Pink Flamingos (1972)

The amazing bad taste classic that put John Waters on the midnight movie map. It’s forty years old and hasn’t aged a day. It’s still sick, bizarre, and unbelievably funny. What’s the point of this story in which fat trailer-dwelling drag queen Divine squares off against hoity-toity black market baby brokers Mink Stole and David Lochary for the title of The Filthiest Person Alive? What’s the reason for all the gleeful incest, rape, cannibalism, frontal nudity and bodily fluids? The answer: cinematic terrorism, and the target was hippie culture. Here, John Waters answers peace, love, and togetherness with violence, hate, and ugliness (and great wit). Much like how Dali and Bunuel intended Un Chien Andalou to be 100% irrational, John Waters intended this to be 100% reprehensible. He succeeded. There are dozens of great belly laughs here, with my favorites being every scene in Mink Stole and David Lochary’s dungeon basement where their butler impregnates kidnapped girls (so that the babies can be sold to lesbian couples).

The moment that everyone talks about here is when Divine eats real dog shit on film—no camera tricks—but the scene that always makes me squirm is when Danny Mills and Cookie Mueller have sex with a live chicken being really smothered to death between them.