Divine, Cookie Mueller, and Susan Walsh in Female Trouble (1974)
American postcard by The American Postcard Co. Inc., no. 895, 1982. Photo: Bruce Moore / New Line Cinema Corp. Divine, Cookie Mueller, and Susan Walsh in Female Trouble (John Waters, 1974). Caption: Divine as Dawn Davenport and Her Sisters in Crime, from Female Trouble by John Waters.
John Waters's trash spectacular Female Trouble (John Waters, 1974), starring drag legend Divine a.k.a. Harris Glenn Milstead, demolished the boundaries of good taste. It is basically a faux biopic of a Baltimore high school dropout named Dawn Davenport. The anarchic film is director Waters's own favourite from his five-decade career. It was made right off the midnight-movie success of Pink Flamingos (John Waters, 1972) which also starred Divine.
Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble changed Divine from Baltimore's most outrageous resident into an international icon of bad taste cinema. Dawn is pretty much the craggy pinnacle of rebellion. After her parents don't buy her cha-cha heels for Christmas, Dawn flips out, beats her parents up and runs away from home. She's picked up by an anonymous motorist, a burping caricature named Earl Peterson, who is also played by Divine. They fuck on a mattress by the side of the road. In most underground films a scene featuring the lead actor, in two roles, raping himself for two full minutes - and thén taking off his pants - would be the climax, in Female Trouble it 's only the start. The film shows Dawn's progress from loving schoolgirl to single mother, stripper, hooker, burglar, housewife, model and her sordid stardom as an outlaw. Inevitably she has her final rendezvous with the electric chair. Female Trouble is one of John Water's last real underground films, and his first film with an actual coherent script and plotline. Amelia Abraham at Vice: "As in his later film Polyester, by taking the family drama as a genre Waters affords himself a structure against which his carefully orchestrated ironies can play out. Take, most glaringly, the fact that his female protagonist is played by a man in drag. Like all good DIY/punk/trash cinema, the cast is droll and deadpan, but Dawn/Divine's gestures are completely theatrical and her delivery Joan Crawfordesque—it's the ultimate parody of femininity and stardom: a total coup."
"To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about," says John Waters in his book Shock Value. "If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation. But one must remember that there is such a thing as good-bad taste and bad-bad taste. It's easy to disgust someone; I could make a ninety-minute film of someone getting their limbs hacked off, but this would only be bad-bad taste and not very stylish or original. To understand bad taste, one must have very good taste. Good-bad taste can be creatively nauseating but must, at the same time, appeal to the especially twisted sense of humor, which is anything but universal." Amelia Abraham at Vice: And that's just the thing about Female Trouble: Its unique brand of trashy camp is, as with all camp, in the eye of the beholder. If you watch a drag-queen-cum-acid-burn-victim strangling her own daughter and smile, you're depraved enough to be welcomed into the John Waters following. If you're offended by his aesthetic or moral sensibilities—well, his job is done; the boundaries of taste have been pushed." Female Trouble was Water's last film to feature his entire original ensemble of actors: Divine, David Lochary, Mink Stole, Mary Vivian Pierce, Cookie Mueller and Susan Walsh as Dawn's sleazy cohorts, and Edith Massey. Each has a memorable and hilarious role. John Waters has said that this film is the 'ultimate Divine vehicle'. Divine's look literally changes every ten minutes. Mink Stole plays Dawn's 'retarded' 14 year old daughter, and Edith Massey is Aunt Ida, an obese and shameless old slut who constantly urges her nephew Gator to turn gay: "I worry that you'll work in an office, have children, celebrate wedding anniversaries.. the world of a heterosexual is a sick and boring life!".
Sources: Amelia Abraham (Vice), Vanessa McDonnell (Green Slate), and IMDb.
Divine, Cookie Mueller, and Susan Walsh in Female Trouble (1974)
American postcard by The American Postcard Co. Inc., no. 895, 1982. Photo: Bruce Moore / New Line Cinema Corp. Divine, Cookie Mueller, and Susan Walsh in Female Trouble (John Waters, 1974). Caption: Divine as Dawn Davenport and Her Sisters in Crime, from Female Trouble by John Waters.
John Waters's trash spectacular Female Trouble (John Waters, 1974), starring drag legend Divine a.k.a. Harris Glenn Milstead, demolished the boundaries of good taste. It is basically a faux biopic of a Baltimore high school dropout named Dawn Davenport. The anarchic film is director Waters's own favourite from his five-decade career. It was made right off the midnight-movie success of Pink Flamingos (John Waters, 1972) which also starred Divine.
Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble changed Divine from Baltimore's most outrageous resident into an international icon of bad taste cinema. Dawn is pretty much the craggy pinnacle of rebellion. After her parents don't buy her cha-cha heels for Christmas, Dawn flips out, beats her parents up and runs away from home. She's picked up by an anonymous motorist, a burping caricature named Earl Peterson, who is also played by Divine. They fuck on a mattress by the side of the road. In most underground films a scene featuring the lead actor, in two roles, raping himself for two full minutes - and thén taking off his pants - would be the climax, in Female Trouble it 's only the start. The film shows Dawn's progress from loving schoolgirl to single mother, stripper, hooker, burglar, housewife, model and her sordid stardom as an outlaw. Inevitably she has her final rendezvous with the electric chair. Female Trouble is one of John Water's last real underground films, and his first film with an actual coherent script and plotline. Amelia Abraham at Vice: "As in his later film Polyester, by taking the family drama as a genre Waters affords himself a structure against which his carefully orchestrated ironies can play out. Take, most glaringly, the fact that his female protagonist is played by a man in drag. Like all good DIY/punk/trash cinema, the cast is droll and deadpan, but Dawn/Divine's gestures are completely theatrical and her delivery Joan Crawfordesque—it's the ultimate parody of femininity and stardom: a total coup."
"To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about," says John Waters in his book Shock Value. "If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation. But one must remember that there is such a thing as good-bad taste and bad-bad taste. It's easy to disgust someone; I could make a ninety-minute film of someone getting their limbs hacked off, but this would only be bad-bad taste and not very stylish or original. To understand bad taste, one must have very good taste. Good-bad taste can be creatively nauseating but must, at the same time, appeal to the especially twisted sense of humor, which is anything but universal." Amelia Abraham at Vice: And that's just the thing about Female Trouble: Its unique brand of trashy camp is, as with all camp, in the eye of the beholder. If you watch a drag-queen-cum-acid-burn-victim strangling her own daughter and smile, you're depraved enough to be welcomed into the John Waters following. If you're offended by his aesthetic or moral sensibilities—well, his job is done; the boundaries of taste have been pushed." Female Trouble was Water's last film to feature his entire original ensemble of actors: Divine, David Lochary, Mink Stole, Mary Vivian Pierce, Cookie Mueller and Susan Walsh as Dawn's sleazy cohorts, and Edith Massey. Each has a memorable and hilarious role. John Waters has said that this film is the 'ultimate Divine vehicle'. Divine's look literally changes every ten minutes. Mink Stole plays Dawn's 'retarded' 14 year old daughter, and Edith Massey is Aunt Ida, an obese and shameless old slut who constantly urges her nephew Gator to turn gay: "I worry that you'll work in an office, have children, celebrate wedding anniversaries.. the world of a heterosexual is a sick and boring life!".
Sources: Amelia Abraham (Vice), Vanessa McDonnell (Green Slate), and IMDb.