Pink Flamingos - Will's Review

It's almost impossible to criticise this film in any conventional manner, Because most of the criticisms that you could level at it are the things it sets out to achieve.

If this were any other film you might complain that it's just as many offensive things as possible strung together; But that is entirely the point of the movie, in fact it was billed as "An exercise in poor taste". Even the terrible overacting seems to be a directorial choice, tailored to the scrip's constant use of hyperbole.

Unfortunately, just because something is deliberate, doesn't make it good, especially as the movie also, quite unintentionally, commits the cardinal sin, the one thing that really is unforgivable in a movie; for much if its runtime, it's dull.



Repulse me, shock me, make me hate you for killing a chicken just to make a movie, but by all that's unholy, please, do not bore me!

The plot, such as it is, is that (drag star) Devine has been named "filthiest person alive" and, due to the attention this brings, gone into hiding with her son, Crackers, her mentally ill egg-obsessed mother, Edith, and her traveling companion, Cotton.

Meanwhile Connie and Raymond Marbles, a couple who kidnap women, impregnate them, sell the babies to lesbian couples, and then loan the money to drugs pushers who operate in elementary schools (!) feel that they are more worthy of the "filthiest people alive" moniker, and set out to destroy Divine.

But really none of that is relevant, it's all an excuse for scenes such as toe sucking, a rape scene involving Crackers, his date and a chicken (the chicken ends up dead, but thankfully still a virgin), a "singing" asshole (a guy who can dilate his anal sphincter at will 'miming'), cannibalism , and the most un-erotic act of felacio you've ever seen; an obese man, playing a woman, sucking the flaccid cock of a man playing her son, punctuated with dialogue like "I want to give you a gift only a living mother can give" and "I want to receive it as a loving son should".

The highlight of the movie, is Edith Massy, Playing Devine's mentally changed, Egg obsessed, playpen dwelling, mother. At times she is so convincing that it gets uncomfortable to watch... If feels like they must be exploiting a genuinely disabled woman*

Finally, when the movie proper is over, there's one final thing; a non-sequitur that's one of the most famous scenes in cult / endurance cinema. I'm almost loathed to say what it is, but at the end if the day, I you're the type of person who's going to seek out an imported copy of a 70's gross-out film you probably already know about it.

Devine eats dig shit.

For real.

In one continuous shot, a little dog takes a dump, and Devine picks it up, pops it in her mouth and eats it; pausing only to flash the camera cinemas most literal shit-eating grin.

For my money though, even though it was fake, the shit eating in Saló is still worse, if only through frequency and volume. (Case in point; I described the Devine scene just with relative ease, but as soon as I began to recall Saló I say here dry-heaving at my keyboard).

I can see that, given the right crowd, the boring moments can probably be he heckled over and forgiven; indeed this movie did find some success on the midnight movies circuit; but at home, alone or with only a small group, it's a really bad movie.

I can't say 'avoid' because there's a lot if stuff that's worth seeing, if only because it's so unique, but unless a local cinema does a midnight revival screening, I can't come close to recommending it either.

I've said it many times, but I definitely like John Waters a LOT more than I like John Waters' movies; midnight screenings aside, give this a miss and track down the movie of his one man show "This Filthy World" instead - his Pink Flamingo anecdotes are wayyy more entertaining than the movie itself.




*I feel I should point out that, while certainly eccentric, Massey is not genuinely challenged in real life.

Pink Flamingos - Lisa's Review

*** SPOILERS ***

So to review the oddest, strangest movie I have ever watched.  As I write, I'm not even sure how I'm going to proceed or do this, but here we go....

We follow our star Divine who has been named 'The filthiest person alive'.  This seems to be a title much sought after and one Divine is very proud of.  She is living under the name Babs Johnson in a trailer-park with her very odd and over sexed son Crackers, a friend Cotton and wierdest of all, her mother, who seems to be mentally ill and spends all her time partially dressed in a playpen in the living room.  All she seems to do in the movie is talk about eggs, how much she loves eggs, how she wants to eat eggs.... you get the drift.

For reasons best known to themselves, a married couple Raymond and Connie Marble wish to be the filthiest people alive so they seek to find out where Divine is living to destroy her.  This couple run an adoption agency with a difference.  They kidnap and keep hostage young women and their gay servant Channing (yes I said gay) is forced to rape them to impregnate them.  The resulting babies are then given to lesbian couples.  As you can imagine this gives for some rather questionable scenes.  In one scene Channing, so disgusted with having to sleep with these women, masturbates in front of one woman before sucking up the produced semen in a syringe and artifically inseminating an unconscious woman.  This is much more preferable to him than having to have sex with them.

I don't see the point of going into the full storyline of the movie as it is very warped, very odd and won't convince or unconvince you to watch this movie.  What I will say is that it appeared to me to be nothing more than an attempt to put what would have been considered the most shocking and repugnant things possible on screen for the era it was made (70's).

We see Divine being sent feces in a box, a chicken being crushed in a sexual encounter between Cracker and a young woman sent as a spy by The Marbles (incidentally this is completely real and the animal was subsequently eaten by the crew as its neck was broken in the scene), an extended and very close-up shot of a man whose sphincter can lip-sync, Divine going down on her son Cracker (it seems the actor had a bit of difficulty rising to the occasion by the looks of things too) but probably most famous of all, as the movie ends, Divine is shown to walk over to a dog who is defecating.  She picks up the warm feces and proceeds to eat it and then smile to the camera.  Lovely!

If you're the type of person who would enjoy this movie, reading the above will make you want to watch it with no more information from me.  If however you have no interest in watching this movie, I doubt any further plunging into the storyline is going to change much.

What did I think?  Well Asides from the chicken part which I absolutely hated, I don't really see what all the fuss is about.  The sphincter bit is definately a new one on me and amusing, but the rest of the movie just seemed to be trying too hard to shock while showing things that were... well,  just not that shocking.

I wouldn't go so far as to say avoid as its probably one of those you have to see just to check it off the list, if only for the singing bum, but its definately not one I would watch again or recommend.