Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea (2006)

Fabulously offbeat and refreshingly upbeat, this lovable film gets friendly with the natives of the Salton Sea an inland ocean of massive fish kills, rotting resorts, and 120 degree nights located just minutes from urban Southern California. This award-winning film from directors Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer details the rise and fall of the Salton Sea, from its heyday as the "California Riviera" where boaters and Beach Boys mingled in paradise to its present state of decaying, forgotten ecological disaster. From wonderland to wasteland, PLAGUES & PLEASURES ON THE SALTON SEA captures a place far more interesting than the shopping malls and parking lots of suburban America, a wacky world where a beer-swilling Hungarian Revolutionary, a geriatric nudist, and a religious zealot building a monument to God all find solace and community.

Crisply and hilariously narrated by oddball auteur John Waters, and featuring music by desert lounge rockers Friends of Deans Martinez, PLAGUES & PLEASURES ON THE SALTON SEA melds high camp with stark realism, offering both a sobering message about the consequences of tampering with nature and a heart-warming tale of individualism.

DVD Features: Audio Commentaries with Filmmakers and Salton Sea Locals; Lost Interviews; Deleted Scenes; LEONARD & THE MOUNTAIN Short Film; MIRACLE IN THE DESERT Real Estate Promotional Film; FRUIT OF THE VINE Vignette on the Salton Sea Skateboarding Scene; LSD A GO GO Short Film; CONSUMING FIRE Music Shot at the Salton Sea; Filmmaker Biographies; Short Film on Friends of Dean Martinez Product Description

Good and Wierd

John Waters: Historian. He does a great job. Makes me want to visit the Salton Sea someday myself. August 9, 2008

The Anti Tourist Video

Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea is sort of an anti tourist video. The film chronicles the story of California's Salton Sea from tourist destination in the 1950's and 60's to its present state of ecological decay.

Narrated by John Waters, the film interviews people who live in the various towns surrounding the Sea and they discuss what the area once was compared to what it is now and on to what it may yet become in the future.

I did not find this to be the powerful documentary that many claimed it was. In fact I was a little disappointed. Yes there is an ecological disaster happening at the Salton Sea and I know I should be concerned. I just wasn't really interested in the area or the folks who live there and the film did not make me care more about them.

There is really nothing wrong with this film it just didn't do a lot for me.

June 19, 2008

Truth is stranger than fiction

I've been to this place several times in the last 6 years. Could it be I am addicted to dead Tilapia or is it the mystique, desolation and strange beauty of the area?
The documentary becomes surreal after you have visited.
I have watched the film so many times I am embarrassed to say.
It has a really good feel and is thought provoking. I wonder what ever happpened to the mostly aging characters.
I wonder why the DVD cost $2 more here than on their web site May 11, 2008

Excellent Documentary!

I watched this on the Sundance Channel and had to buy it immediately. Well done and found the residents to be very interesting people. Definitely not your run of the mill video. April 26, 2008

Bizarre and educational!! A strange place in the California desert

Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea is a rarity -- a film about an (apparent) ecological disaster and the strange and remarkable and funny stories and lifestyles that built themselves around it. The Salton Sea was created in about 1905 when the Colorado River was diverted to irrigate farms nearby and the runoff formed a lake in the Salton Sink, just 20 miles off the coast of Palm Springs. In the '50s it was promoted aggressively as a tourist spot and real estate boomed -- but then due to a number of factors (including the fact that excessive heat in the summer kills off hundreds of thousands of fish every year, leaving a bad smell) the Sea was mostly abandoned -- leaving only the hardy and stubborn, and many of them are cool and odd ducks: a former Hungarian revolutionary named Hunky Dory; an old man who likes to let it all hang out; the game warden; the real estate mogul who expects the boom to come soon; families who have come to escape inner city L.A.

The film does an excellent job providing a portrait of the wildlife (both human and otherwise) that surrounds the sea, and catalogues the contradictory reasons why they stay -- it is funny, poignant, bizarre and engaging, and the narration by John Waters hits just the right tone. It dispells some of the many myths that surround the Salton Sea (the fish are NOT poisonous, the lake is NOT toxic -- birds die from the bacteria that come to eat the fish that die because of a lack of oxygen in the salty water when it gets very hot) -- but perhaps more importantly exposes the existence of this strange and remarkable place, a testament simultaneously to our lack of foresight and to our ingenuity in making the best of unforeseen circumstances. The style of the film is spot-on -- with music and titling and other effects that give the film a retro-California-in-the-'50s feel.

If you've caught this doc on cable and enjoyed it, you ought to check out the dvd -- which is expanded a bit over the tv version: it includes more on the local life, is a bit more "salty," and definitely more memorable. April 15, 2008

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