by Sam Juliano
Present-day John Waters fans who are only familiar with his vomit-inducing Pink Flamingos may be unaware that his best work followed that landmark of sleaze with Female Trouble (1974) and Desparate Living (1977). Of these two, the former rates a slight edge, as it gave bad taste an entirely new level of meaning. Yet, it’s outrageous characters, vile mise en scène and trashy decor was what Waters was all about in those years, and as he was in his writing “prime” it brought out his most inspired talents for satire and self-parody, no matter whose expense it was at. You know you’re in for a most “special” experience after the opening scene, when rotund Baltimore high-schooler Dawn Davenport (played by the king of sleaze himself, Divine) takes major issue with a Christmas present she received from her parents; she discovers a shoe box under the Christmas tree that does not contain the cha cha heels she asked for:
Dawn Davenport: What are these?
Mrs. Davenport: Those are your new shoes, Dawn!
Dawn Davenport: Those aren’t the right kind, I told you cha cha heels, black ones!
Mr. Davenport: Nice girls don’t wear cha cha heels!
Dawn Davenport: Gimmie those presents, I’ll never wear those ugly shoes! I told you the kind I wanted! You ruined my Christmas!
[stomps the Christmas presents]
Mrs. Davenport: Please Dawn! Not on Christmas!
Dawn Davenport: Get off me you ugly witch! [pushes mother into Christmas tree]
Mr. Davenport: Dawn Davenport are you crazy? Look at your mother!
Dawn Davenport: Get off me……Lay off me! I hate you; fuck you! Fuck you both, you awful people! You’re not my parents! I hate you, I hate this house, and I hate Christmas!
This nefarious introduction segues into even sicker territory when a local pervert and car mechanic crusing picks up Dawn and engages in raunchy unprotected sex in a romp on a junkyard mattress with a fat derelict in soiled underpants, which is also a car mechanic who cruises for sex regularly. (Divine also plays this derelict, so the scenes together are craftily edited, making it a kind of “self-rape.” The effect is apparently achieved by cross-cutting footage of Divine dressed as one character either on top or below of a similarly plump double whose face is obviously obscured. It’s surely a grotesque and gratuitous scene with Waters displaying why he is the incomparable King of Trash). One of Waters’ stock company regulars, Mink Stole, is terrific as Dawn’s bratty daughter Taffy, who makes both Patty McCormack in Bad Seed and Ann Blyth in Mildred Pierce seem dutiful and mannered by comparison. Mary Vivian Pearce and David Locahary co-star as crazed owners of a beauty parlor who are convinced that “crime equals beauty,” and they take Dawn under their wing, forcing her to mainline liquid eyeliner to enhance her appeal. But there’s little doubt that the long-time acting treasure in Waters’ arsenal is Edith Massey, who in this film plays Dawn’s obsessive neighbor, “Aunt” Ida, who wants her straight nephew to be gay because “heterosexuals lead sick and boring lives.” She throws acid into Dawn’s face after she marries him, and she spends time locked in an animal cage in her apartment. Massey’s comportent, with straggly hair, imperfect teeth and deliberately awful voice delivery that sounds like it was read off cue cards is all part of the director’s purposeful aim to shock and disgust, while stereotyping the lowest kind of human being on the evolutionary scale. Waters found Massey on Baltimore streets, and true-to-form he celebrated her unendowment as a raunchy force of nature.
Basically, Female Trouble is a licentious social commentary, but that is also applicable for the director’s other works of this period. As a follow-up to the notorious (aforementioned) Pink Flamingos, this film is amazingly sicker and even more twisted. Despite its low-budget nature, the film’s script and direction are considerably more ambitious. The surprisingly complex packs its narrative into 98 minutes, and it never feels as if its overwritten, with Waters filling each frame of the film with outrageously gaudy sets, costumes, makeup and of course hairdos that create a convincingly surreal atmosphere of bad taste (special credit must also be bestowed upon production designer Vincent Peranio and costume and make-up wizard Van Smith, who each played a crucial role in creating this world). Of course Waters himself served as cinematographer as well. However, Female Trouble is unremittingly over-the-top and hysterically shrill in its pursuit of sick humor that it might frighten off even the most agreeable of cult film addicts. The characters are written in a way that makes them all unsympathetic and the film’s theme of “crime equals beauty” is likely to make even the most liberal-minded viewers squirm (even 35 years later this film’s teeth have not been blunted in this sense), and the story plays sordid themes like child abuse, incest and mutilation for laughs of the darkest variety. Still, those brave enough to stay with the film will be rewarded with hysterical set-pieces, uproarious dialogue, and those incomparably depraved supporting characters, led by Massey as Gator’s anti-heterosexual mother. The director makes some pointed visual references to fellow directors Russ Meyer and Herschell Gordon Lewis, and some of the violence sets the stage for his own Desparate Living, released three years later.
Of course, Female Trouble is graced with the best performance of Divine’s short-career. (Divine was born Harris Glenn Milstead in Baltimore, where he became a friend of Waters. He died of an enlarged heart in his sleep in March of 1988 at the age of 42). He goes about his transformation from spoiled teen to crazed murderess with a kind of fearless bravado that few actors would attempt, even within the parameters of their character. Of course the matter-of-fact sleaziness and white trash vulgarity to be seen on display here throughout make Dawn Davenport the most original of creations, and no one but Devine could bring her to life in quite the same manor. She is simultaneously terrifying and uproarious in the hilarious nightclub act that climxes with the actor in drag attempting to “execute” the audience. While performing the act she jumps on a trampoline and wallows in a playpen filled with dead fish. She revels in the ideal that beauty is an art form born from crime and she declares: “I framed Leslie Bacon! I called the heroin hotline on Abbie Hoffman! I bought the gun that Bremer used to shoot Wallace! I had an affair with Juan Corona! I blew Richard Speck, and I’m so fucking beautiful I can’t stand it myself!” She then yells out, “Who wants to be famous, who wants to die for art?”, and commences shooting into the crowd. Several people are wounded and others are trampled to death by the crowd. Dawn later goes on trial when among others, Ida testifies against her for being kidnapped and having her hand amputated for revenge for having her own face disfigured when Ida splashed acid on her.
While Female Trouble has reviled and disturbed many, it stands today as as it’s creator’s most ingeniously-written, conceived assault on mores of civility that he has long since abandoned while developing his most singular style of expression.
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Those who haven’t seen Female Trouble can enjoy the Christmas scene Sam writes about so lovingly over at YouTube.
This film is definitely an acquired taste, but it trumps so much of what passes for comedy today…especially the kind that think they’re being subversive. Waters’ films are a rude slap in the face to post-war suburban complacency whereas most modern comedies would rather anesthetize you than shake you awake.
Keep your Hangovers and your Brunos. Give me John Waters.
Would you believe I never saw this one, even if I do find Waters a blast. I did see “Pink Flamingos” and I have known about the film you review here so brilliantly, just never had the opportunity. But I’ll have this up on netflix later today. I agree that Edith Massey is one of a kind. I hear as a person she was a kind and loving woman, and she remain true to her roots. The cha cha heels sequence sounds priceless.
Of course, Hairspray – and NOT the musical – has always had me in stitches, but the earlier films represent the best of Waters. I am not sure if I like this the best, or Desparate Living, but your review is as hilarious as the film itself. Nobody can touch Divine and Edith Massey as the trashiest of the trashiest.
Craig: Thanks so much for including the you tube segmant and for providing the high-quality insights and embellishments. It’s so true that where Waters was once accused of going way over the top, he is now seen as someone whose extreme assaults on good taste are his most adored trait. What alwasy gets me going is his penchant to turn all conventions on their heads, and Massey in this film personifies this gleefully.
Joe: Thanks, I’ve read the same about Massey, and I implore you to see this as soon as possible. I can help out if you wish.
Frank G: Again, thanks for being the trooper here day in and day out. You and a few others are the heart and soul of the site. Oh I agree that its a tough call between this and DESPERATE LIVING as Waters’s masterpiece.
Sent by Pierre by e mail, as WitD post did not go up until a few hours afterwards. Posted at Fairview school computer with same I.P. address as some of my other colleagues use here at Fairview Public School district with Pierre’s permission….S.J.
Pierre says:
“Oh, Sam — !!!!! — Oh, Sam !!!!!
Thank you Thank you Thank you.
Female Trouble will never be forsaken in Pierre’s book. This piece of High Art is at the very top tier of my list. And your choice of scenes to desribe in detailed dialogue is one of my very favorites. In fact, one year I hosted an Xmas Eve slumber party. Right before we opened our gifts, I played the cha cha heels scene to get people into the proper Xmas mood!
That scene alone places this masterpiece in the echelon shared by such luminosities as the chariot sequence (Ben Hur), the opening explosion tracking shot (Touch of Evil) and — why, yes — the Odessa steps sequence in Battleship Potempkin!!!!!!!!
Actually, the first time I saw this back in the 1970s I thought Waters had gone a bit too far. Upon second viewing, though, I totally got it all. Waters and Divine: Uberstars!!!!!!!”
One of the sickest movies ever, comparable to ‘Sweet Movie’ and in an art house sense to the movie reviewed here by Mr. Fish, ‘Salo’. But what a great review this is, and the movie is an undeniable laugh riot. It’s actually considered a cult classic.
I think you may be right that it is Waters’ best film. Getting Divine to play Dawn and that pervert in the same scene was a most effective deceit.
Thanks of much for reviewing this, and for doing such a fabulous job. May be the best of your forsaken series.
Pierre!!! That is one of the greatest comments we’ve ever received at this site as it is incomparable hysterical!!! Never knew you had that kind of passion for this film, but it appears we have the same kind of humor. I can imagine back then it was probably shocking to the extreme. But after what we’ve seen up till today, it doesn’t stand alone in that department. Still, it’s hardly tame, especially the outrage. The meatball sandwich scene in class is another hoot!
Frederick: Thanks for making several contributions at the site this morning. This is much appreciated. SICK MOVIE is depraved is a different sort of way, but its appropriate you being it up here.
My view is that Waters paved the way for people such as Sacha Baron Cohen. One difference, though, is the “punking” aspect of Cohen’s works, which at times seems mean-spirited to me. Waters mocked conventionality without violating people’s humanity.
Don’t get me wrong — I think Cohen is extremely talented and has created some marvelous stuff. However, some of his set-ups don’t work for me. (It sort of boils down to, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”)
The first time I saw Female Trouble, I felt that Waters had taken things just a bit too far. It wasn’t ’til the second viewing, when I sort of let go of convention, that I understood the world he had created.
When it’s a world you want to nuke and the sort of world that would enjoy reality TV, it’s an instant turn off… Just me, but I have never seen a John Waters movie even rise as high as mediocre.
When it’s a world you want to nuke, John Waters is a great coping mechanism!
I’m with you on Cohen, Pierre. I’m not a fan of comedy designed to make other people look stupid. You can point out the stupidity of things by behaving badly yourself (as Waters and cast do), but to think you’ve risen above it as Cohen does is arrogant and off-putting…even when he’s right.
Well, really meant the world Waters presents is the world I’d like to nuke…watching a John Waters film is as much fun as eating an excrement sandwich and washing it down with a gallon of acid while your children gets steamrollered into paté.
Craig, I’d better clarify — I think I like Cohen’s stuff more than you do. For me, though, it’s a hit-and-miss proposition. When one works in this particular realm, things can get dicey and go south very quickly. My guess is that we’ve come to a point where it’s easier and more acceptable to laugh at people as ideas or symbols of what we object to.
I don’t mind people being exposed for their prejudices or failings. However, I would’ve cut the scene in Bruno involving Ron Paul. I don’t think it was wrong to include it — and I don’t feel Paul came off poorly — I just don’t think it merited inclusion.
Oops — am getting off point. Allan, I’ve never taken the opportunity to eat an excrement sandwich, etc., so I can’t comment!
Pierre, did you read what Anthony Lane had to say in The New Yorker? I haven’t seen the movie yet so I can’t really comment, but it wasn’t pretty.
Here’s a along juicy quote:
“I’m afraid that “Brüno” feels hopelessly complicit in the prejudices that it presumes to deride. You can’t honestly defend your principled lampooning of homophobia when nine out of every ten images that you project onscreen comply with the most threadbare cartoons of gay behavior. A schoolboy who watches a pirated DVD of this film will look at the prancing Austrian and find more, not fewer, reasons to beat up the kid on the playground who doesn’t like girls. There is, on the evidence of this movie, no such thing as gay love; there is only gay sex, a superheated substitute for love, with its own code of vulcanized calisthenics whose aim is not so much to sate the participants as to embarrass onlookers from the straight—and therefore straitlaced—society beyond.
How efficient, though, is embarrassment as a comic device? It’s a quick hit, and it corrals the audience on the side of smugness; but its victories are Pyrrhic, and it tends to fizzle out unless held in by a plot—as it was in “Fawlty Towers,” which, from its base on the English seaside, fathomed the most embarrassable race on earth. Baron Cohen, in exporting his japes, comes up against a people much less devoted to the wince. I realized, watching “Borat” again, that what it exposed was not a vacuity in American manners but, more often than not, a tolerance unimaginable elsewhere. Borat’s Southern hostess didn’t shriek when he appeared with a bag of feces; she sympathized, and gently showed him what to do, and the same thing happens in “Brüno,” when a martial-arts instructor, confronted by a foreigner with two dildos, doesn’t flinch. He teaches Brüno some defensive moves, then adds, “This is totally different from anything I’ve ever done.” Ditto the Hollywood psychic—another risky target, eh?—who watches Brüno mime an act of air-fellatio and says, after completion, “Well, good luck with your life.” In both cases, I feel that the patsy, though gulled, comes off better than the gag man; the joke is on Baron Cohen, for foisting indecency on the decent. The joker is trumped by the square.”
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2009/07/20/090720crci_cinema_lane?currentPage=1
…watching a John Waters film is as much fun as eating an excrement sandwich and washing it down with a gallon of acid while your children gets steamrollered into paté….
Very few share your non-enthusiasm for his peak period, if any. FEMALE TROUBLE and PINK FLAMINGOS are two of the funniest films ever made in America in the past 40 years in any sub-genre!
That ‘excrement sandwich’ you speak of came to mind when I watched that inane British TV series SPACED.
Different strokes for different folks, but it’s nice to have the overwhelming majority on your side.
As it is with me for Spaced, which only an old fossil like you couldn’t like. To be fair, it’s a series for people under a certain age.
So now I’m referred to as an “old fossil” because I didn’t happen to like something that you did. 54 years old, and ready to pasture now, eh? You’re 35, I’m 54. Oceans apart?
In temperament and taste, an aeon…
You are the only person I know who didn’t like Spaced, and I was using your age as a potential reason, though your “I’m not even going to try and like this” mentality don’t help either.
If it isn’t down to age, then it’s down to retardation, and that’s perfectly possible as you thought Dreamgirls great. A sure sign of abject senility.
and “ethneticity” as well I presume. You beat to the death your attack on DREAMGIRLS, but I refer you to the largely favorable reviewds it received, even from some excellent critics. Go rail against them, and leave me out of it.
While Danny Peary in his famous “Guide For the Film Fanatic” rates this as one of the greatest of all comedies, and Pauline Kael’s position in her trash essay is justly famous, here’s Jonathan Rosenbaum, who also loves the film here:
“This 1975 feature is the best of John Waters’s movies prior to Hairspray and his ultimate concerto for the 300-pound transvestite Divine, whose character will do literally anything–including commit mass murder–to become famous. As in all of Waters’s early outrages, the technique is cheerfully ramshackle, but Divine’s rage and energy make it vibrate like a sustained aria, with a few metaphors about the beauty of crime borrowed from Jean Genet. With Edith Massey and Mink Stole, as well as some doubling on the part of Divine that allows the star to have sexual congress with himself, giving birth to . . . guess who?
– Jonathan Rosenbaum, The Chicago Reader
Danny Peary’s Guide For the Film Fanatic is one of the books that made me BECOME a film fanatic!
Thanks, Sam. I think the point of Waters’s “world,” so to speak, is that it’s not real. There’s no mistake about that. It’s a movie. In Pink Flamingos, for example, Divine and Co. engage in warfare over being “the filthiest people alive,” a make-believe, “what if” reality.
Although to each his own and all that, I nevertheless find it curious when someone says they want to “nuke” that world. These are ideas were talking about, kids, not real people (or are they?).
Absolutely, absolutely Pierre:
This is that nightmare that brings together perverse sexuality, irreverence and corrosive satite, while basically turning th eworld on its head, and questioning the accepted “order.” When Edith Massey shrieks “No, don’t tell me that!!!” to her nephew Gator for daring to say that he liked “girls” you laugh not only at the perversity but at the role-revearsal, spoken by a highly unlikely adherent!
Yes, Sam. And I guess this hearkens back to what I was saying about Baron Cohen, where he’s dealing not just with ideas but also with people, an area with lots of land mines.
Indeed Pierre, indeed. Of course that’s what makes it so unpredictable, hence, hopelessly and infectiously irreverent. I will be seeing BRUNO over the weekend, so I’ll see first-hand here of your correlations.
Allan Fish is entitled to his opinion, and he’s expressed it here often with some remarkable work, but sometime I just don’t get where he is coming from. He condemns the film with the kind of veracity that should be reserved for widely-regarded “junk” not for a film that has received consistently great reviews from practically every critic. As an audience hit, it’s clear it’s been a favorite since the 1974 release, and i does show Divine really breaking out for the first time. I appreciate the clip here from Rosenbaum, but the later Hairspray really has nothing on this gleefully revolting film that breaks every rule in the book and comes up standing riotously tall.
I can’t imagine anyone not finding this terrifically funny.
Wonderful piece on a film that had me holding my sides from the first time I saw it. I’m not one for raunchy/sophmoric humor (matter of fact I’m luke-warm on a film like ANIMAL HOUSE or BLAZING SADDLES-I always preferred the work of W.C. Fields and Woody Allen). But, this film is so over-the-top I guess it caught me off guard. Merely thinking about the “christmas tree” scene or the “meatball sandwich” moment bust me out in giggles. It’s so stupid it’s brilliant!
Thanks Peter and Dennis!
I have always contended the same, and haven’t yet come across a single unenthusiastic review from either side of the Atlantic. But Allan proves there is always a first.
Dennis: Yes, I do know you have always had a thing with this film, and believe you will love DESPERATE LIVING as well.
Ah, Sam, you already showed me DESPERATE LIVING. Senior moment there?
Although I have always contended that Waters was at the height of his poweres with his earlier work, surprisingly two of my three favorites come from his more recent pallette. Yes, FEMALE TROUBLES is my favorite but I’m also wild over HAIRSPRAY and SERIAL MOM!
I can recall many shirtless summer nights howling in Sam’s basement after he put this on, his personal choice for the pinnacle of tasteless debasement!
Craig: Again I thank for the New Yorker embellishment there with Anthony Lane on BRUNO, which I may see tomorrow.
Dennis: I’ve always known you love those later two!
Jason: Ha!!! Oh yes, I have ceaselessly promoted this one. I like the way you put that!
If I had to make a short-list of the movies that never cease to crack me up, along with FEMALE TROUBLE would be: IT’S A GIFT (W.C. Fields), BRINGING UP BABY (Howard Hawks), THE PRODUCERS (Mel Brooks), TO BE OR NOT TO BE (Ernst Lubisch), LOVE & DEATH (Woody Allen), IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD (Stanley Kramer), LOST IN AMERICA (Albert Brooks), NIGHT AT THE OPERA (Sam Wood), SONS OF THE DESERT (Laurel & Hardy), THE LADY EVE (Preston Sturges), THE BIG LEBOWSKI (Joel/Ethan Coen), THE END (Burt Reynolds). Chaplin doesn’t count as I felt his films went beyond comedy (but CITY LIGHTS is my favorite).
Hey Dennis, I can recall more than one occasion where you called me up, in hysterics to the point where you could barely form a completed sentence, upon the conclusion of another screening of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Don’t forget to add it to the list!
Fuck you Jason
Something about this discourse makes me think of John Waters.
Spoken like a true John Waters character Big D-I heard they’re considering a Female Trouble remake, you gonna throw your hat in the ring in place of the deceased Divine?
Off topic here, but I’d like to respond to Craig:
Thanks for the quote from Anthony Lane. He and I are not on the same page. First of all, does Lane really think schoolboys will be watching Bruno unless they’re already gay or at least thinking about it? Sounds like Anthony wants to see an after-school special or something.
And speaking of John Waters, one of life’s tragic disappointments is that Divine wasn’t nominated as Best Actress for her bravura performance in Polyester.
Pierre: I must agree with you on the two issues you raise here! It’s true that outside of the movie fanatics who try and see everything (like me and others, LOL!) the prime audience for this will be the schoolboys you site there. Lane is a great writer but his taste has always been a major downer for his readers. That said, I am not so sure of what to make of this film, the proof will be in the pudding this weekend.
Ha on Divine! Now that would have made news in a way that the ten oscar nominees for Best Picture couldn”t approach! Think of the Oscar trivia: Who was the only man to be nominated for Best Actress in the leading role?
Well, th eanswer won’t be difficult of course. Ha!
I find it completely discourteous that Jason would use this forum as a platform for infantile sucker punches and personal vindictive gratification. My sharp three word response should have put an end to this childs moronic banter and brainless pot-shots. I’m surprised Sam hasn’t started deleting the imbecilic banter this psychlogically deranged white trash know-it-all continues to dirty up the site with. NOTE TO SAM: PLEASE MODERATE, THIS IS SITE IS FOR THE DISCUSSION OF FILM AND ALL THINGS RELATED TO ART. PLEASE PUT THE GARBAGE WHERE IT BELONGS AND START DELETING THIS KIDS COMMENTARY
How is it possible that a man could walk the earth for more than four decades and have no sense of personal irony? Did you just call for Sam to moderate my posts after you used the word “Fuck” in a response? Your blunderous impulses really have a transcendent ability to provide hours and hours of amusement. Please, by all means, continue in earnest.
Pierre, call me crazy, but I value your judgment more than that of Mr. Lane.
I think what Anthony Lane does best is write pans full of humorous derision; he’s an excellent writer too often clever at the expense of insight.
I’m pretty mixed on SBC (particularly in light of his targeting my town in Bruno), but rather enjoy Waters. I’ve not seen Female Trouble–at least not capitalized. I hope to remedy that soon.
Indeed Jenny, I agree. He’s a kind of civilized version of John Simon in one sense, but at least he’s not as obnoxious as Armond White.
Now how did I know you would include this in the series? Good one!
Because you’ve met him, John? That’s the only criteria for knowing whether Sam would include it, as he tries to convert other unsuspecting victims to his crime…
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