Disgusting depravity: What is John Waters’ grossest movie?
The cinematic provocateur John Waters has been making movies which threaten to destabilise and disrupt the mainstream since the 1960s. Challenging the notion of what filmmaking can be by depicting all things gross and stomach-turning, Waters has revelled in the grotesque and shocking, leaving many people to consider his movies as nothing more than gratuitous exercises in sex and violence.
Some keywords and phrases associated with Waters’ movies include castration, the consumption of faeces, anal sex using rosary beads, vomit eating, prolapsed anuses, cannibalism and incest. It’s safe to say that the filmmaker’s movies are hardly family-friendly (although he did a great job at dialling back the grossness for Hairspray), with some of his films receiving bans in certain countries.
Yet, which of his movies is the grossest? There are moments in most of Waters’ movies which might bring your dinner back up, but some are much worse than others. Waters started making bigger-budget films in the ‘80s, moving away from the DIY aesthetic of his earlier work, which all contained non-actors and allowed Waters’ to experiment with the most shocking material he could think of. Thus, movies like Hairspray, Cry-Baby, Pecker and Serial Mom certainly have their moments, but they’re relatively tame in comparison to everything Waters made in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
So, fighting for the title of ‘grossest John Waters film’ are four titles that we consider to feature the most shocking, graphic, and, some may argue, gratuitous scenes in his filmography: Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living. Starting with Multiple Maniacs, released in 1970, the film was one of Waters’ first features. It begins with a freakshow, where people are invited to witness some grotesque acts, like a man who vomits and then scoops it back into his mouth. Then we see some murder, although none of this is graphic. One of the movie’s most shocking moments is the intense sex scene which sees Mink Stole insert rosary beads into Divine’s anus while sitting in church. While it’s incredibly shocking, it’s not a particularly graphic scene. The same goes for the scene at the end when Divine is raped by a giant fake lobster – we mainly just see Divine screaming.
Similarly, Female Trouble has many outrageous moments, but it isn’t overwhelmingly graphic. It’s certainly more explicit than Multiple Maniacs, with violence coming to play a prominent role, but it’s definitely not the most transgressive thing Waters has ever made. Still, we can’t forget the sex scene between Divine as Dawn and Divine as a dirty man, laid out on a grimy mattress outside, or when Taffy is almost assaulted by her long-lost father.
So, now it comes down to Desperate Living and Pink Flamingos. Released in 1977, Desperate Living features someone getting shot up the bum with a gun, which is enough to make you squirm, as well as when we see a penis created via phalloplasty being cut off. Essentially, there’s just a general air of dirtiness and filth that emanates from the screen for the movie’s entire 90-minute runtime.
But Pink Flamingos, Waters’ most notorious movie, has to take the top spot here. The film is Divine’s most iconic role – his pink dress, shaved-back hair, and dramatic makeup have become instantly recognisable. From beginning to end, Waters packs in as much grossness as possible. There’s a scene when one character is raped while a chicken is crushed between her and the attacker- something that you’ll be thinking about for days after viewing it.
A close-up shot of a prolapsed anus is equally grim, as are the scenes where Divine and her friends eat dead bodies, a man gets castrated, another character flashes his penis (with a sausage tied on it) to strangers, and Divine actually gives oral sex to a character who is meant to be her adult son. Yet, of course, the grossest moment is the final sequence, where a dog is shown defecating on the pavement, only for Divine to pick it up and eat it. He actually did put the faeces in his mouth, although Waters claims that Divine spat it out straight away. Regardless, the scene is enough to make you gag.
Waters advertised Pink Flamingos as an exercise in “bad taste,” and he certainly achieved it. Even just thinking about that end scene will get your stomach turning. Thus, we hereby crown it as the grossest John Waters movie.
