by: KFear
Posted on 11.10.09 in All Horror Films > Cult/Erotic
Release Date: 1972

There are films that try to be goriest, the most sadistic, and there are films that try to be the scariest. Now, what about films that try to be the filthiest? What happens when a director comes along who decides that they’re going to cross every single line that a filmmaker, outside of snuff and pornography, has ever crossed? Well, when the budget is next to nothing, a director like John Waters emerges to give us a film that is absolutely the vilest, most hilarious, and hilariously vile piece of cinematic trash to ever be captured on camera! Prior to throwing Pink Flamingos into my DVD player, I thought that I had fully prepared myself for this notoriously filthy piece of cult history, but I soon lost all my initial ethical reasoning only a half hour after the opening credits. As a result, this classic John Waters film is filth at its finest.

Say hello to Divine! She might look like your typical trailer trash: make-up enthused, overweight, foul mouth individual, but really, she is much much more. She is deemed as the filthiest person alive, and Divine has no problem, of what so ever, at living up to this title on a regular day to day basis. Now, Divine is also a woman that belongs to a very loving family. It just so happens that her family is just as filthy. They are all cannibals, incestuous, and murderous. Divines son performs random acts of bestiality, her mother sits in a cradle all day eating eggs (yes, eggs), and her daughter likes nothing more than to see her own brother perform various sex acts (including the animal loving) on various other women, or if you will, victims. The important thing that Water’s wants you to realize is that the members of Divines family don’t go out of their ways to be this incredibly filthy. They are simply filthy by nature.

Now, somewhere, in a town nearby, lies a middle aged couple that decides that they are in fact the filthiest people alive. They are also successful entrepreneurs, however; the business is just a little more than a tad bit unconventional. They kidnap innocent young women, their butler impregnates these women, the women are then kept in captivity until they have the child, and the child is then sold to lesbian couples. Our entrepreneurs are not heartless however. Some of the profit from the sale goes to heroin addicts and various pornography shops. Think of it as charity! Anyway, this brings us to the basic plot that surrounds the film. The filthiest couple claims that they together are the filthiest people alive and will stop at nothing to claim this title from Divine. The battle has begun!

I could go on and on about the films filthiness, but there is a lot more to Water’s film than just almost every single disgusting act or wretchedness that you can think of. The actors in the film suggest that they were suddenly costumed from a thrift store, not given any character direction or coaching in the least, and left, by our director, to lollygag throughout their entire roles with the littlest attention given to any production value. Does the production value bring the film down to shit-list status? Absolutely not, and although the film does take some time to get used to, soon you will be laughing in hysterics at the cast, the films concept, and the way every single ethical moral in film-making, as of 1972, because of John Waters, has just innocently fluttered out a wide open window.

Pink Flamingos is basically the senior school play that I always wanted to be a part of, but nobody could direct without consequently being thrown in slammer. Still, it’s not so hard to imagine a film, which derives purely on filth, becoming such a huge cult classic either. Maybe it’s the fowl use of nudity or just the overall perversion of the film that sends it over the edge, but if you’re anything like me and a rather large handful of midnight film goers, it’s an edge you’ll probably want to cross again and again.

• ★★★★★

  Acting:

• ★★★★★

  Blood:

• ★★★★★

  Violence:

• ★★★★★

  Partying:

• ★★★★★

  Language:

• ★★★★★

  Humor:

• ★★★★★

  Predictable:

• ★★★★★

  Girls:

• ★★★★★

  Gore:

• ★★★★★

  Sexuality:

• ★★★★★

  Torture:

• ★★★★★

  Overall:

Love this film. Great call on the film, but dude, you'd want to be in THAT Senior Play?