John Waters @ 75 : Desperate Living (1977)
Thursday, April 22, 2021 at 5:00PM Team Experience is celebrating John Waters for his 75th birthday this week
The final chapter of John Waters's so called "Trash Trilogy" has everything you would expect from the filmmaker. Except for one pivotal thing: it doesn't have Divine, the iconic star that made the two previous excerpts from the trilogy - "Pink Flamingos" and "Female Trouble" - true camp classics. But even if her magnetic screen presence is always a sight in Waters's filmography, you needn't worry about Desperate Living, as the 1977 film represents the raunchy brand of comedy camp that makes the director one of our most fascinating auteurs...
In the film, we follow two women on the run after one of them kills her husband. They're sentenced to a life in Mortville, a place that is as filthy as they come, populated by a group of eccentric characters and ruled by a very temperamental queen.
Temperamental would actually be a good word to describe a few of the other characters we encounter throughout the picture, starting with one of its leads. The leading lading Peggy (Mink Stole) is the picture of the 1970s neurosis from the get-go. Her hilarious first meltdown scene is just the tip of the iceberg, with an overdramatic comparison of her woes to the Vietnam war. And as her breakdown progresses the following minutes, it's no wonder her husband falls short (no pun intended). A seemingly perfect life in the suburbs can only take you so far. And she's done.
What follows is an amalgamation of all the things that made Waters the king of camp. As Peggy runs away with her maid Grizelda (Jean Hill), all sorts of crazy accidents and encounters are just around the corner. The first being with a cop, that, in this fantasy world, treats the white woman with the same distrust and violence it gives the black lady. It's a John Waters film, so it's no surprise when the policeman is a panty aficcionado with a thing for Bloomingdale's.
As if the craziness wasn't already on brand, the film takes a turn and gets even more outrageous as Peggy and Grizelda ditch their day clothes and hairstyles and become habitants of Mortville. We're finally introduced to the film's MVP, sex game-lover Queen Carlotta, played with a delicious ruthlessness by Edith Massey.
The film's opening credits suggests a banquet, albeit a fancy schmancy one, and Waters delivers the way he's supposed to in the third act, with a big revolution that shows that the people are still in charge. All framed by an outrageous show of colors and sounds, just like it should, and a banquet for everyone, in a big celebration of the rejects. Royal proclamation number one... You know the rest.
More from our John Waters Celebration
Pink Flamingos (1972)
Female Trouble (1974)
Polyester (1981)
Pecker (1998)
Reader Comments (2)
"I'll teach you to arouse royalty!" Need I say more?
DESPERATE LIVING is so underrated!! The absolute best representation of the past five or so years of this hell world. An acrylic rendering of Trump would look so at home alongside the portraits of Idi Amin, Adolf Hitler, and Charles Manson.
No auteur had a run of masterpieces like THIS.