Pink Flamingos

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"Kill everyone now! Condone first degree murder! Advocate cannibalism! Eat shit! Filth are my politics! Filth is my life!"
Divine

The film that launched John Waters as the world's leading authority on bad taste, Pink Flamingos is a 1972 transgressive comedy film starring Divine, David Lochary, Mink Stole, Edith Massey, Danny Mills, and Mary Vivian Pearce. It follows the adventures of Divine (living under the alias of Babs Johnson), a fat, style-obsessed criminal who lives in a trailer with her mentally ill mother Edie, her delinquent son Crackers, and her traveling companion Cotton. Divine, however, is furious when a pair of perverts, Raymond and Connie Marble, try to steal her title of "filthiest person alive." Hilarity Ensues.

Pink Flamingos was added to the National Film Registry in 2021.

Tropes used in Pink Flamingos include:

Mr. Vader: Do you believe in God?
Divine: I AM GOD!

Reporter: Divine, are you a lesbian?
Babs: Yes, I have done everything!
Reporter: Does blood turn you on?
Babs: It does more than turn me on, Mr. Vader, it makes me come! And more than the sight of it, I love the taste of it, the taste of hot freshly killed blood!
Reporter: Could you give us some of your political beliefs?
Babs: Kill everyone now! Condone first degree murder! Advocate cannibalism! Eat shit! Filth are my politics, filth is my life!

  • Road Apples: "Someone has sent me a bowel movement."
  • Scenery Gorn: Many, many scenes of the trailer burning.
  • Serial Escalation: To say that it pushes the limits of bad taste is an understatement.
    • The actual production of the film counts, as well, as everything you see in the movie actually happened. Unsimulated.
      • Except for the deaths, of course.
        • Which is just a darn shame.
    • In his Stand-up Comedy routine, This Filthy World, he claims that he showed the film to a group of prisoners , when he was teaching a class in prison (emphasizing that many of them were murders), and they all declared it one of the sickest things they'd ever been exposed to.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: Patti Page's "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window" plays while Divine eats dog shit. Yeah, the song is about a dog, but it's a cutesy '50s pop hit.
  • Tagline: "An exercise in poor taste."
  • Tar and Feathers
  • There Are No Police
  • Those Wacky Nazis: Patty Hitler, a character who didn't make the final cut of the film, although she can be seen as a party guest.
  • Torture Cellar: The Marbles kidnap young women, lock them up in their basement, have Channing impregnate them, and sell the babies to lesbian couples.
  • Torture Porn: Supposed to be a disturbingly funny parody.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Edie and eggs.
  • Transgender: One of the women whom Raymond exposes his penis to flashes hers back.
  • Villain Protagonist: Divine
    • Of course, with their sex slave ring, which they use to sell babies to lesbian couples, and the fact that the money they get is used on illicit drugs to sell to inner-city grade schoolers, the Marbles (the main antagonists) are MUCH worse as villains, which is why Divine feels justified in killing them for first-degree stupidity and assholism.
  • Villains Out Shopping: The trip to the butcher shop.
  • What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: Half Subverted. Waters said he was high while writing it, but not while making it.
    • On the other hand, he did say that, to save on catering, he gave everyone "some good speed" instead.
      • Also, during the party scene, Divine and a party guest are shown doing poppers.
  • World of Ham