Pink Flamingos
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Movie Reviews of Pink Flamingos
Movie Review: Yes, It's the Most Disgusting Movie Ever
Summary: 5 Stars
Anyone reading this review has already heard what's been said about it. It's been called the stupidest, most vile, disgusting film ever made. It's written/directed/produced/filmed by cult director John Waters and it's his first film. Calling this film the most disgusting, vile film ever made is almost an understatement. I don't really regret watching this film, but there are images in this film I will never get out of my head. I haven't bothered to read a lot into just how real a lot of this stuff is, but considering this movie was made in the 70s I'm not sure how they could have simulated most of this stuff...Which truly worries me. Divine, who I'm pretty damn sure is a guy, plays...Divine, who is living under the alias of Babs Johnson and is called "The Filthiest Person Alive," a title she is quite proud of. She lives with her family, consisting of her son Crackers, a live-in friend named Cotton, and her mother The Egg Lady who lives in a crib. I agree with the reviewer who said The Egg Lady needed to die, because she was annoying. She is annoying. Very annoying. Anyway, on the other side of town are Connie and Raymond Marble who are convinced that they are the filthiest people alive...And they just might be. Because they keep woman in their basement and have their servant impregnate the women and when the baby is born they sell it to lesbian couples. The woman usually die in childbirth. After the Marbles wage an all-out war on Babs and her family, it's on to see who is the filthiest person alive. Now, this movie is most definitely not for everyone. This is the most sickening, vile film I have ever seen...But it's also fascinating. I mean, some of this stuff is just so digusting I wonder how anyone could even envision any of this. John Waters actually seems like a fairly normal guy. If I knew nothing about this movie before watching it and you put John Waters and someone like Tim Burton (who, for the record, has never done anything like this movie but is a fairly discheveled looking guy) in a lineup and made me choose who I thought had written and directed it. I would choose Burton. People consider "Plan 9 From Outer Space" to be the worst film ever made, although that has crossed over into cult classic. What I don't understand is how no one ever gave this film that "honor." This movie has terrible acting, that's completely noticeable and yet doesn't annoy you half as much as Keanu Reeves did in "Dangerous Liaisons." This is truly a bad film. But for it's originality and supreme distaste, I was hooked. You also have to realize that Waters made this film so he could make a name for himself, in that aspect...This is a really great marketing idea. If you make a film that becomes widely known as the most disgusting ever made...People are gonna see it.
GRADE: A
Quick Note-This film contains people eating dog feces, there is shots of various male and female orifices, sex scenes involving animals, Divine performing oral sex on a person, and a complete array of other disgusting things. If any of this stuff is making you queasy just reading about it, don't see this film.
Movie Review: "Will leave a permanent scar on your movie memory."
Summary: 5 Stars
WOW!!! I just read David R. Crews' review of "Pink Flamingos" and it really took me way back. Not just the flick itself, but the whole lifestyle. WOW!!! I saw PF at the Biograph in Georgetown in 1973 and my unformed, immature, inexperienced teenage mind was woefully unprepared for Mr. Waters' merciless assault on everything decent and good in this world. An outcast's ultimate revenge, I guess you could call it. Anyway, the Biograph was an extremely forward-thinking establishment, but to my knowledge the management never willingly permitted marijuana smoking or alcohol consumption on the premises during movies. Too bad. So Mr. Crews and his friends clearly got by far the better deal that way. All the Biograph audience members arrived in an intoxicated state, although we were unable to continue adding to our inebriation in the theater. Pity. So when PF unreeled on the screen everyone just sat there in shock, rather than being in a party frame of mind. More like accident victims or something; not like a bunch of impaired revelers enjoying a film. So, like I said, we all just sat there in a literal state of shock. I'm not kidding - we were all actually stunned from start to finish. It seemed like being an unworthy opponent of Muhammad Ali in his prime - all we could do was absorb punishment to our brains until it was finally over and we were barely able to stumble outside in utter confusion. "What the hell was that?" was the universal comment afterwards. So if the definition of genius is the ability to deeply and profoundly affect everyone who sees your work, then it certainly looks like Mr. Waters is a genius. An evil, heartless, sadistic genius to be sure, but still a genius nevertheless. Just like Mr. Crews, I never want to see that movie again - once was plenty, that's for sure. Remember the eyelids-propped-open scene in "A Clockwork Orange"? Showing PF like that would be excellent behavior-modification therapy. Or punishment, albeit both cruel and unusual. I actually felt sorry for Roger Ebert because he had to watch it again when the 25th Anniversary Edition came out in 1997. Mr. Ebert promised back then that if he's still around for the 50th Anniversary Edition then he will retire rather than watch it a third time. This should give pause to those of us who think watching movies for a living is a soft gig.
So anyway, the whole point of PF was that Mr. Waters was just beginning his bizarre career and he needed a way to make himself stand out from the crowd. He succeeded brilliantly and beyond all reasonable expectations. PF put him on the map for good and he was able to get financing and distribution and big-name participation for all his strange visions from then on. I had wanted to say that he then began using his awesome powers for good, but that just doesn't sound quite right. All his other flicks have proven him to be extremely talented, although in a disturbing sort of way, and he has even become a kind of national treasure. Not sure it's legal to describe John Waters as a national treasure, though. Hmmm....
Movie Review: File Under: Things Not to Do with a Chicken
Summary: 5 Stars
If any movie does not need a review, critique, or summary, it's PINK FLAMINGOS, the seminal [pun intended] shrine to perversity and to wanton, remorseless stupidity; but since PINK FLAMINGOS is so much about everything gratuitous, I'm going to run my yap about it for a few paragraphs or so. I can't say I'll do it justice, but words can hardly be expected to evoke to the (sublime?) experience of watching an obsese drag queen eat canine feces for no particular reason at all. (Yes, kids, it's just that good. And it's good for you.)
The disclaimer part. As an act of community service, I'll advise the religious, the Republican, and the otherwise overly sensible among us to avoid this film. In fact, if any of the aforementioned ever find themselves even in the vicinity of the DVD, they'd be best off either fleeing from it or ritualistically destroying it. OK. Let's be more to the point. We know each other well enough, don't we? If you don't want to watch some guy inseminating an imprisoned "hippie" in a dungeon with a turkey baster so that the baby produced may be sold to upper class lesbian couples, then switch the channel to Patch Adams. Or if the sight of a man puckering and contorting his anus leaves you wanting to write letters to your congressman, pastor, and mother, then maybe you're too hip for this.
So the usual Waters stable of finely-trained thespians has been assembled: Mink Stole, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Edie the Egg Lady, and, of course, the eponymous Divine, equally glam and macabre as the self-proclaimed Filthiest Person Alive, Babs Johnson. Admittedly, Divine's Best Actress moment comes in the electric chair in Waters' FEMALE TROUBLE, but she's dead-on here as well, in her red fish-tail dress and her circus clown make-up. (Wait. Scratch that. Even Clarabelle was more sparing with the eye shadow.)
One thing I love about Pink Flamingos, if I may get personal, is that it's the real deal. It isn't the big studios playing at gross-out with big name stars, or about test-marketed film-making, or even about film school pretension. It's just a bunch of drug users, freaks, and losers, who are all winners in my book. What else can one say about a film that makes an utterly deplorable character somehow, in a twisted and inscrutible way, endearing? (And this was decades before the ascendancy of Martha Stewart.)
Movie Review: Addictively filthy... !!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Billed as the filthiest film ever made, the truth is that PINK FLAMINGOS might be wickedly campy and seedy - - but its reputation is somewhat deceptive... mainly because John Waters is a great story teller... the film is well paced... genuinely funny and genuinely rewatchable over and over again. The lines are quotable... and the characters are unforgettable... as for offensive... Yes, but as long as you're willing to "let go" and let yourself be pulled into John Waters' unique world (JUST til the film ends of course, if you're still in it after it ends, institutionalization IS necessary!) it is definitely a one of a kind watching experience... - - as long as you don't mind the risk of someone accusing you of having the mind of a 14 year old. - - The soundtrack of the film and use of the music is also great... - - It alternates between John Waters' great screenwriting (if you don't believe he's a great writer, check out his book of memoirs and essays CRACKPOT!) and "silent" scenes with the rock and roll music and the charactors engaging in sick antics. I think Raymond Marbles definitely wins out over divine... he's so suave as he roams town exposing himself in the most unique of ways... As for the big irony... Though the film is best remembered for the famous dog doodie eating scene (at the very end), believe it or not, it could have been cut and the film would be equally great.
As for advice... be sure to watch the "MAKING OF" documentary DIVINE TRASH and you'll appreciate the film.
Though John Waters was accused of mellowing out in later years, the good news is with A DIRTY SHAME he seems to have regressed to his old self... god bless him !
Movie Review: A charmingly delightful romp....
Summary: 5 Stars
I saw this film in its 25th Anniversary version, and I loved it. Technically, it's a flawed film. The camera work is often subpar, the acting is rather amateurish (even though some of it, especially Divine, is inspired at times), and it looks cheap (it was shot on 16mm reversal film, the film stock that news crews used for their nightly broadcasts, until video came into its own). The whole film raises trash to an art form. I usually don't like films like this, but I think Waters is a great filmmaker, and really captures something hilarious and unique here. Of course, some people might be offended by some of the antics here (why I have no idea), but I think it's brilliant stuff. This was one of the original "midnight movies" that played to packed houses back in 1972 in places like NYC and L.A.. The final scene (Divine's dining habits) is gross, but I don't think that scene is that great. The preceding 90 minutes is much funnier and memorable than that scene. Siskel and Ebert trashed this film a lot (calling it their "dog of the week" on their old PBS show), and I probably wouldn't have ever saw it if I listened to them. Since they were in my doghouse in 1997 for recommending so many awful films, and 1997 was the height of politically correct attitudes, I decided to dive into this film. It is such a slap in the face to the PC crowd, which makes it so endearing. It has one of my favorite lines in movie history, uttered by Waters's regular Mink Stole "there are 2 kinds of people. My kind of people, and a**holes". This is my favorite Waters's film, along with the underrated Desperate Living and Female Trouble.