Divine

(On Cable TV, June 2022) I started watching Female Trouble with a troubling question– while I really liked the John Waters’ films that I had seen, those (Hairspray, Cry-Baby, Serial Mom, Cecil B. Demented) were toward the bigger-budgeted, mainstream end of his career rather than the earlier, most transgressive era: What would I think of such fare as Pink Flamingos and Polyester? Well, if Female Trouble is any indication, I’m in for a few more great viewing experiences. Female Trouble is as camp as camp can be, deliberately heightening the ridiculousness of its execution, the extreme nature of its plotting and the melodrama of its ill-fitting actors. Some of it depends on having drag queen character actor Divine in the lead role, but not as much as you’d think – the particular nature of the character just becomes one more thing in an entire film built on self-conscious ridiculousness. I don’t think every viewer will be a good audience for this kind of material – but if you can make it past a particular point early in the film in which what’s essentially the worst thing in the world is shown in a way that makes you laugh, then you’re good to go for the rest of the film’s descent into pure lunacy and a final act of filicide that just caps it all off. Female Trouble is quite something, and rarely less than engrossing despite the bargain-basement budget and actors playing decades younger or older than their age. It has aged very well – but of course, what was transgressive back in 1974 is almost mainstream these days, and I’m not sure that the more-or-less-exact same film made today would be as remarkable. No matter – Waters’ iconoclastic sense of demented humour serves him well here, and I’m feeling upbeat about seeing the rest of his filmography.