Free Film Screening! Starting at 8:30 pm we will show you two of John Waters and his early cohort’s most depraved and glorious works of trash art. Any donations at the door will go towards the National Abortion Funds Network.
Female Trouble, part of Waters’s ‘Trash Trilogy,’ was his follow-up film to his massive camp hit Pink Flamingos. The movie hits all the hallmark gross-out and counterculture notes his audiences craved, but the story packs more of a cohesive punch, indelibly cementing Waters’s reputation as the ‘Prince of Puke.’
While still employing his troupe of local Baltimore actors (the Dreamlanders) in more outlandish situations, this would ultimately be another star vehicle for his foul-mouthed, corpulent muse: Divine.
Dawn Davenport (Divine) is a dropout who gets knocked up on a used, roadside mattress and becomes a struggling single mom to her monstrous daughter, Taffy (Stole). When Dawn gets discovered by salon owners/photographers the Dashers (Lochary & Pearce)—who are obsessed with her ugly beauty—her life takes off. Not even a mutilating, acid attack by harpy Aunt Ida (Massey) can slow the rise of Dawn Davenport. Her ascent to fame culminates with a murderous performance that eventually sends our ‘shero’ to the electric chair.
While Waters’s work heavily leans on the side of shock-for-shock’s sake, Female Trouble has a winking eye hellbent on shining a spotlight firmly on American hypocrisy. The premise of using the foul-mouthed, cross-dressing Divine as the conduit of glamour and success was as big F-U to the squeaky-clean hetero norms of the times.
Moreover, Waters sharply flips the script when Aunt Ida desperately implores her hairdresser nephew to become gay: “But you could change. Queers are just better. I’d be so proud if you was a fag and had a nice beautician boyfriend. I’d never have to worry.”
Female Trouble is disgusting, twisted, insane — and above all, a riot. Skewering mainstream America has never looked so horribly good.
Desperate Living (1977)
A rich housewife murders her husband with her overweight maid's help and the two go on the run, ending up in Mortville, a town that provides refuge for criminals. They shack up with a lesbian ex-wrestler and her murderess lover before running into the tyrannical Queen Carlotta, ruler of Mortville.
