Before Waitress! became the name of a completely different and much more famous movie, there was this wonderfully strange 1981 Troma comedy. Directed by Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman, Waitress! is a raunchy, chaotic New York restaurant comedy about three waitresses trying to survive obnoxious customers, a drunken chef and a workplace that seems to be falling apart around them. It runs about 88 minutes and was released theatrically in September 1982.

It is also exactly the sort of movie that could only have come from the early days of Troma.

The premise sounds simple enough. Three women work in a restaurant, dealing with customers and whatever insanity comes through the front door. But Waitress! quickly abandons anything resembling a conventional workplace comedy and becomes a collection of outrageous situations, bizarre characters and deliberately tasteless jokes.

Welcome to the Restaurant

The three central waitresses are Andrea, Jennifer and Lindsey, played by Carol Drake, Carol Bevar and Renata Hickey. Each has her own personality and problems, but their shared workplace is the real star of the movie.

This is not a glamorous New York restaurant.

It’s noisy, crowded and filled with people who seem determined to make the employees’ lives miserable.

The official Troma description promises a “crazy restaurant” featuring chaos among the customers, an exploding kitchen and a drunken chef. That’s a pretty accurate indication of the movie’s priorities.

The restaurant becomes a pressure cooker where practically anything can happen.

Customers complain.

Employees argue.

The kitchen becomes increasingly unmanageable.

And somehow the waitresses are expected to keep smiling through all of it.

A Very Early Troma Movie

Waitress! is particularly interesting because it comes from an important period in Troma’s development.

Troma Entertainment would eventually become synonymous with outrageous horror-comedies like The Toxic Avenger, but the company was also producing a series of deliberately raunchy comedies.

Waitress! was part of that early “sexy comedy” period, following Squeeze Play! and preceding films such as Stuck on You! and The First Turn-On!

That history explains why the movie feels different from the Troma productions many people know today.

There are no radioactive superheroes running around.

There aren’t armies of mutant monsters.

Instead, the movie finds its comedy in everyday situations and then pushes those situations far beyond anything resembling normal behavior.

Carol Drake’s Andrea

Andrea is played by Carol Drake, and her character is an aspiring actress working as a waitress.

That setup gives the movie another layer of comedy.

Andrea isn’t necessarily dreaming about spending her entire life serving food to difficult customers. She’s trying to make something else happen with her life while working a job that constantly throws distractions and ridiculous situations at her.

It’s a familiar idea.

Countless actors have waited tables while trying to break into show business.

Waitress! simply turns that familiar experience into a broad comedy.

The restaurant becomes less of a temporary job and more of an obstacle course.

The Customers

The customers are where much of the movie’s weirdness comes from.

Instead of treating the restaurant as a realistic workplace, the filmmakers use it as a stage for a parade of eccentric personalities.

Some customers are annoying.

Some are bizarre.

Some are downright disgusting.

And some exist primarily so the movie can deliver another joke.

The supporting cast is enormous, with IMDb listing a long roster of diners, waitresses, busboys and other restaurant characters. Among the cast is a young Tony Denison, while the film also features appearances from performers who would go on to other projects.

The sheer number of characters contributes to the movie’s anything-goes atmosphere.

The Drunken Chef

One of the central sources of chaos is the restaurant’s chef.

He’s not exactly the calm professional you’d want preparing your dinner.

He’s drunken, slovenly and constantly contributing to the insanity around him.

The movie uses the chef as another example of the basic joke: everyone working in this restaurant is barely holding things together.

The waitresses have difficult customers.

The chef is a disaster.

The kitchen is a mess.

And management doesn’t seem capable of bringing order to anything.

It’s less a restaurant than a workplace accident waiting to happen.

The Exploding Kitchen

Eventually, the restaurant’s dysfunction reaches its logical conclusion.

Things go spectacularly wrong in the kitchen.

Troma’s own description specifically highlights an “exploding kitchen,” and that phrase tells you more about the movie than a traditional plot summary ever could.

This isn’t a carefully constructed culinary comedy.

It’s a movie where the filmmakers see a restaurant and ask how much chaos they can squeeze out of it.

The answer appears to be: quite a lot.

Filming at Marty’s

One of the most entertaining production stories involves the restaurant itself.

The movie was shot on location at Marty’s, a real restaurant in Manhattan. Because the restaurant couldn’t allow the filmmakers to shoot during normal business hours, the cast and crew reportedly worked overnight, filming from approximately midnight until 10 in the morning.

That detail helps explain the movie’s authentic restaurant atmosphere.

The filmmakers weren’t working on a giant studio set designed to look like a diner.

They were actually filming inside a functioning New York restaurant.

And there is something fitting about a movie this chaotic being made while everyone else was asleep.

The New York Setting

New York itself gives Waitress! some personality.

The movie isn’t trying to present a romanticized version of Manhattan. Instead, it uses the city as a noisy, crowded backdrop for its characters.

The restaurant feels like a little world where strangers constantly collide.

That gives the movie a slightly different flavor from the more polished workplace comedies that Hollywood was producing at the time.

It’s scruffier.

It’s cheaper.

It’s more unpredictable.

And that’s exactly what makes it interesting.

The Humor

There is no getting around the fact that Waitress! is very much a product of its era.

The humor is raunchy, crude and frequently juvenile.

Some jokes have aged considerably better than others.

The movie doesn’t worry much about political correctness or subtle character development. It wants to make the audience laugh, shock them occasionally and keep throwing new situations at them.

That makes it something of an acquired taste.

If you’re expecting a sophisticated comedy about restaurant workers, this probably isn’t the movie for you.

If you’re interested in early Troma and enjoy discovering forgotten exploitation-era comedies, however, it becomes much more appealing.

Why It Matters

Waitress! isn’t one of Troma’s most famous movies.

It doesn’t have the cultural footprint of The Toxic Avenger.

It isn’t particularly polished.

It isn’t a major piece of American cinema.

But it is an interesting snapshot of what Troma was doing before the company became best known for its mutant superheroes and splatter comedies.

It also captures a particular kind of low-budget filmmaking that has largely disappeared.

A small production could find a real restaurant, assemble an unconventional cast, shoot overnight and build an entire comedy around whatever chaos the location provided.

That’s part of the movie’s appeal.

The Legacy of Waitress!

Today, Waitress! is primarily a cult-film curiosity and an early chapter in the history of Troma Entertainment.

Its reputation isn’t based on critical acclaim. Rotten Tomatoes lists only a small number of critic reviews, with the film holding a low Tomatometer score, while its audience reception demonstrates the sharply divided reaction that often follows Troma’s stranger productions.

And that’s probably where Waitress! belongs.

It’s not a forgotten masterpiece waiting to be rediscovered.

It’s a weird little time capsule.

It’s a snapshot of early-1980s independent filmmaking, New York restaurant culture and Troma’s willingness to turn almost any ordinary situation into an excuse for outrageous comedy.

The title may sound harmless.

The movie isn’t.

Waitress! takes a normal restaurant, fills it with dysfunctional employees and impossible customers, throws in a drunken chef and an exploding kitchen, and lets the whole thing descend into chaos.

It’s cheap, crude and completely ridiculous.

In other words, it’s Troma doing what Troma does best.

 

Where to Stream

You can stream it for free on Tubi here