Pink Flamingos (1972)

Notorious Baltimore criminal and underground figure Divine goes up against a sleazy married couple who make a passionate attempt to humiliate her and seize her tabloid-given title as "The Filthiest Person Alive".

Director:

John Waters

Writer:

John Waters

Stars:

Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Divine	...	Divine / Babs Johnson
David Lochary	...	Raymond Marble
Mary Vivian Pearce	...	Cotton
Mink Stole	...	Connie Marble
Danny Mills	...	Crackers
Edith Massey	...	Edie
Channing Wilroy	...	Channing
Cookie Mueller	...	Cookie
Paul Swift	...	The Egg Man
Susan Walsh	...	Suzie
Linda Olgeirson	...	Linda
Pat Moran	...	Patty Hitler (Party Guest In Nazi Uniform)
Jack Walsh	...	Party Guest
Bob Skidmore	...	Delivery Boy
Pat Lefaiver	...	First Lesbian (as Pat LeFaiver)

Storyline

Sleaze queen Divine lives in a caravan with her mad hippie son Crackers and her 250-pound mother Mama Edie, trying to rest quietly on their laurels as 'the filthiest people alive'. But competition is brewing in the form of Connie and Raymond Marble, who sell heroin to schoolchildren and kidnap and impregnate female hitchhikers, selling the babies to lesbian couples. Finally, they challenge Divine directly, and battle commences...

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Plot Keywords:

absurd humor | black humor | black comedy | actual animal killed | lesbian | 

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Taglines:

An exercise in poor taste.

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Genres:

Comedy | Crime

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated NC-17 for a wide range of perversions in explicit detail

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

October 1979 (West Germany)

Also Known As:

John Waters' Pink Flamingos

Filming Locations:

Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$10,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$70,188, 13 April 1997, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$180,483, 20 April 1997

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$1,250,000, 31 December 1974

Company Credits

Production Co:

Dreamland

Technical Specs

Runtime:

93 min 106 min (re-release) 104 min (re-release) 108 min (re-release) 108 min (re-release)

Sound Mix:

Dolby (1997 re-release) Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Director John Waters wrote a sequel to this film, entitled "Flamingos Forever". It takes place 15 years after the action of the original film, showing Babs' return to Baltimore with Cotton, Crackers, Miss Edie, and her new grandson Dwayne, an 8-year-old transvestite. Their foe in this film is Vera Venninger, Connie Marble's sister, and her husband, Wilbur, a necrophile who runs a mortuary. Troma Films offered to finance the picture for $600,000 but it was never made because of the death of Edith Massey, and later that of Divine, whose roles were integral to the plot. Waters was also VERY uncomfortable with TROMA's editing facilities, which at that time were Moviolas from the very early days of film editing. The screenplay to this work is available with those of Pink Flamingos (1972) and Desperate Living (1977) in a collection entitled "Trash Trio".

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Goofs

A cameraman's shadow is visible as Divine and her friends eat the police officer.

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Quotes

Cotton: Let's move to Boise, I always wanted to go there!
Babs Johnson: Boise, Cotton? Why, that might not be a bad place!
Crackers: Were you ever there?
Cotton: Only once, we robbed a transit bus there, remember?
Babs Johnson: I remember, the number 42!

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Crazy Credits

For Sadie, Katie, and Les- February 1972 (The Manson Family members Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten. February 1972 was the month when the California State Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in California (it was later reinstated), reducing the sentences of the convicted Manson Family members to life imprisonment.)

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Alternate Versions

The 25th Anniversary re-release version contains a re-recorded music soundtrack, re-mixed for stereo, plus 15 minutes of deleted scenes preceeded by the film, introduced by John Waters.

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Connections

Referenced in Ban the Sadist Videos! Part 2 (2006)

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Soundtracks

Pink Champagne
by Joseph Liggins
Performed by The Tyrones
Courtesy of Mercury Records
By Arrangement with PolyGram Film and TV Licensing

User Reviews

The Original Trailer-Tacky Barf-O-Rama

Like those who listened to radio reports about the attack on Pearl Harbor, every one who has ever seen PINK FLAMINGOS can tell you exactly where they were when they first saw it--and some thirty years later the movie is still one of the most unspeakably vile, obnoxious, repulsive, and hilariously funny films ever put to celluloid, guaranteed to test the strongest stomachs and the toughest funny bones.

Filmed with a close-to-zero budget and some of the shakiest cinematography around, PINK FLAMINGOS tells the story of two families that compete for the tabloid title of "The Filthiest People Alive." Just how filthy can they be? Plenty: the film includes everything from sex with chickens to what I can only describe as a remarkable display of rectal control to a heaping helping of doggie doo, and I guarantee that you won't want to eat an egg for at least several weeks after seeing it.

The cast is either wonderful, atrocious, or atrociously wonderful, depending on how you look at it. The star, of course, is Divine... and to describe Divine as the BIGGEST drag queen on the planet would the understatement of the year. She is a mammoth creature given to BIG eye makeup, BIG orange hair, and BIG expressions--she is the Charleton Heston of drag, and whether she is almost running down a jogger, pausing to use the bathroom on some one's front lawn, or startling real-life shoppers by taking a stroll along a Baltimore sidewalk she is both unspeakable and unspeakably funny. Others in the cast include Mary Vivian Pearce, Danny Mills, and the ever-appalling Edith Massey as members of Divine's family; and Mink Stole and David Lochary as the white-slaving, baby-selling couple who challenge Divine's status.

It should be pretty obvious that PINK FLAMINGOS is not exactly a movie that will appeal to just every one, and viewers who know director John Waters only through such later films as HAIRSPRAY and CRYBABY will be in for a major jolt. But if you want to see something so completely different that even Monty Python couldn't imagine it, this is the movie for you. Just make sure you eat before you see it, because you probably won't want to eat afterward--and you might want to keep a barf bag handy just in case.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer