Pink Flamingos (John Waters, 1972, USA)

Carrying the title “the filthiest person alive”, Divine lives in a trailer in the woods under the codename of Babs Johnson. (Might we add that Divine is in reality about 350 lb man named Harris Glenn Millstead). There she lives with her egg-loving mother Edie, her mad hippie son Crackers and her companion Cotton. The couple Connie and Raymond Marble are envious of Babs and plan to challenge her title. The Marbles run an adoption clinic which is in fact a black market baby ring. They kidnap young women and impregnate them, then selling the children to lesbian couples. They then use the profit from the baby selling to fund the selling of heroin in elementary schools. The Marbles hire a girl named Cookie to have sex with Crackers and spy on Babs and her filthy ways. Babs becomes aware of the Marbles scheming and the competition of filth begins and soon spirals wildly out of control.

Pink Flamingos is one of the best known film in a group of midnight movies focusing on sexual perversions and fetishism and is often remembered for coprophagia. Midnight movies as a cinematic phenomenon began in the early 70s in a few offbeat cinemas showing nonmainstream pictures at midnight, soon building a cult stature. Other films adopted cult status through midnight screenings such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), El Topo (1970), Freaks (1932) and The Night of the Living Dead (1968).

John Waters (1946 - , Baltimore, MD) began film making in the 60´s and wrote, produced and directed his own movies with independent financing. He shot his early movies in the Baltimore area with a company of local friends called the Dreamlanders. He got notable cult status in the 70´s and 80´s for films like Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble (1974), Polyester (1981) and Hairspray (1988). After the death of his favored actress and muse, Divine, in 1989 he is thought to have mellowed. The movies he made in the 90´s and recent years are thougt to be more “regular” satires, such as Serial Mom (1994) and Cecil B. DeMented (2000).