Review of Desperate Living (1977) by Stuart K — 27 Apr 2014

Since 1964, John Waters had made 4 short films and 4 feature films, and he had emerged from underground filmmaking with Pink Flamingos (1972), and Female Trouble (1974) heightened his profile. For his next film, he was able to raise 6 times the budget of Pink Flamingos for this trashy but darkly funny crime caper made with very little money but a lot of imagination.

Neurotic housewife Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) and her housemaid Grizelda Brown (Jean Hill) go on the run after Grizelda smothers Peggy's husband Bosley (George Stover) to death. With nowhere else to go, Peggy and Grizelda end up in the run-down and deviant shanty town of Mortville, run over with an iron fist by the evil Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey) and her two-timing daughter Princess Coo-Coo (Mary Vivian Pearce).

Peggy and Grizelda end up becoming associates of lesbian wrestler Mole McHenry (Susan Lowe) and her lover Muffy St. Jacques (Liz Renay), and they end up in a coup to try and overthrow Queen Carlotta after Coo-Coo runs away.

It's a very sleazy film, and you will feel very unclean after witnessing all this, but you can't help but admire the way Waters creates this world for next to nothing. The only thing missing from this dirty magnum opus was Divine, who was doing a play, but he returned with style for Waters' next one, Polyester (1981).