Polyester (1981)
Directed by John Waters · Cinematography by David Insley
R86 min61 frames
ComedyDrama
It’s Scentsational!
Stills, screencaps & shots from Polyester
16 of 61 frames — the full set is searchable by lighting, lens, shot size, color and mood with a free account.
















Polyester — official trailer
What is Polyester about?
Blessed with a keen sense of smell and cursed with a philandering pornographer husband, a parasitic mother, and a pair of delinquent children, the long-suffering Francine Fishpaw turns to the bottle as her life falls apart -- until deliverance appears in the form of a hunk named Todd Tomorrow. Originally screened with "Odorama" scratch and sniff cards so the audience could (at their own risk) smell along with the film.
Polyester is a 1981 American satirical black comedy film written, produced, and directed by John Waters, and starring Divine, Tab Hunter, Edith Massey, David Samson, Mary Garlington, Ken King, Mink Stole, Joni Ruth White, and Stiv Bators. It satirizes the melodrama film genre and the "woman's film" category, particularly the work of Douglas Sirk, which directly influenced this film. The film is also a satire of suburban life in the early 1980s, involving topics such as divorce, abortion, adultery, alcoholism, racial stereotypes, foot fetishism, and the religious right.
Second paragraph from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Where can you watch Polyester?
US availability for Polyester (1981). Data by JustWatch, listings on TMDB. Availability changes — check the provider for current listings.
Who stars in Polyester?
Who made Polyester?
What does the cinematography of Polyester look like?
Sampled across 61 frames, the coverage of Polyester leans heavily on medium shots (72% of the sample). Cinematographer David Insley keeps 51% of it in soft, low-key light. Night and dusk account for 52% of the frames. Focus stays shallow in 56% of the frames, isolating subjects from their surroundings. The production design places the film in the 1980s.
What is the color palette of Polyester?
The dominant colors across the sampled frames of Polyester (1981) are #332d2c, #f7f6f5, #0c0b0c, #ede6d1, #d5d3c8, #473a37 — measured from the per-frame color data FrameThrower extracts for every film.
#332d2c#f7f6f5#0c0b0c#ede6d1#d5d3c8#473a37
See the full Polyester colour palette — every hex with its share, plus warmth, saturation and luminance.
A reference database for filmmakers
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Techniques in this film
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