Renegade filmmaker and noted aficionado of expressive bad taste John Waters exploded into international infamy with this darkly comic, no-budget parade of the perverse (his third feature film, and first in color), in which plus-size cross-dresser Divine stars as Babs Johnson, a flashy criminal on the lam from the FBI who is hiding out in a trailer outside of Baltimore, MD. Accompanying Babs are her mother (Edith Massey), an obese and dim-witted woman who is malignly obsessed with eggs; her degenerate son, Crackers (Danny Mills); and Cotton (Mary Vivian Pierce), Babs’ duplicitous “traveling companion” and Crackers’ co-conspirator in unwholesome erotic play. –amctv
Growing up in Baltimore in the 1950s, John Waters was not like other children; he was obsessed by violence and gore, both real and on the screen. With his weird counter-culture friends as his cast, he began making silent 8mm and 16mm films in the mid-‘60s; he screened these in rented Baltimore church halls to underground audiences drawn by word of mouth and street leafleting campaigns. As his filmmaking grew more polished and his subject matter more shocking, his audiences grew bigger, and his write-ups in the Baltimore papers more outraged. By the early 1970s he was making features, which he managed to get shown in midnight screenings in art cinemas by sheer perseverance. Success came when Pink Flamingos (1972) – a deliberate exercise in ultra-bad taste – took off in 1973, helped no doubt by lead actor Divine’s infamous dog-crap eating scene.
Waters continued to make low-budget shocking movies with his Dreamland repertory company until Hollywood crossover success came with Hairspray… read more
Filthy laughs. What makes Waters so subversive? Whilst so many people major on the taboo busting (yes, important), it’s the gleeful sense of the absurd (“you are convicted of asshole-ism!”) that makes… read review
One of my favourite films of all time. John Waters’ pseudo-punk work of trash art seeks to offend its audience by any means possible. Each scene outdoes its predecessor in shock value, steadily building… read review
(Originally written July 7, 2009)
Disclaimer: Includes descriptions of vulgar happenings in this movie. Although I reveal some of what happens in the film, I guarantee the movie will not be… read review
