John Waters Has Female Troubles
Director John Waters, Baltimore’s “Prince of Puke”, has a well-earned reputation for putting some of the strangest—and most distasteful—images ever seen on screen.
And now the folks behind the Sunday Slashers film series present a fall-out-of-your-seat funny bad-taste epic from Waters, the rarely seen on the big screen Female Trouble.
Divine, the American actor, singer, and drag queen, plays Dawn Davenport, go-go dancer and Moll Flanders of the Baltimore slums. From her bad-girl roots to her death in the electric chair, Dawn never backs down from gratuitous violence.
Dawn’s mouthy daughter Taffy, played by Mink Stole, is conceived following a junkyard mattress romp with an obese ne’er-do-well in soiled undies (also Divine, in drab).
When Mary Vivian Pearce and David Lochary, playing beauty-parlor owners who believe “crime equals beauty”, take Dawn under their wings, a bizarre Pygmalion story ensures. The cast of characters around them are equally vile and hilarious.
Brilliant? Appalling? Reactionary or the reverse? View this disgusting, funny cherry on Water’s oeuvre and see what you think.
Female Trouble runs Friday at 9 p.m. and again on Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Palace Theater on Georgia Ave. Come if you dare.