Pink Flamingos (1972)
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Pink Flamingos Movie Review
Pink Flamingos is a 1972 exploitation comedy film directed by John Waters and starring Divine. It’s a horrible viewing experience for sure.
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“Kill everyone now!
Condone first degree murder!
Advocate cannibalism!
Eat shit!
Filth is my politics!
Filth is my life!“
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This is a very famous transgressive exploitation, counter-culture film from this star and director and I have finally watched it, but it is better to be avoided as it’s truly repulsive. It has its fine moments between all of those atrocities and more on that later, but for the majority of time it is very difficult to sit through.
So basically one couple proclaims themselves the filthiest people alive, but Divine holds that title so they challenge her to a competition to see who really is the filthiest person alive. That thin premise led to a bunch of horrific sequences where we witness a bunch of scary stuff happening.
I did not have a problem with the sexual scenes as I am not a prude. Yes, they literally went into the pornographic territory, but at least some of those scenes were pretty normal. But what wasn’t normal was the infamous chicken scene which scared the shit out of me and I also morally object to that being filmed. And of course coprophagia gets showcased in that infamous finale where Divine eats dog feces and I could not look at that scene at all.
So yes, this movie is hard to sit through, despite a couple of fine moments. I am of course talking about Divine who excels as this over-the-top character. Her acting isn’t the greatest, though so much better than the acting from the other people which truly was terrible to witness, but she sells the role due to a lot of charisma at display and very memorable look and costumes. I loved some of her dialogue and some lines were so funny.
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That’s about it when it comes to the minor positives here, the rest could not even be considered to be a real movie how transgressive, repetitive and even cheap it all is. John Waters made one very cheap film with the cinematography, production design and actors all being very cheap and amateurish with only the score being rather solid.
Pink Flamingos features a memorable, charismatic turn from Divine and some amusing lines of dialogue, but for the majority of its runtime it is very difficult to sit through. It’s hard to even call it a movie considering its cheap technical aspects, overt sensationalism and terrible acting. It was just an excuse to film the most grotesque scenes possible and literally nothing else.
