Grossest and Nastiest Film of all time!

PINK FLAMINGOS (1972)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia 

Baltimore native John Waters has helmed some of the most outrageous and disgusting films of the 20th century. He began in the 1970's spewing some underground cult films such as "Multiple Maniacs," "Mondo Trasho," "Female Trouble," and the notably perverse "Pink Flamingos." "Hairspray," a film from the late 80's and the last to star Divine, is comparably his most restrained film. 1997 marked the 25th anniversary of "Pink Flamingos" (and 2012 will mark the fortieth anniversary), a film of such execrable taste that I defy anyone to find a more repugnant film bearing the title "Grossest Film of All Time." This film is disgusting, shocking, nauseating, uneven, among many other things, but it is also funny in a demented sort of way. In other words, you must see it because you'll never see anything like it again.

The flamboyant, hilarious Divine plays herself (sort of), a 300-pound trailer park woman, alias Babs Johnson, who lives with her son Cracker (Danny Mills) who is obsessed with killing chickens while having sex. The other members of this household include Divine's equally obese mother (Edith Massey) who's obsessed with eggs, and an apparently normal blonde roommate named Ms. Cotton (Mary Vivian Pierce). Divine is ecstatic when she hears that she's the filthiest person alive as claimed by a tabloid paper called "Midnight." Divine is also a murderer, cannibal and a lesbian, and proud of it. 

A wacky couple, Connie and Raymond Marbles (Mink Stole and David Lochary with blue hair), are envious of Divine's filthy status and vow for revenge; they claim to be the filthiest people alive. Actually, they are not so much filthy as they are evil. For example, Connie runs an illegitimate adoption agency where her servant kidnaps women to have sex with so they can have babies to sell for adoption to lesbian couples!

"Pink Flamingos" benefits greatly from Divine's performance, and she is a real riot to watch. She's gracious, garish, flamboyant, and sheerly outrageous. She wears elongated black eyelashes and tight, multicolored skirts, and prances and preens to the camera with excessive mugging - it's a great, trashy performance that gives the cast of "Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" a run for their money. Except for Mink Stole, the rest of the cast is amateurish and uninteresting at best. Divine is clearly the star of the show. Her lines are delivered with a no-nonsense mentality. Here are some dialogue examples:

"Kill everyone. Filth is my life. Eat sh--"

"I find you guilty on all counts of first-degree stupidity."

What else can be said about this film? It is repulsive and idiotic but always entertaining to a degree. There's cannibalism, torture, numerous deaths, sexual innuendos bordering on pornography, butt-synching to "Surfin' Bird," and Divine performing all kinds of distasteful acts, including the famous shot of Divine eating dog excrement. Most of the film is cartoonish and unbelievable but the excrement sequence is definitely real making her, as the narrator puts it, the filthiest actress alive.

I'll simply say that the ads are true - this film is simply an exercise in bad taste. I did say back in 1997 that "Pink Flamingos" is not filmmaking and it is not art. Well, it is not art as in an Ingmar Bergman film or any of the other cinema gods we hold in high esteem, but it does qualify as gutter, trash art. John Waters wrote, directed and filmed this trash - thankfully, he acquired cinematographers later on because he has no clue how to hold a camera or compose a shot. There are jump cuts galore and much bad dubbing. None of this matters, though, because Waters had one thing in mind: to make a film as filthy and distasteful as possible. He has succeeded. Since 1972, no other director has come close, including Waters.