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Pink Flamingos (1972)
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Reviews Counted:33
Fresh:27
Rotten:6
Average Rating:6.6/10
Runtime: 1 hr 48 mins
Genre: Comedies
Synopsis: Baltimore director John Waters's outrageous 1971 debut PINK FLAMINGOS burst onto the filmmaking scene like the ample flesh of its drag-queen star through the seams of a lamé dress. Conceived as a... Baltimore director John Waters's outrageous 1971 debut PINK FLAMINGOS burst onto the filmmaking scene like the ample flesh of its drag-queen star through the seams of a lamé dress. Conceived as a way to garner attention for Waters's fledgling career, this paean to bad taste certainly did just that--so much so that decades later, the film still retains the power to shock with its gleeful demolition of every known human taboo. Waters's attempt at making the most vile and offensive movie ever made is aptly mirrored in his characters' competition for the title of "Filthiest Person Alive." Overweight transvestite and Waters muse Divine (aka Glen Milstead) stars as the current record holder, Babs Johnson, who lives in a trailer park with her trashy friend Cotton (Mary Vivian Pearce), incestuous son Crackers (Danny Mills), and mentally-stunted mother Edie (Edith Massey), who spends her time in a playpen and is obsessed with eggs. Vying for Babs's filthy title is evil middle-class couple Raymond (David Lochary) and Connie Marble (Mink Stole), who fund porno shops, sell heroin to grade-schoolers, and run a white-slave trade that involves kidnapping young women, imprisoning them in their dungeon-like basement, raping and impregnating them, and selling their babies to lesbian couples. In between, there's sex with chickens, whistling rectums, actual fellatio, and canine excrement--ensuring not only gross-out comedy par excellence, but a total assault on bourgeois respectability that rivals the comparatively mild critique of UN CHIEN ANDALOU or L'AGE D'OR. Disgusting, hilarious, and utterly fabulous, PINK FLAMINGOS is guerrilla filmmaking at its finest. [More]
Starring: Divine, Edith Massey, Mink Stole, David Lochary
Starring: Divine, Edith Massey, Mink Stole, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Danny Mills, Cookie Mueller, Channing Wilroy
Director: John Waters
Director: John Waters
Screenwriter: John Waters
Producer: John Waters
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Release:
Sep 7, 2004
Reviews for Pink Flamingos
People complain about shock cinema and how far it has to go now to penetrate our jaded, desensitized sensibilities. Come meet the grandfather of it all!
[A] demented comedy that defecates on everything the '60s stood for, and then allows the drag queen in the lead to eat in, right on camera.
Hard to make an argument based on sheer artistry; impossible to make an argument against outrageous charm and transfixing weirdness.
Latest News for Pink Flamingos
September 08, 2006:
TORONTO: John Waters, Front and Center in “This Filthy World”
Legendary filmmaker John Waters, aptly named the "Pope of Trash" years back, stars solo in front of the camera in "This Filthy World," screened at the 2006... More...
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