Cry-Baby (4K UHD Review)

Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
Review Date: Jul 30, 2024
Format: 4K Ultra HD

Director

John Waters

Release Date(s)

1990 (May 28, 2024)

Studio(s)

Imagine Entertainment/Universal Pictures (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)

Film/Program Grade: B+
Video Grade: A-
Audio Grade: B+
Extras Grade: A
Overall Grade: A

Review

After achieving a mild amount of mainstream success with Hairspray in 1988, John Waters responded with what may seem like his most mainstream effort of all, at least on a superficial level: Cry-Baby. It’s a PG-13 film that was distributed by a major studio, starring a hot young actor who was already well on his way to superstardom. However, that’s the start and the finish of anything that can be considered even remotely mainstream about Cry-Baby, since everything else about it says otherwise. For starters, It’s a full-blown musical, which is something that Hollywood studios weren’t eager to produce during that era. (Hairspray had plenty of music in it, but it still wasn’t quite a musical yet; that transformation came later.) It’s also a celebration of trashiness from the man who William S. Burroughs once called the Pope of Trash. It may not be as tasteless as his earlier films—after all, it did pass muster with the MPAA for a PG-13—but it’s still the unmistakable Waters brand of tastelessness, albeit in one of its most tasteful forms.

Waters has always celebrated those who have been marginalized by society, and in the process, he’s exalted tackiness and trashiness into high art. In Waters’ world, societal norms exist to be broken at every possible level. Even when he left behind the world of filth that marked his earlier work, he still found ways to push boundaries in less overt but no less subversive ways. Hairspray had addressed the obstacles to racial integration during the Sixties, while Cry-Baby turned its lens on class conflict by way of one of the scourges of the Fifties (at least as far as polite society was concerned): juvenile delinquency. Yet the subversive nature of Cry-Baby lies in the fact that it’s anything but an exposé about youth run amok; instead, it’s a celebration of the non-conformity that’s inherent to juvenile delinquency. The kids in Cry-Baby are rebels with a cause: namely, self-expression, and they just want to be themselves regardless of what anyone else may think. If the kids in Hairspray used their local television dance program to provide freedom from racial oppression, the kids in Cry-Baby use their rebellion as a means to provide freedom from societal repression.

Waters being Waters, of course, everything in Cry-Baby is filtered through the lens of his beloved Baltimore home. Rather than focusing on the Greasers, Hoods, or JDs that would be more familiar anywhere else in America, Cry-Baby features the Drapes and Drapettes of the Greater Baltimore area and their conflict with the Squares of polite society. It’s Quadrophenia with Drapes vs. Squares instead of Mods vs. Rockers—with more than a touch of Romeo and Juliet thrown in for good measure. “Cry-Baby” Walker (Johnny Depp) is the leader of a gang of Drapes that includes his pregnant sister Pepper (Ricki Lake), Wanda Woodward (Traci Lords), “Hatchet-Face” Malnorowski (Kim McGuire), and Milton Hackett (Darren E. Burrows). While getting mandatory polio vaccinations at high school, Cry-Baby catches the eye of a Square named Allison Vernan-Williams (Amy Locane), setting into motion a conflict between the Drapes and the Squares that will result in Cry-Baby being thrown into prison, with Allison torn between the two sides. Yet even her super-Square grandmother (Polly Bergen) realizes that Allison needs to follow her heart, not her head.

Waters certainly followed his own heart in making Cry-Baby, taking inspiration from the music, movies, and real-world nonconformists that he has always loved so dearly. Studio production or not, he brought along many of his stock crew members. He also peppered the cast with plenty of familiar faces, as well as a few new ones who embodied his obsessions. That included Iggy Pop and Susan Tyrell as the elder statespeople for the Drapes; Troy Donahue, Mink Stole, Joe Dallesandro, Joey Heatherton, David Nelson, and Patty Hearst as some of the parents; and Willem Dafoe as a gleefully sadistic prison guard. (Mary Vivian Pierce also has a small cameo.) Cry-Baby was produced through Ron Howard and Bryan Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment and distributed by Universal Pictures, but it’s still a John Waters film through and through. It’s a celebration of nonconformity made by one of the ultimate nonconformists, and no one was ever going to hold him back. Regardless of whether or not Mr. Jailer will let Allison’s man Cry-Baby go free, there was exactly zero chance that The Man was going to make a lifer out of John Waters. You can’t repress someone who’s inherently irrepressible, and that’s both the story behind the making of Cry-Baby and the ultimate message of the film itself. Viewed from both perspectives simultaneously, it’s one of the most personal films that Waters has ever made.

Cinematographer David Insley shot Cry-Baby on 35mm film with spherical lenses, framed at 1.85:1 for its theatrical release. This 4K master was provided by Universal, based on a 4K scan of the original camera negative, graded for High Dynamic Range in both Dolby Vision and HDR10. The opening credit sequence and all other opticals throughout the rest of the film were derived from dupe elements, so they’re softer than the surrounding material, but everything else is as sharp as it can be—perhaps not true 4K levels of fine detail, but the textures and the original grain are all nicely resolved here. The biggest gains are from the new HDR grade, which accentuates the colors without ever exaggerating them. Cry-Baby is supposed to be bright, a little garish, and larger-than-life, and that’s exactly how it looks in this presentation. It’s a live-action cartoon that now looks as cartoonish as ever, yet it still never loses sight of its filmic origins. There’s nothing trashy about Cry-Baby in 4K—it’s a winner from any perspective.

Audio is offered in English 2.0 and 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English subtitles. Cry-Baby was released theatrically in Dolby Stereo, and the 2.0 track does appear to be the original mix with encoded surrounds—the sound of thunder in the front channels ends up rolling into the rears. That said, it’s a dominantly front-focused mix, with most of the stereo spread being provided by the music. The 5.1 track sounds like a straightforward discrete encoding of the original four matrixed channels. Between the two, it has a slight edge thanks to more precise steering and a bit more depth to the bass, but those differences are minor. You can’t go wrong either way.

Kino Lorber’s 4K Ultra HD release of Cry-Baby is a 2-Disc set that includes the theatrical cut in 4K on UHD and the director’s cut in 1080p on Blu-ray. It also offers a slipcover that duplicates the artwork on the insert. The following extras are included, the bulk of them on the Blu-ray only:

DISC ONE: UHD (THEATRICAL CUT)

Audio Commentary by John Waters (2024)

DISC TWO: BD (DIRECTOR’S CUT)

Audio Commentary by John Waters (2005)
Bringing up Baby (HD – 38:10)
Pop Icons (HD – 14:13)
Part of a Collection (HD – 19:23)
A Few Yucks (HD – 9:17)
All These Misfits (HD – 8:17)
So Tired of Being Good (HD – 8:42)
In the Sandbox (HD – 10:12)
Hip to Be Square (HD – 9:16)
Talking Hair (HD – 10:04)
It Came from... Baltimore! (SD – 47:39)
Deleted Scenes (SD – 7:02, 5 in all)
Trailer (HD – 1:58)

Of course, the director’s cut itself qualifies as one of the extras, running approximately seven minutes longer than the theatrical cut. It adds back a few sequences and shots throughout the film, some of which do help to clarify things that were left unexplained in the theatrical cut. For example, there’s a brief sequence after the opening credits featuring Hatchet Face’s parents selling cigarettes in front of the school, which sets up the punchline of her mother being in an iron lung later during the courtroom scene. Speaking of which, it also restores the first two “fucks” during that scene (although it’s arguably funnier to have them bleeped out so that the unbleeped third one is more unexpected). There are also a few extensions to some of the musical and dance numbers. Note that the original elements for the missing footage weren’t available or no longer exist, so this is actually a hybrid version using the same 4K scan from the theatrical cut, with most of the director’s cut material scanned from an interpositive, although a handful of shots were upscaled from an SD master instead. It’s not exactly seamless, but it’s good enough for 1080p. The audio options are identical to the theatrical cut: 2.0 and 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English subtitles.

That means that there are actually two different commentary tracks here featuring John Waters, one for each cut. The new commentary on the theatrical version is moderated by Black Mansion Films producer Heather Buckley. Waters describes it as stream-of-consciousness commentary, but Buckley does chime in occasionally to ask questions—although it’s hardly necessary, because Waters never lacks for anything to say. The commentary on the director’s cut was originally recorded for Universal’s 2005 DVD release of Cry-Baby, and it’s a solo affair from Waters. He calls the film “Romeo and Juliet from the gutter,” giving glimpses into his thought processes about the film and providing an overview of the production. He also points out some of the footage that was added for the director’s cut. (He states with tongue perhaps only slightly in cheek that he created the whole thing just so that he could have the opportunity to include another instance of Patty Hearst saying the word “fuck.”)

The rest of the extras kick off with the new featurette Bringing up Baby. It’s a look at the making of Cry-Baby that includes interviews with Waters, David Insley, Mink Stole, and casting director Pat Moran. They offer a brief history of how they came to work together, and then describe the challenges of making a real studio production. Moran says that as far as she’s concerned, filmmaking is the same and the only difference is the budget, but Waters is pretty clear that it was a little more complicated than that. Regardless, Cry-Baby is still the film that he set out to make. Since they all came from Baltimore, they also offer their thoughts on the whole Drapes vs. Squares dichotomy. Waters says that music and sex are the two things that can break down barriers between the classes, and that’s what Cry-Baby is about.

The new interviews continue with Pop Icons, where Amy Locane says that at the time, she was a Catholic school girl who thought that she was avant-garde, but the experience of making Cry-Baby proved that she wasn’t nearly as avant-garde as she had thought. (Of course, she’s being interviewed in her prison jumpsuit while she’s currently serving time for vehicular homicide, so she admits that she’s pretty much a Drape at this point.) Part of a Collection is with Traci Lords, who tells her side of what it was like to become a small part of the John Waters family. (At the time, she had no idea who he was.) A Few Yucks is with the one and only Iggy Pop, who says that he knew that a John Waters movie was going to be something that he wouldn’t be embarrassed about—the exact opposite of how most other people would feel. He admits that it was a crazy set, though. All These Misfits is with Ricki Lake, who explains her working relationship with Waters and how they’re usually on the same page. She respects the fact that he’s always true to himself. So Tired of Being Good is with Patty Hearst, who says that she was a Square who really wanted to be a Drape. (Given her background, that’s a pretty loaded statement.)

In the Sandbox features actor Darren E. Burrows, who loved doing a picture that was bigger than life with characters who were bigger than life. He says that having Joe Dallesandro and Joey Heatherton playing his parents was like upside-down Disneyland. Hip to Be Square is with actor Stephen Mailer, who was over the moon to be able to work on a John Waters project. He was over a car for the stunt sequence at the end of the film, and was surprised that they didn’t tether him to the roof for safety, but he was told that it was actually safer if he could just let go in case of an accident. Talking Hair takes a different direction than the rest of the interviews—it’s with barber Howard “Hep” Preston, who designed the hairstyles in the film based on his familiarity of the styles of the period.

The last few extras were all originally created for Universal’s 2005 DVD. It Came from... Baltimore! is a documentary about the making of Cry-Baby, featuring interviews with John Waters, Johnny Depp, Amy Locane, Traci Lords, Ricki Lake, Kim McGuire, producer Rachel Talalay, author David Ehrenstein, and more. It actually takes a step back at first by examining juvenile delinquency on film prior to Cry-Baby, as well as the history of the Drapes and Squares. Waters explains his inspirations and how he pitched Cry-Baby to the studios—after Hairspray, he says that it was the only time that every studio wanted to make a film with him. From there, It Came from... Baltimore! dives in the actual making of Cry-Baby, including the editorial process that resulted in a few scenes being dropped. There’s also some priceless footage of the Baltimore premiere.

Finally, there are five different deleted scenes that didn’t make their way into the director’s cut. There are a few more moments with the sleazy photographer, another glimpse of the helicopter in action, and another musical number.

That’s all of the extras from previous releases, plus a healthy slate of new ones, and both cuts of the film—one of them in full 4K. That’s as definitive a release of Cry-Baby as we’re ever going to get. Some people may grouse that the director’s cut isn’t available in 4K as well, but the mixed source elements would have stood out even more in 4K than they do in 1080p. The reality is that Cry-Baby is hardly the kind of title that anyone would have expected to get in 4K at all, so this is a gift horse that shouldn’t be looked in the mouth. The fact that Universal licensed this 4K master out to a boutique label proves that they had no intentions whatsoever of releasing it on disc themselves, so props to Kino Lorber for stepping up to the plate. Kino is only too happy to celebrate the 4K nonconformity that the marketing departments at studios like Universal tend to shy away from these days, and thanks to them, we have Cry-Baby in 4K on physical media. Wonders truly never cease.

- Stephen Bjork

(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, and Letterboxd).