- Year
- 1972
- Country
- USA
- Runtime
- 93 min
- Director
- John Waters
- Updated
- 10 Aug 2026
- Obscurity
- known (15/100)
- Also known as
- John Waters' Pink Flamingos
- Banned in
- Australia
Pink Flamingos
Refused classification in Australia on release and again for its 1997 re-release.
Divine competes to be the filthiest person alive. The most notorious act in film history closes it.
John Waters's monument to bad taste, in which Divine, living in a trailer under the name Babs Johnson, defends her title as the filthiest person alive against a jealous rival couple. It escalates through every taboo Waters could stage and ends with Divine eating fresh dog excrement on camera, in one unbroken shot, to prove the point.
It is deliberately, aggressively disgusting, and also very funny, made with Waters's Baltimore friends for almost nothing. It is the purest act of provocation in American cinema and the foundation of the midnight-movie circuit. Know exactly what you are getting.
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Written about
- Exploitation film examples, cycle by cycle
Exploitation film examples grouped cycle by cycle, from Freaks in 1932 to the video nasties, with the real dates, cut durations and censorship rulings.
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