Mink was here for PINK FLAMINGOS (1972)

Posted by Daniel Metz

We were lucky enough to have been visited by screen legend and trash queen Mink Stole last weekend. As I wrote about a few days ago, she was here with drag queen Peaches Christ to premiere their new film, All About Evil. As a bonus, we were also treated to a screening of John Waters’ classic Pink Flamingos.

After some crowd-baiting from Rebecca Havemeyer’s alter-ego Christine, the show started with a duet of “Female Trouble” from Mink and Peaches. The two performers were there before the show to do a bit of a Q&A. Whereas in the previous night most questions were geared toward Elvira, this was all about Mink, John Waters, and Divine. Dreamland fans would genuinely be pleased with the string of stories and jokes that Miss Stole had to offer.

Even though I am now raising chickens, I still love this scene.

I actually wrote a little about Pink Flamingos for the Alamo blog (where you’ll see I shared a byline with Havemeyer):

PINK FLAMINGOS is quite possibly the most disturbing art film in history. In 1972, John Waters created a transgressive motion picture unlike anything before it. It’s truly a unique example of cinema made at the boundaries of taste, convention, budget and aesthetics.

The story of two rival factions in down-and-dirty Baltimore who are both vying for the title of “filthiest person alive” is outrageous enough to relegate it to the scariest depths of American film legend. But the truly impressive thing about PINK FLAMINGOS — and what enters it into the pantheon of truly excellent cinema achievements — is the way that Waters captures the freakshow that was Baltimore circa 1972. From the deranged lunatics and maniacs he got to play the principal and supporting characters we get chicken rapists, steak thieves, incestual cursers, toe suckers, meat flashers and cannibals. And also a brown eye that opens and closes for all the world to see.

With all this hoity-toity stuff, we must not forget how goddamned funny this movie is. Anyone with a twisted sense of humor will love and laugh through every moment of this film. It’s a party of excess, disregard for humanity, and hatred for morality. This is the campiest, craziest, freaky-deakiest movie you’ll ever see.

So that’s a lot of what I feel about the movie in general. The experience Sunday night was a lot of fun; the crowd clearly loved the movie, and the laughter and disgust filled the room. Pink Flamingos is probably the kind of movie people don’t watch as much as they should, so they end up forgetting some of the finer points. Thus, the biggest laughs in the film were the surprises and small jokes, like the smoking hot flasher/tranny, or the butler’s spot-on impersonation of Mink Stole and David Lochary.

My favorite romantic couple of all time, Edie and the Egg man, share a kiss.

It’s a great movie, and definitely one of my favorites. It’s got so much awful energy, it is so damned offensive, and golly is it funny. It is against everything the we hold to be right, and as such it is a marvelous satire against culture.

To me, this is the best thing about Pink Flamingos: It is so depraved, so filthy, that it can’t REALLY be read as an allegory as one might expect. Yes, it would be obvious to see this counter-culture film as an attack against homophobia, as it is by a gay writer/director featuring a largely queer cast and a grotesque drag queen. Yet, the film reaches such depths of disgustingness, passing over every line of exaggeration and good taste, that it reaches a point where there is no lifestyle that is proper or admirable. No, this film has no message, it is just pure anarchy.

For God’s sake, there’s a grown woman who lives in a crib and lives for eggs.