[4] It features several actors who were part of the Dreamland acting troupe for Waters' films, including Divine, Mary Vivian Pearce, David Lochary, Mink Stole, Edith Massey, George Figgs, and Cookie Mueller.

A major restoration received national exhibition in August 2016, after initially screening in June at the Provincetown Film Festival.

They have a sexual encounter in the church pew, with Mink inserting a rosary in Divine's rectum while describing the Stations of the Cross.

[5] The scene in which Divine cannibalizes Mr. David's innards was accomplished using a cow's heart that Waters had purchased from a butcher two days prior and refrigerated.

Guy Schaffer, a lecturer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, describes camp aesthetics in queer cinema as a way of reappropriating and revaluing "trash" whilst still broadcasting the trashiness of what it glamorizes.

This is evident as in the Cavalcade of Perversion, where "puke eaters" and "actual queers kissing" are part of the same spectacle and elicit the same guttural reactions from the "straight" audience.

Divine draws power in these stories from the misfortune she faces, as every crime committed (against her or by her) pushes her further from society, prompting her to radicalize her behavior in retribution, which paradoxically grants her a sense of freedom from societal restraints.

John Waters has been described as the "Pope of Trash," a reference to the role that religious imagery plays throughout his films.

The child leads her to a church where she has her first homosexual encounter: a "rosary job" performed by Mink Stole's character.

In a 2016 interview, Waters noted that the Catholic church is the only enemy he has left and that religion is so inherently anti-sex that it's easy to sexualize it.

[1] Waters later recalled that he toured the film throughout the United States, showing it at small arthouse theaters and other venues which often required a deposit to screen features.

[14] In 2024, Waters recalled an incident where the Ontario Censor Board burnt a print of Multiple Maniacs that he sent for review.

[15] Upon the film's debut in 1970, The Baltimore Sun's Lou Cedrone wrote: "Multiple Maniacs is very smelly, save for a moment here and there when the Waters humor is apparent.