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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1970s
    Movies - 1970s Movies - D 2 Mins Read

    Desperate Living (1977)

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    John Waters followed his two works of “accidental art”, Pink Flamingos (1972) and Female Trouble (1974), with this lurid ensemble melodrama – his most “serious” work.

    Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) is a highly strung, bourgeois housewife. Having just been released from a mental hospital, Peggy comes home to what she perceives as a plot to kill her by her husband and children. With the help of her “petite” 400-pound maid, Grizelda (Jean Hill), she sits on her husband’s face and suffocates him.

    Fearing the consequences of their actions, they both flee by car only to be pulled over by a raunchy cop who prefers sniffing women’s underpants to making arrests.

    Having got a noseful of their “delights”, he recommends that the women hide out in a remote shanty town called Mortville where only criminals can live under the benevolent fascist dictatorship of the very pink and vulgar Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey) and her sex slaves.

    The villagers are commanded to walk and dress backwards, while sex changes, rabies and auto-castration all work their magic into the plot.

    Peggy applies for a job as a biochemist working for Queen Carlotta who wishes to spread rabies among the rabble, and as she Peggy jockeys for position in Carlotta’s court, using insidious means to push likely successor Princess Coo-Coo (Mary Vivian Pearce) out of the way, Grizelda joins with the “good” people of Mortville for a rebellion.

    Meanwhile, lots of screen time is devoted to the exploits of Mole McHenry (Susan Lowe), a bullish lesbian with a face full of sores who pursues a sex-change operation in order to wow her buxom girlfriend, Muffy St. Jacques (Liz Renay).

    A woman’s picture par bizarre excellence, the film may look cheap and cluttered, but it comes with a poignant ending that is endearingly apocalyptic.

    Peggy Gravel
    Mink Stole
    Queen Carlotta
    Edith Massey
    Muffy St Jacques
    Liz Renay
    Mole McHenry
    Susan Lowe
    Princess Coo-Coo
    Mary Vivian Pearce
    Grizelda Brown
    Jean Hill
    Bosley Gravel Jr
    Brook Blake
    Beth Gravel
    Karen Gerwig
    Flipper
    Cookie Mueller
    Kid
    Jay Allan
    Bathroom pervert
    Pat Moran

    Director
    John Waters

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    Put some beefiness into your mid-week menu with these recipe ideas published in a Birds Eye advertisement from the Radio Times on 30 September 1965.

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