Female Trouble (1974)

Trash-cinema auteur John Waters took a step backward with this picture, perhaps because he knew he couldn’t get any more outrageous than he did with his first color film, Pink Flamingos (1972). And since he returned to form with his next picture, the giddily perverse Desperate Living (1977), it’s probably best to regard Female Trouble as a minor effort from a prolific period. As always during Waters’ early days, the star of the show is rotund transvestite Divine. He plays a teenager (!) named Dawn Davenport, who runs away from home. Soon afterward, she has a tryst with a scumbag named Earl Peterson. He’s also played by Divine, leading to the strange image of Divine, dressed as a man, humping Divine, dressed as a woman. (Oh, the things a resourceful filmmaker can do with body doubles.) Anyway, Dawn becomes a hardened criminal and gives birth to Earl’s baby, not necessarily in that order, so adventures ensue, leading to Dawn’s final showdown with the law. Waters has said the picture was inspired by his conversations with an imprisoned member of the Manson family, and that’s telling. Whereas in other pictures Waters celebrates societal rejects looking for acceptance, in Female Trouble he crosses a line by celebrating irredeemable sociopaths for no edifying reason. Partially because of this thematic problem and partially because the story is episodic and weak, Female Trouble drags, no pun intended. There’s plenty of Waters’ usual repulsive stuff, but none of it feels truly brazen. Sure, some of the lines are enjoyably crude (“I wouldn’t jump in a bed that had been defiled by you—I’d sooner jump in a river of snot!”), but too much of Female Trouble comprises such pointlessly grotesque imagery as the shot of dark skidmarks staining (male) Dvine’s tighty-whities while he screws (female) Dvine. So by the time Waters recycles the image of a performer shooting a gun at an audience, previously seen in Multiple Maniacs (1970), it’s clear he’s running on some very unpleasant-smelling fumes.

Female Trouble: LAME

Multiple Maniacs (1970)

          Baltimore provocateur John Waters got closer to perfecting his signature style with Multiple Maniacs, an extremely low-budget comedy starring the director’s longtime muse, overweight transvestite Divine. Whereas Waters’ best pictures have a strong element of sociopolitical satire, usually by means of presenting criminals and degenerates as outlaw heroes, Multiple Maniacs has a more scattershot approach. The playful notion of transforming perverts into romantic rebels is one element, but the movie also gets into rape, religion, and revenge. At the risk of giving away one of the more outlandish gags, the fact that the picture’s climax involves a giant lobster indicates that Waters wasn’t aspiring to artistic legitimacy when he made Multiple Maniacs; more than any of his other ’70s features, this one feels like a lark that Waters made with his pals for kicks.

          Divine plays Lady Divine, the proprietor of a freak show called “The Cavalcade of Perversions.” Occupying a series of tents in a suburban neighborhood, the show features people who are odd (the woman who fellates a shoe), repulsive (the self-explanatory “Puke Eater”), and socially marginalized (the amorous dudes billed as “actual queers”). Lady Divine uses the show as a means of luring normal people into the tents so she and her accomplices can rob them, but one day she decides to kill spectators instead. This transforms Lady Divine into a fugitive, so Lady Divine and her boyfriend, Mr. David (David Lochary), take separate escape routes.

          Waters spends a lot of time cutting between Lady Divine’s misadventures and Mr. David’s entanglement with a new lover. In Lady Divine’s scenes, the heroine endures two rapes, one of which leads to a religious conversation, complete with visions of Jesus. Eventually, she finds her way back to Mr. David and she learns he’s been unfaithful. Cue the “hell hath no fury” bit. Most of Waters’ beloved tropes are here, including comically upbeat dialogue, gleeful excess, and hopelessly inept actors. Yet poor cinematography, editing, and sound make it difficult for Waters to cast his special camp/trash spell, especially since the story frequently devolves into nonsense. (Remember the lobster?)

Multiple Maniacs: FUNKY

Pink Flamingos (1972)

          Indie provocateur John Waters’ breakthrough movie, Pink Flamingos, is currently rated NC-17, and the text provided by the MPAA to justify the rating sums up the nature of the film: “For a wide range of perversions in explicit detail.” After directing two no-budget black-and-white features, Waters was ready to make a big noise with his first color feature, so he applied his signature cheerful insouciance to the task of creating the most disgusting characters ever filmed. Accordingly, Pink Flamingos depicts a war between two depraved criminals for the title of “Filthiest Person Alive.”

          The star of the show is, of course, Waters’ singular muse, the 300-pound drag queen Divine, who plays a character named Divine—although the character often travels under the alias “Babs Johnson.” Living in a trailer with her odd family, which includes an adult son and daughter as well as Edie (Edith Massey), an overweight senior who sleeps in a crib and spends every waking hour eating eggs, Divine/Babs finds fulfillment by committing crimes and grotesque acts. For instance, she nearly runs over pedestrians while driving, and she urinates in public like an animal. Meanwhile, Connie Marble (Mink Stole) and her husband, Raymond Marble (David Lochary), lead a similarly revolting lifestyle. They kidnap young women, hold the women hostage in their basement so the women can be impregnated by their servant, Crackers (Danny Mills), and then sell the resulting babies to lesbian couples—using the profits to bankroll their drug operation.

          Even a partial list of taboo acts performed in Pink Flamingos is startling—especially when one considers that only some of the following behavior is simulated. Divine/Babs performs fellatio on her son. A flasher ties sausages to his penis before displaying himself to innocent bystanders. A party guest does a strange puppetry routine involving his sphincter muscle. Revelers kill police officers and eat the bodies. Two people have sex while mutilating chickens. And, in the most notorious scene of Waters’ filmography, Divine/Babs eats dog feces. (As Waters himself proclaims in the exuberant voiceover that precedes the dog scene, “This is a real thing!”)

          Crudely made and deliberately tasteless, Pink Flamingos ventures so far past revulsion that it enters the realm of the surreal—and yet in a (very) strange way, it’s a rather sweet film. Waters’ affection for the weirdo characters (and the brazen performance-artist types portraying them) is contagious, and Waters has an unmistakable flair for comic irony. Scoring a montage of Divine/Babs doing foul things with ambiguously gendered rock star Little Richard’s classic tune “The Girl Can’t Help It” is droll, and it’s hard not to laugh at such stupidly funny lines as, “I guess there’s just two kinds of people, Miss Sandstone—my kind of people and assholes.”

          Which, incidentally, encapsulates the whole perverse joie-de-vivre that drives Waters’ cinematic exploits. In the world of Waters’ movies, freaks are the cool people and straights are the ones who don’t get the joke. That’s a beautiful thought, even if Waters delivers it in Pink Flamingos via some of the ugliest imagery ever captured on film. In other words, if your tolerance for the repugnant is low, give Pink Flamingos a wide berth and content yourself with Waters’ later work, which explores similar thematic material in a less confrontational way. But if you’re eager to prove your mettle by enduring something truly nasty, rest assured Pink Flamingos goes about as far as any movie you’ll ever encounter. Word to the wise, though—don’t eat while you’re watching.

Pink Flamingos: FREAKY