Cecil's real terror leads to real gun battles with edgy policemen, and his crew dwindles with every encounter. While Waters successfully lampoons both the Hollywood elite and the so-called underground, though his fantasies carry him away at some points. Running from their raids, the gang takes refuge in porn theaters and kung fu grindhouses, the very types of theaters whose disappearance they're supposed to be protesting. Cecil even stages his fiery climax in a quaint old drive-in. Outside of a few tattoos of directors unknown to the average viewer, we're given little idea of what type of film he approves of, just the ridiculous extremes of what he's fighting against.
Waters also has race trouble.
Waters may lose his way here and there, but Cecil B. DeMented still manages to nail a lot of targets. An engorged porn house audience shuffles to Cecil's defense like zombies. And Waters regular Patricia Hearst is on hand again, this time playing the distraught mother of a youth seduced into the terrorist gang. Sloppy and scattershot, this is nevertheless a return to Waters' early spark, despite the R rating. He's once again setting his outcast underdog heroes in a crazy world where giant lobsters could leap out of the woodwork at any moment to assault unsuspecting housewives.