They were like something out of a creepier than usual fairytale. Some classic scenes from this movie include Dawn toppling the Christmas Tree on top of her mother, the infamous scene where Divine gives birth to baby Taffy she chews off the umbilical cord and spits it on the wall! I stumbled onto this thang totally blind. Well, I saw it in a. The iris of Female Trouble opens on a Baltimore high school, introducing us to high school trash tramp Dawn Davenport. The drunkard father, who lives in a dilapidated house, sexually assaults Taffy, and she stabs him with a butcher knife.
Accompanying all that is a beauty myth from the bowels of a white trash hell that would send screaming for sanctuary. My first sense that this might not be the movie for me is when I noticed I was the only female in the theater. The mere thought of Mink uttering her lines like a normal person makes me shudder. That was the good things about the film that featured an outrageous star in Divine, a transvestite that played Dawn Davenport. Cut to 1968, when Taffy Hilary Taylor , now age eight and already difficult, drives her mother to violence; Dawn beats her with a car antenna. John Waters has said that this film is the 'ultimate Divine vehicle', and he's right.
You will laugh, you will cry, you will vomit and you will die as you behold the deliciously disgraceful antics of the indefatigable queen of crime and sleaze. Where do they go when the sun goes down? He's made some of the best, crudest feel-good movies, and this is one of his crowning achievements. Set in 1960 Baltimore, the tale begins with Dawn as a juvenile troublemaker in an all-girls school. I was lucky enough to see Female Trouble when it was first released. A second bouncing-off-the-wall climax follows when Dawn murders audience members as performance art before going down in a blaze-of-glory finale that could compete with Cody Jarrett blowing himself up or Tony Montana rat-a-tat-tatting away after being riddled with bullets.
Everyone is equally implicated; suburbanites can be just as given to avarice, just as heartless, just as guided by hate as the billionaire down the street. The very idea that Waters uses a fat transvestite with a beehive hairdo to illustrate his scorn for school shows he's not so interested in subtlety. Dawn Davenport's ascent to the ceiling of crime is hilarious and perceptive and Waters clearly knew where all this was going. Who could eat a whole pie in a single sitting without throwing up? This compost heap is even dedicated to a member of the Charles Manson gang! Skid marks on a pair of Haines? Absolutely the grossest movie I've ever seen all done without gore which I have to give John Waters some credit for. The sets and the costumes are amongst the best ever created irrespective of budgets, and are way beyond kitch, but are somehow extremely glamorous 'hard core art' as Donna Dasher would say. There are so many quotable lines.
I loved Mary Vivian Pearce and David Lochary's possessed enthusiasm as the sex-hating, beauty-loving Mr. Female Trouble 1974 The life and times of Dawn Davenport, showing her progress from loving schoolgirl to crazed mass murderer - all of which stems from her parents' refusal to buy her cha-cha heels for Christmas. All the people in the theater laughing and cheering. Who wants to die for art? They were so blonde, they made Swedes doubt themselves. These companies may use information not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. All the fans who died so fashionably and gallantly at my nightclub act.
It also has Waters film trademark of having the actors shout their lines instead of saying them. All the acting is good and refreshing, too. Above all though this is really Divine's vehicle. This has to be Divine's finest hour in acting. And the quintet of , , Edith Massey, and are more than up for the demanding task of reciting it in the most exuberant manner possible. Obedient Dawn begins to perform criminal acts in public, such as knocking her daughter unconscious with a chair, while flashing a big smile and posing for photo shoots by the Dashers. We know they'll never get it, there is no hope.
She runs away from home, is raped, becomes a single mother, criminal and glamorous model before her inevitable rendezvous with the electric chair. Female Trouble remains my absolute favorite and will probably remain that way I still need to see some of his even earlier films. This new version will include enhanced video and audio quality and plenty of long-lost scenes!!! Water's dialog is vehement, abominable, and not to be equaled. Brief, because the Dasher's are making plans for Dawn, sinister plans. Without all of you, my career could never have gotten this far.
It also shows how the media exploits the desperate and causes the distorted image. Unfortunately, all of these releases are out-of-print and a bit pricey. They compliment each other instead of overpowering one another. Female Trouble works on many levels. Who can forget crazy his Aunt Ida Edith Massey , who disfigures Dawn's face with acid.