Female Trouble (1974): Dir: John Waters / Cast: Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Edith Massey, Mink Stole: Amusingly disturbing followup to Pink Flamingos with a theme that takes mental stability to whole new lows. Divine plays Dawn Davenport, a loud obnoxious overweight teenager who ends up hooking up with Donald and Donna Dasher, a flamboyant couple played with questionable fashion by David Lochary and Mary Vivian Pearce. They enlist Dawn to be their poster girl of crime and film her doing all sorts of horrendous antics. John Waters lavishes in the depraved but his filmmaking hardly improves here. He seems to rejoice in inserted penis shots as well as pointless inserts of a boar head on a wall. The sets are flimsy but his cast have the right kind of over-the-top presence to be entertaining. Divine as Dawn demands our attention, applauding even the very notion of going to the electric chair. Lochary and Pearce play the very enemies poising as friends. Edith Massey as a neighbor despises Dawn because she got her nephew fired. For her crime Massey is locked in a big bird cage and has her hand chopped off. Mink Stole plays Dawn's sassy daughter Taffy who resents her mother and plays smash-up derby in the house in one of the funniest moments. While vulgar and often gross Waters seems to attack celebrity and society's wayward desire for self importance. Score: 7 / 10

This was not my first introduction to John Waters' controversial films. Besides watching his more "clean" works, I had previously watched Pink Flamingos, after a period of gathering courage to do so. I had the expected reaction to it, I was disgusted and shocked as I watched him and his Dreamlanders succeed in the task of making the filthiest film ever. I actually quite enjoyed some of the humour - I recall especially the scene where Divine and Crackers try to contaminate the Marble residence, by spitting and rubbing onto the furniture. I hated the incident involving the chicken, though, but oh well.I thought Female Trouble was going to go the same way as Pink Flamingos, filth-wise, but it doesn't (almost), and I think this is John Waters' best film featuring Divine & co. It made me appreciate and understand more the purpose behind it all. If one watches Pink Flamingos without any previous knowledge of the type of movie it is, and what it stands for, one will be simply shocked and tend to never want to hear about it again (although it will forever be marked in one's mind's eye). Watching Female Trouble, I was able to come to terms with the nonsense jokes and the visual glorification of the grotesque. To me, it doesn't just serve as a comedic vehicle, it's also a genius way to defy society and whatever it's thought to be morally acceptable - for all we know, "cleanliness is next to godliness".And can any film be more subversive and profane in its ideology and ironic portrait of human beings? One of the most iconic quotes is Edith Massey's: "I worry that you'll work in an office, have children, celebrate wedding anniversaries. The world of the heterosexual is a sick and boring life!". Needless to say Divine is absolutely wonderful in this, the rise and fall of a once typical troubled teenager who ends up getting caught in the twisted desires of others, ending up in a sort of maniac narcissistic frenzy. And questions such as the cult of image, beauty and fame at all costs are all presented to us in a hilarious way.Anyway, I'm glad I got to discover this different kind of filmmaking, which is often dismissed for its graphic content, rather than being taken lightly as an interesting critique of American society and a fine exercise of trashy/nonsense humour.

I watched the 97 minute version. This and Pink Flamingos was lent to me by a friend of mine, and they are my first and only exposure to Waters, other than his guest appearance in an episode of The Simpsons and his role in Seed of Chucky. Well, I'm not a fan. I would have to say that this is the better of the two. Instead of being one long excuse to shock and put the nastiest things they could think of onto the screen(this may have the same amount, but in a much lesser range), this has genuine plot and even sort of a point... crime as beauty(seemingly related to Charles Manson and his "family"), and the pursuit of the latter. Well, yeah, it's *strange*... remember who we're dealing with. The substance does help this considerably(a little absurd stuff is better than absolutely nothing). There are a couple of funny lines(such as the one in my summary), if on the whole, I didn't find this humorous(the "don't want eggs" bit was amusing), only offensive. Not a lot of it is in the language, it's largely visual and in the occurrences. Divine is yet again wearing excessive make-up, and again there are characters with odd names wearing weird clothes and hair being obnoxious and not necessarily credible. While the dialog is not as repetitive, and doesn't feel as improvised and "ok, guys, we only have time for one take so keep going if you flub a line" as in the earlier movie, it's not impressive. Performances are decent, same for the FX. This has a little good music. The technical aspects remain underwhelming. There is a moderate measure of sex and full frontal nudity of both genders in this. I recommend this to those who enjoy John's work, or find what I describe here to be appealing. 6/10

Female Trouble (1974) ** (out of 4) Divine plays a schoolgirl who runs away from home, gets pregnant and then hits the hard life. Soon she meets a strange couple who talks her into a life a crime so they can capture her true beauty. It's really hard to judge this early Waters' films because they are technically horrid with awful performances yet that's their charm. The charm also comes from Waters trying to be as disgusting as possible and he does that here up to a point. If you are easily offended then you'd be best to skip this film as we see rape, crap stained underwear, a father trying to rape his daughter, child abuse, Edith Massey naked and a lot worse. I'm not sure I'll ever get the image of Massey naked out of my head and frankly, that scares me. I laughed a lot during the film but it eventually ran out of steam towards the end and I grew very tired. Some of the dialogue is very funny especially the stuff with Massey trying to talk her nephew into becoming gay because she feels gay people are better.