Raymond also earns money by exposing himself – with a large kielbasa sausage or turkey neck tied to his penis – to women and stealing their purses when they flee. The proceeds are used to finance pornography shops and a network of dealers selling heroin in inner-city elementary schools. The Marbles run a black market baby ring: they kidnap young women, have them impregnated by their manservant Channing, and sell the babies to lesbian couples. After learning that Divine has been named 'the filthiest person alive' by a tabloid paper, jealous rivals Connie and Raymond Marble attempt to usurp her title. They share a trailer on the outskirts of Phoenix, Maryland, next to a gazing ball and a pair of plastic pink flamingos. The notorious criminal Divine lives under the pseudonym 'Babs Johnson' with her mother Edie, delinquent son Crackers, and traveling companion Cotton. In 2021, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant'.

The film, at first semi-clandestine, has received a warm reception from film critics and, despite being banned in several countries, became a cult film in subsequent decades. The film is considered a preliminary exponent of abject art. It features a 'number of increasingly revolting scenes' that center on exhibitionism, voyeurism, sodomy, masturbation, gluttony, vomiting, rape, incest, murder, cannibalism, castration, foot fetishism, and concludes, to the accompaniment of ' How Much Is That Doggy in the Window?', with Divine's consumption of dog feces – 'The real thing!' narrator Waters assures us. It was filmed in the vicinity of Baltimore, Maryland, where Waters and most of the cast and crew grew up.ĭisplaying the tagline 'An exercise in poor taste', Pink Flamingos is notorious for its 'outrageousness', nudity, profanity, and 'pursuit of frivolity, scatology, sensationology and skewed epistemology'. The characters engage in several grotesque, bizarre, and explicitly crude situations, and upon the film's re-release in 1997 it was rated NC-17 by the MPAA 'for a wide range of perversions in explicit detail'. While living in a trailer with her mother Edie ( Edith Massey), son Crackers (Danny Mills), and companion Cotton ( Mary Vivian Pearce), Divine is confronted by the Marbles ( David Lochary and Mink Stole), a pair of criminals envious of her reputation who try to outdo her in filth. The film stars the countercultural drag queen Divine as a criminal living under the name of Babs Johnson, who is proud to be 'the filthiest person alive'. It is part of what Waters has labelled the 'Trash Trilogy', which also includes Female Trouble (1974) and Desperate Living (1977).

Pink Flamingos is a 1972 American black comedy film directed, written, produced, narrated, filmed, and edited by John Waters.

Trash trio john waters