Pink Flamingos

1972 American film directed by John Waters
the film

Pink Flamingos is a 1972 American black comedy film by John Waters. The film stars the countercultural drag queen Divine as a criminal living under the name of Babs Johnson, who is proud to be "the filthiest person alive". While living in a trailer with her mother Edie (Edith Massey), son Crackers (Danny Mills), and companion Cotton (Mary Vivian Pearce), Divine is confronted by the Marbles (David Lochary and Mink Stole), a pair of criminals envious of her reputation who try to outdo her in filth. The characters engage in several grotesque, bizarre, and explicitly crude situations, and upon the film's re release in 1997 it was rated NC 17 by the MPAA "for a wide range of perversions in explicit detail". It was filmed in the vicinity of Baltimore, Maryland, where Waters and most of the cast and crew grew up. Displaying the tagline "An exercise in poor taste", Pink Flamingos is notorious for its "outrageousness", nudity, profanity, and "pursuit of frivolity, scatology, sensationology and skewed epistemology". The film, at first semi clandestine, has received a warm reception from film critics and, despite being banned in several countries, became a cult film in subsequent decades. In 2021, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

The notorious criminal Divine lives under the pseudonym "Babs Johnson" with her mother Edie, delinquent son Crackers, and traveling companion Cotton. They share a trailer on the outskirts of Phoenix, Maryland, next to a gazing ball and a pair of plastic pink flamingos. After learning that Divine has been named "the filthiest person alive" by a tabloid paper, jealous rivals Connie and Raymond Marble attempt to usurp her title. The Marbles run a black market baby ring: they kidnap young women, have them impregnated by their manservant Channing, and sell the babies to lesbian couples. The proceeds are used to finance pornography shops and a network of dealers selling heroin in inner city elementary schools. Raymond also earns money by exposing himself with a large kielbasa sausage or turkey neck tied to his penis to women and stealing their purses when they flee. Later in the film, one of Raymond's would be targets, a trans woman thwarts his scheme by exposing her breast, penis, and scrotum, causing Raymond to flee in shock. The Marbles enlist a spy, Cookie, to gather information about Divine by dating Crackers. Cookie is raped by Crackers while crushing a live chicken between them as Cotton looks on through a window. Cookie then informs the Marbles about Babs' real identity, her whereabouts, and her family as well as her upcoming birthday party. The Marbles send a box of human feces to Divine as a birthday present with a card addressing her as "Fatso" and proclaiming themselves "the filthiest people alive". Worried that her title has been seized, Divine declares that whoever sent the package must die. While the Marbles are gone, Channing dresses in Connie's clothes and imitates his employers' overheard conversations. When the Marbles return home, they are outraged to find Channing mocking them, so they fire him and lock him in his "room" (a closet). The Egg Man, who delivers eggs to Edie daily, confesses his love for her and proposes marriage. She accepts his proposal. The Marbles arrive at the trailer to spy on Divine's birthday party. Her birthday gifts include poppers, fake vomit, lice shampoo, a pig's head, and a meat cleaver. Entertainers include a topless woman with a snake act and a contortionist who flexes his prolapsed anus in rhythm to the song "Surfin' Bird". Disgusted by the outrageous party, the Marbles call the police, but this backfires when Divine and her guests ambush the officers, hack up their bodies with the meat cleaver, and eat them. Afterwards, Edie and The Egg Man have their wedding, and he carts her off in a wheel barrow. Divine and Crackers head to the Marbles' house, where they lick and rub the furniture, which excites them so much that Divine fellates Crackers. They find Channing and discover two pregnant women held captive in the basement. After Divine and Crackers free the women with a large knife, the women use the knife to emasculate Channing. The Marbles burn Divine's beloved trailer to the ground; when they return home, their furniture cursed by being licked by Divine and 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 his emasculation and the two women have escaped. After finding the remains of their burned out trailer, Divine and Crackers return to the Marbles' home, kidnap them at gunpoint, and bring them to the arson site. Divine calls the local tabloid 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 and Crackers recommend a sentence of execution, so the Marbles are tied to a tree, coated in tar and feathers, and shot in the head by Divine. Divine, Crackers, and Cotton enthusiastically decide to move to Boise, Idaho. Spotting a small dog defecating on the sidewalk, Divine scoops up the feces with her hand and puts them in her mouth proving, as the voice over narration by Waters states, that Divine is "not only the filthiest person in the world, but she is also the filthiest actress in the world".

Divine's friend Bob Adams described the trailer set as a "hippie commune" in Phoenix, Maryland, and noted that their living quarters were in a farmhouse without hot water. Adams added that ultimately Divine and Van Smith decided to sleep at Susan Lowe's home in Baltimore, and that they would awake before dawn to apply Divine's makeup before being driven to the set by Jack Walsh. "Sometimes Divy would have to wait out in full drag for Jack to pull the car around from back, and cars full of these blue collar types on their way to work would practically mount the pavement from gawking at him," Adams said. Divine's mother, Frances, later said she was surprised that her son was able to endure the "pitiful conditions" of the set, noting his "expensive taste in clothes and furniture and food". Stylistically, it takes its cues from "exaggerated seaport ballroom drag show pageantry and antics" with "classic '50s rock and roll kitsch classics".

The film had its world premiere on March 17, 1972, at a screening sponsored by the Baltimore Film Festival. The event was held on the campus of the University of Baltimore, where it sold out tickets for three successive screenings. The film had aroused particular interest among fans of underground cinema following the success of Multiple Maniacs, which had begun to be screened in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Being picked up by the then small independent company New Line Cinema, Pink Flamingos was later distributed to Ben Barenholtz, the owner of the Elgin Theater in New York City. At the Elgin Theater, Barenholtz had been promoting the midnight movie scene, primarily by screening Alejandro Jodorowsky's acid western film El Topo (1970), which had become a "very significant success" in "micro independent terms". Barenholtz felt that being of an avant garde nature, Pink Flamingos would fit in well with this crowd, subsequently screening it at midnight on Friday and Saturday nights. The film soon gained a cult following of filmgoers who repeatedly came to the Elgin Theatre to watch it, a group Barenholtz characterized as initially composed primarily of "downtown gay people, more of the hipper set", but after a while Barenholtz noted that this group eventually broadened as the film also became popular with "working class kids from New Jersey who would become a little rowdy". Many of these cult cinema fans learned all of the lines in the film, and recited them at the screenings, a phenomenon which later became associated with another popular midnight movie of the era, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).

The film was initially banned in Switzerland and Australia, as well as in some provinces in Canada and Norway.

Pink Flamingos was released on VHS and Betamax in 1981, and the re release in 1997 New Line Home Video became the second best selling VHS for its week of release. The film was released in the John Waters Collection DVD box set along with the original NC 17 version of A Dirty Shame, Desperate Living, Female Trouble, Hairspray, Pecker, and Polyester. The film was also released in a 2004 special edition with audio commentaries and deleted scenes as introduced by Waters in the 25th anniversary re release (see below). The film was released on Blu ray on June 28, 2022, by the Criterion Collection, featuring a new 4K restoration.

The 25th anniversary re release version contains a re recorded music soundtrack, re mixed for stereo, plus 15 minutes of deleted scenes following the film, introduced by Waters. Certain excerpts of music used in the original, including Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, had to be removed and replaced in the re release, since the music rights had never been cleared for the original release. The Japanese laserdisc version contains a blur superimposed over all displays of pubic hair. Prints also exist that were censored by the Maryland Censor Board. The first UK video release of Pink Flamingos in November 1981 (prior to BBFC video regulation requirements) was completely uncut. It was issued by Palace as part of a package of Waters films they had acquired from New Line Cinema. The package included Mondo Trasho (double billed with Sex Madness), Multiple Maniacs (double billed with Cocaine Fiends), Desperate Living, and Female Trouble. The 1990 video re release of Pink Flamingos (which required BBFC approval) was cut by three minutes and four seconds (3:04), the 1997 issue lost two minutes and forty two seconds (2:42), and the pre edited 1999 print by two minutes and eight seconds (2:08). The 2009 Sydney Underground Film Festival screened the film in Odorama for the first time, using scratch 'n' sniff cards similar to the ones used in Waters' later work Polyester. John Waters recast the film with children and rewrote the script to make it kid friendly in a 2014 project, Kiddie Flamingos. The 74 minute video features children wearing wigs and costumes modeled on the originals and performing roles originated by Divine, Mink Stole, Edith Massey, and others. Waters has said the new version, filmed in one day with actors drawn mostly from friends' children, is in some ways more perverse than the original. The film was shown on a continuous loop in the Black Box gallery at the Baltimore Museum of Art from September 2016 through January 2017.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 84% based on 50 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Uproarious and appalling, Pink Flamingos is transgressive camp that proves as entertaining as it does shocking." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 47 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. In the "Cult Movies" episode of the UK documentary series Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema, Kermode admitted that Pink Flamingos is "one of the very few films that I have ever walked out of, when I first saw it as a teenager on a late night double bill at the Phoenix in East Finchley". Like the underground films from which Waters drew inspiration, which provided a source of community for pre Stonewall queer people, the film has been widely celebrated by the LGBT community and has been described as "early gay agitprop filmmaking". Pink Flamingos is also considered an important precursor of punk culture. Despite Waters having released similar films, such as Mondo Trasho and Multiple Maniacs, it was Pink Flamingos that drew international attention. For its 25th anniversary, the film was re released in 1997, featuring a post film commentary by Waters in which he introduced and discussed deleted scenes, American "New Queer Cinema" director Gus Van Sant has described the film as "an absolute classic piece of American cinema, right up there with The Birth of a Nation, Dr. Strangelove, and Boom!"

The final scene in the film would prove particularly infamous, involving the character of Babs eating fresh dog feces; as Divine later told a reporter, "I followed that dog around for three hours just zooming in on its asshole" waiting for it to empty its bowels so that they could film the scene. In an interview not in character, Harris Milstead revealed that he soon called an emergency room nurse, pretending that his child had eaten dog feces, to inquire about possible harmful effects (there were none). The scene became one of the most notable moments of Divine's acting career, and he later complained of people thinking that "I run around doing it all the time. I've received boxes of dog shit – plastic dog shit. I have gone to parties where people just sit around and talk about dog shit because they think it's what I want to talk about". In reality, he remarked, he was not a coprophile but only ate excrement that one time because "it was in the script". Divine asked his mother, Frances Milstead, not to watch the film, a wish that she obliged. Several years before his death, Frances asked him if he had really eaten dog excrement in the film, to which he "just looked at me with that twinkle in his blue eyes, laughed, and said 'Mom, you wouldn't believe what they can do nowadays with trick photography.

The film has a reputation as a midnight movie classic cult with audience participation similar to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The Funday PawPet Show holds what is called the "Pink Flamingo Challenge", in which the ending to the film is played to the audience while they eat a (preferably chocolate) confection. Videos of the show are forbidden from showing the clip, only the reaction of the audience. Theater patrons often received free "Pink Phlegmingo" vomit bags. Death metal band Skinless sampled portions of the Filth Politics speech for the songs "Merrie Melody" and "Pool of Stool", both on their second album, Foreshadowing Our Demise. Joe Jeffreys, a drag historian, mentioned seeing in Pink Flamingos a poster for the documentary film The Queen (1968), featuring Flawless Sabrina, and stated that it influenced his career path to document the history of drag with the Drag Show Video Verite.

Waters had plans for a sequel, titled Flamingos Forever. Troma Entertainment offered to finance the picture, but it was never made, as Divine refused to be involved, and Edith Massey died in 1984. The script for Flamingos Forever would later be published in John Waters' 1988 book Trash Trio, which also included the scripts for Pink Flamingos and Desperate Living.