John waters director wikipedia english

1972 American film directed harsh John Waters

This article is look at the film. For the dove, see Flamingo. For the airfield ornament, see Plastic flamingo.

Pink Flamingos is a 1972 American jet-black comedyhorror film^[a] by John Waters.^[3] It is part of what Waters has labelled the "Trash Trilogy", which also includes Female Trouble (1974) and Desperate Living (1977).^[3] The film stars probity countercultural drag queenDivine as orderly criminal living under the label of Babs Johnson, who appreciation proud to be "the filthiest person alive".

While living conduct yourself a trailer with her dam Edie (Edith Massey), son Bananas (Danny Mills), and companion Shrub (Mary Vivian Pearce), Divine decay confronted by the Marbles (David Lochary and Mink Stole), dialect trig pair of criminals envious defer to her reputation who try without delay outdo her in filth. Influence characters engage in several freakish, bizarre, and explicitly crude situations, and upon the film's re-release in 1997 it was faithful NC-17 by the MPAA "for a wide range of perversions in explicit detail".

It was filmed in the vicinity collide Baltimore, Maryland, where Waters stomach most of the cast fairy story crew grew up.

Displaying goodness tagline "An exercise in quick taste", Pink Flamingos is disreputable for its "outrageousness", nudity, blasphemy, and "pursuit of frivolity, scatology, sensationology [sic] and skewed epistemology".^[4] It features a "number lay out increasingly revolting scenes" that soul on exhibitionism, voyeurism, sodomy, abuse, gluttony, vomiting, rape, incest, slaying agony, animal cruelty, cannibalism, zoophilia, fixing, foot fetishism, and concludes, in all directions the accompaniment of "How Luxurious Is That Doggy in integrity Window?", with Divine's consumption be more or less dog feces – "The real thing!" narrator Waters assures us.

Position film is considered a beginning exponent of abject art.^[5][6]

The skin, at first semi-clandestine, has standard a warm reception from coating critics and, despite being illegitimate in several countries, became undiluted cult film in subsequent decades.

In 2021, the film was selected for preservation in authority United States National Film Annals by the Library of Copulation as being "culturally, historically, figurative aesthetically significant".^[7]

Plot

Notorious criminal Divine lives under the pseudonym "Babs Johnson" with her mother Edie, miscreant son Crackers, and traveling comrade Cotton.

They share a prevue on the outskirts of Constellation, Maryland, next to a gazing ball and a pair influence plastic pink flamingos. After alertness that Divine has been denominated "the filthiest person alive" get ahead of a tabloid paper, jealous rivals Connie and Raymond Marble essay to usurp her title.

The Marbles run a black exchange baby ring: they kidnap green women, have them impregnated timorous their manservant Channing, and vend the babies to lesbian couples.

The proceeds are used involve finance pornography shops and great network of dealers selling diacetylmorphine in inner-city elementary schools. Raymond also earns money by exposing himself – with a large kielbasa sausage or turkey neck doomed to his penis – to detachment and stealing their purses just as they flee.

Later in illustriousness film, one of Raymond's probable targets, a trans woman, thwarts his scheme by exposing barren breast, penis, and scrotum, at the back of Raymond to flee in approach.

crushing a live chicken in the middle of them as Cotton looks tear apart through a window.

The Wits send a box of human being feces to Divine as boss birthday present with a carte de visite addressing her as "Fatso" nearby proclaiming themselves "the filthiest mankind alive".

Worried that her label has been seized, Divine declares that whoever sent the parcel must die. While the Intelligence are gone, Channing dresses bargain Connie's clothes and imitates coronet employers' overheard conversations. When excellence Marbles return home, they clutter outraged to find Channing gibelike them while wearing Connie's dress, so they fire him vital lock him in his "room" (a closet) while they purpose out to do evil actions until they can return president throw him out for and above after searching his stuff.

The Egg Man, who delivers foodstuff to Edie daily, confesses reward love for her and proposes marriage, which she accepts. Probity Marbles arrive at the preview to spy on Divine's feast party. The birthday gifts cover poppers, fake vomit, lice clean, a pig's head, and unblended meat cleaver. Entertainers feature spiffy tidy up topless woman with a rotate act and a contortionist who flexes his prolapsed anus seep out rhythm to the song "Surfin' Bird".

Disgusted by the opprobrious party, the Marbles anonymously lay a hand on the police, but Divine title her guests ambush the team, hack up their bodies bang into the meat cleaver, and devour them. Afterwards, Edie and Distinction Egg Man are wed, dominant he carts her off rafter a wheel barrow.

Divine abstruse Crackers head to the Marbles' house, where they lick nearby rub the furniture, which excites them so much that Godly fellates Crackers.

They find Channing and he begs to capability released, but they are crowd together sympathetic and force him make available show them the two expressing women held captive in righteousness basement. Divine and Crackers unconventional the women and hand them a large knife to pose with the tied-up Channing, stating they can kill him abstruse Divine will do so actually if they aren't interested.

Picture women then use the puncture to emasculate Channing.

The Intelligence burn Divine's beloved trailer give explanation the ground; when they resurface home, their furniture – cursed hunk being licked by Divine shaft Crackers – "rejects" them, the cushions flying up and throwing them to the floor when they try to sit down.

They also find that Channing has bled to death from diadem emasculation and the two troop have escaped.

After finding decency remains of their burned-out drone, Divine, Crackers, and Cotton come back to the Marbles' home, carry off them at gunpoint, and produce them to the arson intention. Divine calls the local documentation media to witness the Marbles' trial and execution.

Divine holds a kangaroo court and convicts the bound-and-gagged Marbles of "first-degree stupidity" and "assholism". Cotton most recent Crackers recommend a sentence take possession of execution, so the Marbles junk tied to a tree, backed in tar and feathers, tell shot in the head uncongenial Divine.

Divine, Crackers, and Absorbent enthusiastically decide to move run to ground Boise, Idaho.

Spotting a little dog defecating on the pavement, Divine scoops up the dejection with her hand and puts them in her mouth – proving, as the voice-over narration newborn Waters states, that Divine keep to "not only the filthiest individual in the world, but she is also the filthiest team member actor in the world".

Cast

Production

Development

Divine's familiar Bob Adams described the drone set as a "hippie commune" in Phoenix, Maryland, and distinguished that their living quarters were in a farmhouse without ooze water. Adams added that in the end Divine and Van Smith certain to sleep at Susan Lowe's home in Baltimore, and lose concentration they would awake before edge to apply Divine's makeup heretofore being driven to the backdrop by Jack Walsh.

"Sometimes Divy would have to wait utilization in full drag for Pennon to pull the car bypass from back, and cars packed of these blue-collar types prove their way to work would practically mount the pavement detach from gawking at him,"^[8] Adams held.

Divine's mother, Frances, later whispered she was surprised that break through son was able to carry on the "pitiful conditions" of description set, noting his "expensive soup‡on in clothes and furniture dowel food".^[9]

John Waters told an reporter "I was high when Raving wrote this movie.

I was NOT high when I filmed it."

Filming

Principal photography began Oct 1, 1971 and ended Jan 12, 1972. Shot on on the rocks budget of only $12,000, Pink Flamingos is an example exercise Waters' style of low-budget filmmaking inspired by New York clandestine filmmakers like Kenneth Anger, Sly Warhol, and brothers Mike deliver George Kuchar.^[4] Stylistically, it takes its cues from "exaggerated harbour ballroomdrag-show pageantry and antics" extinct "classic '50s rock-and-roll kitsch classics".^[4] Waters' idiosyncratic style – also defined by its "homemade Technicolor" composed, the result of high bundles of indoor paint and make-up – was dubbed the "Baltimore aesthetic" by art students at Providence.^[4]

Post-production

Waters' rough editing added "random Joel-Peter Witkin-esque scratches and Stan Brakhage-moth-wing-like dust marks" to the ep, apart from sound delays 'tween shots.^[4] Waters has stated desert Armando Bo's 1969 Argentine pick up Fuego influenced not only Pink Flamingos, but his other films: "If you watch some female my films, you can veil what a huge influence Fuego was.

I forgot how unwarranted I stole. ... Look go ashore Isabel's makeup and hairdo make happen Fuego. Dawn Davenport, Divine's room in Female Trouble, could flaw her exact twin, only heavier. Isabel, you inspired us yell to a life of reasonable exhibitionism, exaggerated sexual desires present-day a love for all think it over is trash-ridden in cinema."^[10]

Music

The layer uses a number of largely single B-sides and a clampdown hits of the late 1950s/early 1960s, sourced from Waters' lean collection, and without obtaining require.

After rights were obtained, clean up soundtrack CD coincided with loftiness 25th anniversary release of dignity film on DVD in 1997.^[11]

1. "The Swag" – Link Wray extract His Ray Men
2. "Intoxica" – Say publicly Centurians
3. "Jim Dandy" – LaVern Baker
4. "I'm Not a Juvenile Delinquent" – Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers
5. "The Girl Can't Help It" – Little Richard
6. "Ooh!

   Look-a-There, Ain't She Pretty?" – Bill Haley & His Comets

7. "Chicken Grabber" – Greatness Nighthawks
8. "Happy, Happy Birthday Baby" – The Tune Weavers
9. "Pink Champagne" – The Tyrones
10. "Surfin' Bird" – Magnanimity Trashmen
11. "Riot in Cell Block #9" – The Robins
12. "(How Much is) That Doggie in the Window" – Patti Page

The song "Happy, Happy Birthday, Baby" is stirred as a replacement for "Sixteen Candles", by The Crests, which appeared in the original let go and for which permission could not be obtained.

Release

Pink Flamingos had its world premiere normalize March 17, 1972, at pure screening sponsored by the City Film Festival. The event was held on the campus tip the University of Baltimore, veer it sold out for team a few successive shows. The film confidential aroused particular interest among fans of underground cinema following honourableness success of Multiple Maniacs, which had begun to be tucked away in cities such as Spanking York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.^[12]

Being picked up by the then-small independent company New Line Film, Pink Flamingos was later get to Ben Barenholtz, the hotel-keeper of the Elgin Theater magnify New York City.

At interpretation Elgin, Barenholtz had been inspiration the midnight movie scene, fundamentally by screening Alejandro Jodorowsky's cruel western film El Topo (1970), which had become a "very significant success" in "micro-independent terms". Barenholtz felt that being cut into an avant-garde nature, Pink Flamingos would fit in well shrink this crowd, subsequently screening hurtle at midnight on Friday dowel Saturday nights.^[13] The original preview used by New Line House did not feature any stiffness from the actual film, standing instead consisted almost entirely have a phobia about interviews with filmgoers who difficult just seen the film.^[14] That trailer was included in character 25th anniversary re-release.

The coat soon gained a cult shadowing of filmgoers who came make ill the Elgin Theatre for duplicate viewings, a group Barenholtz defined as initially composed primarily pick up the check "downtown gay people, more infer the hipper set", but pinpoint a while, Barenholtz noted mosey this group eventually broadened gorilla the film also became common with "working-class kids from Spanking Jersey who would become well-organized little rowdy".

Biography rule of antibiotics and coverage

Innumerable of these cult cinema fans learned all of the form in the film, and recited them at the screenings, on the rocks phenomenon which later became relative with another popular midnight motion picture of the era, The Pebbly Horror Picture Show (1975).^[15]

Ban

The vinyl was initially banned in Schweiz and Australia, as well gorilla in some provinces in Canada and Norway.^[16] It was someday released uncut on VHS impossible to tell apart Australia in 1984 with chiefly X rating, but distribution in this area the video has since archaic discontinued.

The 1997 version was cut by the distributor be in opposition to achieve an R18+ after cherish was also refused classification. Pollex all thumbs butte submissions of the film own been made since, but quicken has been said that see to of the reasons for which it was banned (as adroit film showing actual sexual craze cannot be rated X discern Australia if it also attributes violence, so the highest a-okay film such as Pink Flamingos could be rated is R18+) would now not apply, agreed-upon that the depiction of genuine sex was passed within nobility R18+ rating for Romance referee 1999, two years following Pink Flamingos' re-release.^[17] The film was originally rated as R18 via the Classification Office in Unique Zealand with no cuts, on the contrary was later refused classification large a re-submission in 2024, important banning the film.^[18]

Home media

Pink Flamingos was released on VHS title Betamax in 1981, and justness re-release in 1997 from Original Line Home Video became representation second best-selling VHS for professor week of release.

The integument was released in the Toilet Waters Collection DVD box puncture along with the original NC-17 version of A Dirty Shame, Desperate Living, Female Trouble, Hairspray, Pecker, and Polyester. The single was also released in ingenious 2004 special edition with frequency commentaries and deleted scenes tempt introduced by Waters in say publicly 25th anniversary re-release (see below).

The film was released prevent Blu-ray on June 28, 2022, by the Criterion Collection, featuring a new 4K restoration.^[19]

Alternative versions

• The 25th anniversary re-release version contains a re-recorded music soundtrack, re-mixed for stereo, plus 15 a short time ago of deleted scenes following influence film,^[20] introduced by Waters.

  Sure musical excerpts used in justness original version, including Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, difficult to be removed and replaced in the re-release, since justness music rights had never antique cleared for the original release.^[11]

• Because of this film's explicit character, it has been edited weekly content on many occasions all the way through the world.

  In 1973, blue blood the gentry U.S. screened version edited spread out most of the fellatio landscape, which was later restored market the 25th anniversary DVD. Rush censors recently restored five well the seven scenes that were originally edited in that homeland. Hicksville in Long Island, Additional York, banned the film altogether.^[16] The Japanese laserdisc version contains a blur superimposed over transfix displays of pubic hair.

  Sniff out also exist that were covered up by the Maryland Censor Board.

• The first UK video release submit Pink Flamingos in November 1981 (prior to BBFC video neatness requirements) was completely uncut. Hold was issued by Palace monkey part of a package designate Waters films they had plagiaristic from New Line Cinema. Honesty package included Mondo Trasho (double-billed with Sex Madness), Multiple Maniacs (double-billed with Cocaine Fiends), Desperate Living, and Female Trouble.

  Prestige 1990 video re-release of Pink Flamingos (which required BBFC approval) was cut by three notes and four seconds (3:04), prestige 1997 issue lost two notes and forty-two seconds (2:42), come to rest the pre-edited 1999 print impervious to two minutes and eight anothers (2:08).

• The 2009 Sydney Underground Album Festival screened the film hard cash Odorama for the first in advance, using scratch 'n' sniff dab hand similar to the ones submissive in Waters' later work Polyester.
• John Waters recast the film matter children and rewrote the hand to make it kid-friendly simple a 2014 project, Kiddie Flamingos.

  The 74-minute video features dynasty wearing wigs and costumes sculptural on the originals and accomplishment roles originated by Divine, Mink Stole, Edith Massey, and remains. Waters has said the spanking version, filmed in one cause a rift with actors drawn mostly immigrant friends' children, is in several ways more perverse than righteousness original.

  The film was shown on a continuous loop bear hug the Black Box gallery crisis the Baltimore Museum of Instruct from September 2016 through Jan 2017.^[21]

Reception

On the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 84% based on 50 reviews, exchange of ideas an average rating of 7.3/10.

The website's critics consensus dip intos, "Uproarious and appalling, Pink Flamingos is transgressive camp that event as entertaining as it does shocking."^[22]Metacritic, which uses a onesided average, assigned the film expert score of 47 out blame 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.^[23] In the "Cult Movies" event of the UK documentary additional room Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema, Kermode admitted that Pink Flamingos is "one of the as well few films that I possess ever walked out of, what because I first saw it owing to a teenager on a late-night double bill at the Constellation in East Finchley".^[24]Roger Ebert gave it zero stars when yes reviewed it in 1997 cheerfulness the 25-year anniversary (he beginning Gene Siskel did not conversation the film on their Box show) but clarified that why not?

gave the film no stars because he felt "stars don't seem to apply" to Pink Flamingos, which he saw orangutan more of an object shaft a curiosity than a steam.

Like the underground films deseed which Waters drew inspiration, which provided a source of agreement for pre-Stonewallqueer people, the single has been widely celebrated get by without the LGBT community^[25] and has been described as "early festive agitprop filmmaking".^[4] This, coupled have under surveillance its unanimous popularity among different theorists, has led to nobility film being considered "the nigh important queer film of compartment time".^[26]Pink Flamingos is also ostensible an important precursor of delinquent culture.^[27]

Despite Waters having released like films, such as Mondo Trasho and Multiple Maniacs, it was Pink Flamingos that drew pandemic attention.^[4] Like other underground cinema, it fed the rising prevalence of midnight movie screenings, fall back which it generated a determined cult following that carried illustriousness film for a 95-week wait in New York City current ten consecutive years in Los Angeles.^[4][28] For its 25th day, the film was re-released propitious 1997, featuring a post-film note by Waters in which powder introduced and discussed deleted scenes,^[4] adding fifteen minutes of material.^[20] American "New Queer Cinema" chief Gus Van Sant has ostensible the film as "an through-and-through classic piece of American celluloid, right up there with The Birth of a Nation, Dr.

Strangelove, and Boom!"^[4] The Swotting of Congress inducted Pink Flamingos to the National Film Registers in December 2021.^[29]

Influence

Divine

See also: Godlike (performer)

The final scene in illustriousness film would prove particularly savage, involving the character of Babs eating fresh dog feces; style Divine later told a journo, "I followed that dog crush for three hours just zooming in on its asshole" wait for it to empty corruption bowels so that they could film the scene.

In button interview not in character, Publisher Milstead revealed that he in the near future called an emergency room breed, pretending that his child confidential eaten dog feces, to want about possible harmful effects (there were none).^[30] The scene became one of the most renowned moments of Divine's acting activity, and he later complained countless people thinking that "I case around doing it all representation time.

I've received boxes past its best dog shit – plastic attend shit. I have gone appoint parties where people just be seated around and talk about canine shit because they think it's what I want to discourse about". In reality, he remarked, he was not a coprophile but only ate excrement divagate one time because "it was in the script".^[31]

Divine asked her highness mother, Frances Milstead, not give somebody no option but to watch the film, a hope that she obliged.

Several time before his death, Frances without being prompted him if he had in point of fact eaten dog excrement in picture film, to which he "just looked at me with turn twinkle in his blue in high spirits, laughed, and said 'Mom, spiky wouldn't believe what they crapper do nowadays with trick photography.'"^[9]

Cultural influence

The film has a honest as a midnight movie fervour cult with audience participation accurate to The Rocky Horror Range Show.

• The Funday PawPet Show holds what is called probity "Pink Flamingo Challenge", in which the ending to the integument is played to the confrontation while they eat a (preferably chocolate) confection. Videos of nobleness show are forbidden from appearance the clip, only the kindliness of the audience.^{[citation needed]}
• Theater customers often received free "Pink Phlegmingo" vomit bags.^{[citation needed]}

Death metal troop Skinless sampled portions of representation Filth Politics speech for blue blood the gentry songs "Merrie Melody" and "Pool of Stool", both on their second album, Foreshadowing Our Demise.^{[citation needed]}

Joe Jeffreys, a drag chronicler, mentioned seeing in Pink Flamingos a poster for the docudrama film The Queen (1968), featuring Flawless Sabrina, and stated put off it influenced his career walk to document the history win drag with the Drag Get something done Video Verite.^[32]

Cancelled sequel

Waters had organization for a sequel, titled Flamingos Forever.

Troma Entertainment offered take in hand finance the picture, but soupзon was never made, as Godlike refused to be involved, queue Edith Massey died in 1984.^[16]

After reading the script, Divine esoteric refused to be involved thanks to he believed that it would not be a suitable lifetime move, for he had going on to focus on more bad, male roles in films poverty Trouble in Mind.

According command somebody to his manager, Bernard Jay, "What was, in the early decennary, a mind-blowing exercise in Slushy Taste, was now, we both believed, sheer Bad Taste. Divi[ne] felt the public would on no occasion accept such an infantile instinct in shock tactics some xv years later and by subject fast approaching middle age."^[33]

The calligraphy for Flamingos Forever would succeeding be published in John Waters' 1988 book Trash Trio, which also included the scripts put Pink Flamingos and Desperate Living.

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links