A Dirty Shame.

When the trailer describes a movie as shocking, twisted and depraved you know it's got to be a John Waters film! His latest in a long list of alternative cinema offerings is a real dig at American morality at a time when the USA was going through a particularly Christian fundamentalist period.  A Dirty Shame (2004) is a return to the vulgarity of his earlier movies being both subversive and outrageous, described as a sex education film where none of the fetishes on show are made up, it works on the pretext that someone somewhere is performing a so called unnatural sexual act as you read this!

 

Sylvia Stickles is on the pull.

Ursula Udders displays her wears. 

It starts sedately enough in a middle class area of Baltimore, rows of lovely houses with immaculate gardens and white picket fences; young innocent children play on well-manicured lawns. But inside the houses reside their repressed mummies and daddy's. That is until they get a bump on the head, meet Ray Ray and turn into sex addicts. This is what happened to Sylvia Stickles (Tracy Ullman), she hated not only the psychical act of sex but also the very idea of coupling with another human being; leading her husband Vaughn (Chris Isaak) to masturbate in the loo to sex magazine’s to release the poor man’s frustrations! But then she is involved in an accident that involves head injury. Through this incident she meets mechanic Ray Ray Perkins (Johnny Knoxville) and joins him at his garage where she discovers she is not along in her newly discovered sexual urges.

 

The Three Bears.

The Baby.

In this flaming cauldron of hidden lust Waters uses hypersexual activities as a metaphor for religious worship where a garage mechanic is treated as a sexual saint, the saviour of the puritanical residents of Hartford Road, their conversion brought on by an accidental bump on the head.  This sexploitation movie is more a sly grin rather than being outright funny. Although it’s great to see the John Waters of old on display but I don’t think it will ever become the cult classic that Pink Flamingos (1972) become. The ‘extra’ on the DVD, All The Dirt…  is in fact far funnier than the actual feature and informs us that John Waters is to Baltimore what Ingmar Bergman is to Sweden and that if he had not become a filmmaker he would probable have become a mass murderer! 

Pink Flamingos.

There are of course many film directors that put two fingers up to America, but John Waters put his thumb right up its arse! The duke of disgust, the saint of bad taste, Waters has made a career out of making vile, stupid, repulsive and sexually explicit movies: none more so than Pink Flamingos (1972) - one of those rare films that’s just got to be seen to be believed! Waters not only directed but wrote, produced, shot, edited and scored this ‘transgressive black comedy exploitation film’[1]

 

....to some lucky young fellow!

This nauseating grindhouse movie stars Waters high school friend Glenn Milstead better known as the deliciously outrageous Devine an actor mainly associated with performing as a female drag queen and recently the subject of a wonderful documentary by Jeffrey Schwarz I Am Devine (2013).

 

"wheres my eggs, I'm hungry"

Devine lives under the pseudonym of Babs Johnson who is on the run from the police for a number of unexplained murders. She lives in seclusion on the outskirts of Baltimore, Maryland in a pink caravan which she shares with her mentally retarded mother Edie, an obese women who inhabits a playpen and has an addiction to eggs, her delinquent son Crackers who enjoys lethal chicken sex and her travelling companion Cotton who gets her sexual pleasure from watching Cracker having sex.

 

Babs like to please her son.

When Devine is proudly named ‘the filthiest person alive’ by a tabloid newspaper her bitter rivals Connie and Raymond Marble are extremely jealous and set out to destroy her. This pair of despicable foot fetishists kidnap young girls, force their manservant Channing to impregnate them and sell the babies to lesbian couples, this in turn finances an inner city heroin ring which caters to high school children.

This highly colourful married couple despatch Cookie to have sex with Cracker and learn where Babs Johnson and her entourage live. This intimate act involves one of the most infamous scenes in the film. With Cotton looking on, Cookie and Cracker have sex while crushing a live chicken between them! The other infamous, and best-remembered scene in the film is the concluding one where Devine scoops up fresh dog excrement, eats it, gags, and smiles for the camera. A scene that not recommended to be watched whilst your having your tea! And believe it or not all produced for a budget of $10000, and that included the hire of the poodle.

 

Happy birthday Babs.

As well as Devine and Waters who plays Mr J the narrator, the film stars David Lochary as Raymond, an actor that specialises in playing sophisticated pervert’s in Waters films, his last appearance in Female Trouble was in 1974 just two years before he died from an overdose of PCP (angel dust). His wife in the film Connie is played by Waters regular Mink Stole, another Dreamlander Edith Massy plays Edie. And how could we forget Elizabeth Coffey a postoperative transsexual woman who plays the chick-with-a-dick who turns the tables on pervert Raymond!

 

Babs does not need little plastic bags?

Pink Flamingos is still, after several years, one of the hottest film attractions and has been honoured all over the World as a film classic and was shown at the New York Museum of Modern Art as part of The Great American Comedy Series. But there’s no disputing that the release of this notorious film caused a great deal of controversy because of the perverse acts performed in explicit and graphic detail.

The film was re released in 1997 and subsequently on DVD to mark the 25^th anniversary of its premiere. This newer version includes an improved soundtrack and some extra scenes from the original release introduced by the director himself. I can say, with hand on heart that there is no other film like it. Certainly not one for the ‘grey pound’ ha ha ha ha.

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[1] IMDb.

I Am Devine.

I first saw Divine on stage in 1977 at the Whitehall Theatre in the Debbie Raymond[1] and Fiona Richmond’s[2] presentation of Tom Eyan’s Woman Behind Bars. This was a camp spoof of the exploitation movies made in the 1950’s and was set in the Woman’s House of Detention in Greenwich Village. Originally premiered in New York in 1975 Devine joined the cast a year later as the most outrageous character in the production, the scheming prison matron Pauline.  In the programme, which miraculously I still have, there is a brief pen portrait, which really summarises Divine’s career to that time and gives you an idea of what to expect from the wonderful documentary, produced and directed by Jeffrey Schwarz, I Am Devine (2013) that focuses on the American actor, singer and drag queen.

World famous for creating original characters Divine made her mark in the popular films of John Waters. Best known for playing Babs Johnson in Pink Flamingos (1972) Divine’s film credits to date include Roman Candles (1966), Eat Your Make Up (1968), The Diana Linkletter Story (1969), Multiple Maniacs (1970) and Mondo Trasho (1969).

 

With friend filmmaker John Waters.

Pink Flamingos is still, after several years, one of the hottest film attractions and has been honoured all over the World as a film classic and was shown at the New York Museum of Modern Art as part of the The Great American Comedy Series. A native of Baltimore Divine has chosen New York as home base and it is from there that Divine has travelled the US continent to create the many characters that have brought fame. On stage in San Francisco appearance in Saves the World and Vice Palace.  

 

Pink Flamingos.

In New York City, under the aegis of Tom O’Horgan for the La MaMa Repertory Company, in Spring Rites. An interlude in Divine’s stage career for a seventh, and favourite film Female Trouble (1974), made in Baltimore. Back to the stage again in Washington D.C. under the watchful eye of director Ron Link in Woman Behind Bars followed 500 performances of the same role in New York City.

 

"Just so beautifully outrageous darling's"

Divine lists hobbies and special interests as Furs, Mink, Fisher, Martin and Sable. Jewels, any and all sizes – gemstones preferred. Flowers – orchids, all varieties by the dozen and finally nothing less than a ten pound note.[3] (Well it was 1977!)

The original 1977 programme.

Schwarz’s documentary gives you both a glimpse of Harris Glenn Milstead life before becoming Divine as well as his work thereafter. Bullied every day at school, it was this shy retiring boys work with his friend, filmmaker John Waters that brought him to the attention of the world at large as one of the most shockingly extreme drag queens ever to wear a frock and wig.

 

Harris Glen Milstead.

Film star, stage actor and singer Divine did it all. Spoken of kindly by all those that knew him especially by Waters and the other Dreamlanders whose anecdotes are hilarious. But it’s the interviews with his now deceased mother Frances Milstead that is the most poignant. Interesting, outrageous, sad and funny really sums up this larger than life character. Who, as he got older, wanted nothing more than to be regarded as a serious actor.

 

He wanted nothing more than to be excepted as a serious actor.

This is a very unique documentary about a very special human being who represented all of life’s beautiful rarities that did not fit, or do not want to fit into mainstream (boring) society.  A lovely man that stood up to the establishment, sending an erotic ripple through all you ‘non believers’!

I Am Divine trailer.

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[1] Daughter of Paul Raymond who died of a heroin overdose in 1992.

[2] Former glamour model and actress who became a British sex symbol in the 1970’s

[3] Whitehall Theatre program 1977.