Right up front: This is our most favorite movie ever. Other idiots can love "The Wizard of Oz," et cetera, but we feel that Waters made his magnum opus with this tale of sordid criminality and mutated fashion principles. How could we not love a film that stars one of our own? Divine plays Dawn Davenport, a troubled teen who rises in her life of crime to the ultimate pinnacle in her chosen career, a front-page death in the electric chair.
The film opens by showing the deep division that has always existed in high schools between the practical and the sheep. Our lead girls could care less about school and are only marking the time until they are old enough to earn money dancing in a strip bar. The realities of Columbine come easily to mind when you consider the contempt with which our protagonists are held by their classmates and teachers. Here we are introduced to Dawns' friends, Chiclet and Concetta. Not only do they share Dawns' disdain for all things having to do with school or with family life; they feed off each other in their hatred of normalcy, making (presumably) anything possible. There is a hitch, with Christmas fast approaching our heroines must be on their tip- top best behavior so that they can receive cha-cha heels as gifts. Well, the big day arrives and the "normal" shoes given to her by her parents because "nice girls don't wear cha-cha heels" disappoint Dawn.
After an angry and profane outburst that ends with Dawns' mother pinned under the upended family Christmas tree, she runs away in her peek- a- boo nitie and fuzzy slippers. Hitch-hiking, she is picked up by Earl Peterson, a fat and perverted Lothario whoops' idea of a good place to fuck is on an old mattress at the city dump. Earl is also played by Divine, and this scene is go- fuck- yourself spectacular.
She is impregnated during this very strange interlude, and the idiot bastard child of the masturbatory tryst is born on a couch in a ramshackle flop-house. Dawn names the child Taffy, thus ensuring that the girl will grow up to be worthless trash. In a brilliant montage, Waters shows Divines' growth as a criminal: Rolling drunks, robbing houses, and jiggling her ample ass in a go-go bar. A cutaway when Taffy is about eight years old establishes the child abuse that our loving mother heaps upon her unwanted daughter.
We fade to a later time. Dawn is at an important juncture of her life. Single motherhood has taken its' toll on her, Taffy is an exceptionally bratty and precocious teen-ager now (played superbly by Mink Stole, our favorite Dreamland regular).
She feels the need for love in her life. Through catty gossip ("I'd suck the socks off him in a minute" Concetta says) Dawn learns of a new addition to the squalid Baltimore neighborhood in which she resides. This is Gator, a hunky hair- dresser that lives next door with his fag- hag Aunt Ida, roasted to a turn by the immortal Edith Massey. He works at The Lipstick Beauty Salon, run by a Donna and Donald Dasher (David Lochary and Mary Vivian Pierce) and catering only to "Special Women". Divine has to audition to get her hair done there, and is accepted for her incredible awfulness. Gator is told to "cater to her every whim."
Another montage is offered of the happy couples' whirlwind courtship and marriage. Aunt Ida who worries that this heterosexual thing is "a sick and boring life" for Gator resists all this. She wants him to "turn Nellie and get a nice beautician boyfriend." However, as sound an idea as that is, even Edie cannot change persons' sex preference, and the marriage goes on over her rather bizarre and extreme objections.
We have the last montage of the movie, showing roughly five years of her strange married life. We get a scene of Dawn and Gator having rather perverted sex, and Gator shoves a carrot down Dawns' flexible throat at her moment of orgasm, pissing her off. She goes to the Lipstick to have her hair done, whereupon the Dashers make her their crime model and fire Gator on her whim. This sets off a chain of events, which culminates in a rapid divorce. Ida is furious with Dawn for driving Gator away, who has decided to split Baltimore for Detroit ("I'm going to find happiness within the auto industry"). She announces the news to Taffy, and orders her to burn all of Gators' belongings. In a parting gesture, Gator leaves Dawn with a black eye.
Meanwhile, the Dashers take odd photos of Divine engaging in criminal behavior that "tickles our fancy" and drive her to deeper levels of exhibitionist hysteria than we had ever believed possible. Ida gets her revenge by busting in on one of these ridiculous photo sessions ("Now look like you've just won a prize" Donald the photographer shouts..."Now look horrified at what you've done to your daughter") and throws acid into Dawns' face.
The film now moves at a torrid pace. Taffy leaves home to find and murder her father in a Manson- like overkill attack that leaves us breathless even after repeated viewing. Her face somehow "improved" by Idas' acid attack, Dawn is now the most exciting model alive, not to mention monstrously insane. Taffy has returned home to find Aunt Ida dressed in feathers, gagged, and living in a large cage. Her mother has gone completely over the edge and even Taffy finds the living arrangements to be less than desirable. Her only option being life as a Hare Krishna, "They're always so nice to me when I meet them at the airport" she whines. Donald and Donna convince Dawn that the time is right for her to burst into show business. Backstage immediately preceding her sold- out performance at the Superstar nightclub, the mortified Dawn murders her saffron- robed daughter. Enraged and out of control, Dawn concludes her disgusting nightclub act by shooting wildly into the audience. She goes on the lam and is caught after a brief chase ("I didn't do one thing!" she says to the arresting cops.) Dawn is brought to trial and is convicted on the perjured testimony of the Dashers and Ida, whose' arm she had cut off with an axe in a previous scene. She is sentenced to death in the electric chair and after a brief death row scene; Dawn gives her acceptance speech and is fried to a crisp.
John Waters does not waste a single second of film or a single opportunity for a great line in this entire movie. There are more ideas in five minutes of this than in an entire summer's release from the big studios. This is the ultimate independent film. Waters baits, shocks, and delivers the goods. Fearless actors such as Divine come along once in a lifetime, and JW seized the moment with this one. Everyone involved with this was working at the top of his or her game. Endlessly quotable, Female Trouble is the ultimate sleaze-fest. Borrowing heavily from Hershell Gordon Lewis and Russ Meyers alike, Waters outdid his own heroes. He would be too humble to admit this, but we defy anyone not to agree after seeing it.
