Female Trouble

One of the underground films John Waters shot in Baltimore. Dawn Davenport is a high school student. When she does not get the shoes she asked for on Christmas morning she knocks over the tree and runs away from home. That scene is the film's most quoted passage. What follows is a story of crime and fame: Dawn's life spins further out of control and two beauty salon owners turn her into an experiment. Their thesis is that crime is beauty. Dawn takes it seriously. Divine plays both Dawn and the man who gets her pregnant; there is a scene in which the two characters are together. The company Waters worked with repeatedly fills the cast; Edith Massey, as the aunt, is the film's second centre. The budget was very low and it was shot in Baltimore, mostly in real locations. Waters dedicated it to a prisoner he met and corresponded with, one of the defendants in the Manson case. A foundational production within its genre for anyone who likes underground cinema, camp and American independent films of the 1970s. Before you watch, know this: the film is deliberately ugly, deliberately uncomfortable, and observes good taste in no scene at all.