Female Trouble

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Female Trouble is a 1974 film by Baltimore, Maryland filmmaker John Waters starring Divine, Edith Massey, Cookie Mueller, Mink Stole, Mary Vivian Pearce and David Lochary.

Dawn Davenport (Divine) is a troubled teen who wants nothing more for Christmas than a pair of black cha-cha heels. When she doesn't get what she wants, she runs away from home and is promptly picked-up by a disgusting man in a fur cap (also Divine). She becomes pregnant with a daughter, Taffy (Mink Stole), and begins a life of crime with her two girlfriends (Cookie Mueller and Susan Walsh). One day, to cheer Dawn up, her friends advise her to get her hair done at the Le Lipstick Beauty Salon...a bizarre establishment run by two fascist weirdos, Donald and Donna Dasher (Lochary and Pearce). All potential customers have to be interviewed to have their hair done. Here, Dawn meets her future husband, Gator (Michael Potter), who styles hair at the salon.

Dawn clashes with Ida (Massey), her peroxide blond, leather-clad, gay male-loving neighbor, and aunt to Gator. When her marriage to Gator begins to turn sour, she falls in with Donald and Donna Dasher, who employ her as their 'crime model' and have a theory which equates excessive crime with ultimate glamour. Taffy, left alone at home, surrounds herself with pieces of wrecked cars and with the help of a headless mannequin (and a bottle of ketchup) re-enacts auto crashes.

Ida, angry at Dawn for the departure of Gator, throws acid at Dawn's face. The Dashers persuade Dawn to retain the disfigured facial injury, making her believe that she is more beautiful than ever. As Taffy joins the Hare Krishna to rebel against her mother, Dawn shoots liquid eyeliner into her veins and embarks on a rampant cavalcade of criminal activity, which culminates in the death of her daughter and a theatre performance, where she shoots members of the audience. Dawn is eventually sentenced to death in the electric chair. Near the start of the final scenes Dawn can be seen hugging and being a model-like figure to the other girls in prison and is also noted as having a possible lesbian relationship with one of them. After Dawn gets her last meal (which she then refuses anyway) she is walked into the room for her execution while a priest reads out parts of the bible to her, in which she pays no attention whatsoever to. The scene ends with Dawn being executed and a pause scene with her head slightly to the side. The theme song plays and the credits then roll.

The theme song was written by Waters to a pre-existing piece of music and sung by Divine. Set designer Vincent Peranio created Davenport's apartment in a condemned suite above a friend's store. Because Earl Peterson, the man who impregnates Dawn, was also played by Divine, shooting was difficult to schedule. Earl's scenes were filmed first because Van Smith sought to shave Divine's head and eyebrows for the role of Dawn. Divine chose to do all her own stunts, the most difficult of which involved doing flips on a trampoline during her final performance. Waters took her to the YMCA where she took lessons until the act was perfected. The birth scene was saved until the end of shooting, when Dreamlander Susan Lowe gave birth to a son. The umbilical cord was fashioned out of prophylactics filled with liver, while the baby was doused in fake blood. The scene created quite a scandal for Lowe's mother in law, who arrived on the set in a state of confusion.

[edit] External links

• Female Trouble at the Internet Movie Database