Tim Burton's Ed Wood was the story of a film-maker who possessed all the passion of an Orson Welles and none of the talent; Cecil B Demented is an even more extreme auteur ego. Conceived, written and directed by John Waters, Cecil B Demented is the story of a guerrilla film-maker and cult leader with the charisma of Charles Manson, the style of Andy Warhol and the temperament of Otto Preminger.

Technically, this is Waters' 15th feature, although his filmography still includes three movies, filmed on 8mm with reel-to-reel sync soundtrack, that practically nobody has seen, or ever will. They comprise: Hag In A Black Leather Jacket (1964) ­ his teenage riposte to Kenneth Anger's Fireworks; Roman Candles (1966) ­ a split-screen projection which was inspired by Chelsea Girls; and Eat Your Make-Up (1967) ­ a Warholian study of models modelling themselves to death.

Waters first came to underground attention in bohemian pockets of his fashionable Baltimore hometown with Mondo Trasho (1969), a 16mm extravaganza that served up live poultry decapitation as an aperitif and followed it with scenes of bad catholic behaviour in the local church, including junkies shooting up with holy water and an errant nun using her rosary for sexual gratification.

His leading lady was Divine, a portly drag terrorist formerly known as Glenn Harris Milstead, whose anti-social behaviour scaled new heights in their next collaboration, Multiple Maniacs (1970). It was originally intended to implicate Divine ­ the ringmistress of a touring cavalcade of perversions ­ in the shocking Tate-LaBianca murders the previous year. But when Charles Manson and his murderous family were arrested, Waters had to back down.

It was the 1972 film Pink Flamingos, however, that put Waters in the (s)limelight. Pitting Waters' diva in a battle of wits for the title of Filthiest Person Alive, it featured such scatological delights as Divine opening a gift-wrapped turd, and enjoying the performance of a young man whose anus 'sings' to her at a free-for-all birthday party. The culmination, though, was its nauseating climax, in which Divine stalks a nervous pet dog, waits for it to defecate and pops its fresh-laid excrement eagerly into her mouth.

It was a tough act to follow, and Waters never did, following with more concept-driven black comedies like Female Trouble (still arguably his best) and Desperate Living (still arguably his worst). And, in 1981, when he delivered the suburban black comedy Polyester, a scratch 'n' sniff white-trash epic filmed in Odorama, it seemed as though Hollywood was finally ready for him.

Waters, however, didn't make another movie until 1988's Hairspray, a 1960s-set PG-rated family comedy that brought him a whole new audience and, at the same time, threatened to turn the once-terrifying Divine into a mainstream movie figure. Tragedy struck, however, when Waters' favourite actor died just a few weeks after the film's opening. Without even missing a beat, Waters quickly moved on, choosing the 1950s as a setting for the juvenile delinquent spoof Cry Baby, although he returned to the present day with crime-culture satire Serial Mom in 1994, and artworld spoof Pecker in 1998.

Waters has not been idle during the gaps in his CV, and his spare time has been taken up with projects that never quite materialised. Most famously, there was a Pink Flamingos sequel, Flamingos Forever. Then there was a plan to break a habit of a lifetime and direct an adaptation of someone else's work ­ John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy Of Dunces.

Most interestingly of all, there was Glamourpuss, a black-power fashion comedy with gay skinheads and fag hags that Waters described as a "Mahogany meets The Battle Of Algiers".

Glamourpuss was to be his next film after Serial Mom, but when it went into turnaround, Waters channelled some of its energy into a new script called Cecil B Demented, about an underground movie director with megalomanical urges.

The funding collapsed in pre-production, however, when a well-known actress ­ who Waters still refuses to name ­ upped her price. Waters decided to move on, but when Studio Canal asked him to reconsider the project after the release of Pecker, he agreed to revive it. Set once again in his beloved Baltimore, the film stars Melanie Griffith as Honey Whitlock, a major Hollywood star who agrees to attend a charity premiere of her new film, Some Kind Of Happiness, in Baltimore. Unbeknownst to Honey, the cinema's mild-mannered manager is actually the deranged celluloid guru of the title, an underground film-maker who kidnaps her at gunpoint and forces her to join his Holy War against the perils of bad cinema. It's a just cause. Care to sign up?

Damon Wise