Female Trouble
Female Trouble is a 1974 dark comedy film co-composed, filmed, co-edited, written, produced, and directed by John Waters and starring Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole, Edith Massey, Michael Potter, Cookie Mueller, and Susan Walsh.
The film is dedicated to Manson Family member Charles "Tex" Watson. Waters' prison visits to Watson inspired the "crime is beauty" theme of the film and in the film's opening credits, Waters includes a wooden toy helicopter that Watson made for him.
Plot
Dawn Davenport, a delinquent high-school student, goes berserk when her parents refuse to buy her the shoes she wants for Christmas because "nice girls don't wear cha-cha heels": she destroys presents, topples a Christmas tree on her mother, and flees the house. Dawn hitchhikes a ride with a lecherous man, Earl Peterson, who drives her to a dump where they have sex on a discarded mattress. Dawn becomes pregnant, but Earl refuses to support her. She gives birth to a daughter, Taffy, a brattish child often beaten and severely punished by her mother. Dawn works various jobs, including stripping and waiting tables, and engages in criminal activities such as burglary and street prostitution with former high-school friends Chiclette and Concetta.Dawn begins frequenting the Lipstick Beauty Salon and marries Gater Nelson, her hair stylist and next-door neighbor. Donald and Donna Dasher, the fascist owners of the beauty salon, recruit Dawn in a scheme to prove "crime and beauty are the same". They entice Dawn to commit crimes by promising her fame, supplying her with drugs and money, and photographing her crimes to stoke her vanity.
Gater's aunt, Ida Nelson, is distraught over her nephew's marriage because she hopes he will "turn nelly" and take a male lover. When the marriage fails, Dawn persuades the Dashers to fire Gater, who moves to Detroit to work in the auto industry. Ida blames Dawn for driving Gater away and exacts revenge by throwing acid in her face, leaving Dawn hideously disfigured. The Dashers discourage Dawn from having corrective cosmetic surgery and use her as a grotesquely made-up model. They kidnap Ida, imprison her in a large birdcage in Dawn's apartment, and give Dawn an axe to chop off her hand as revenge for the acid attack.
Taffy, now a teenager, is distressed by her mother's criminal lifestyle and convinces her to reveal the identity of her father. Taffy finds her father living in squalor and drinking excessively. She stabs him to death with a chef's knife after he tries to sexually assault her. Taffy returns home, falsely claims she was unable to locate her father, and announces she is joining the Hare Krishna movement. Dawn warns her she will kill her if she does.
Dawn, now with bizarre hair, make-up, and outfits provided by the Dashers, mounts a nightclub act. When Taffy appears backstage chanting mantras in religious attire, Dawn fulfills her threat and strangles her to death. Dawn brandishes a gun onstage during her nightclub act and begins firing into the crowd, wounding and killing several audience members. When police arrive to ostensibly subdue the crowd, they shoot several audience members themselves. However, they allow the Dashers to leave when they claim to be upright citizens caught in a bloody rampage. Dawn flees into a forest, but is soon arrested by the police and put on trial for murder.
At the trial, the judge grants the Dashers immunity from prosecution for testifying against Dawn. The Dashers feign innocence and completely blame Dawn for the crimes she committed at their behest; they also pay Ida to lie on the witness stand. Although Dawn pleads not guilty by reason of insanity, the jury finds her guilty and sentences her to die in the electric chair. As a priest says a prayer and Dawn is strapped to the electric chair, she thanks her fans for her notoriety before being electrocuted.
Cast
- Divine as Dawn Davenport / Earl Peterson
- David Lochary as Donald Dasher
- Mary Vivian Pearce as Donna Dasher
- Mink Stole as Taffy Davenport
- Hilary Taylor as Young Taffy
- Edith Massey as Ida Nelson
- Cookie Mueller as Concetta
- Susan Walsh as Chiclette Friar
- Michael Potter as Gater Nelson
- Ed Peranio as Wink
- Paul Swift as Butterfly
- George Figgs as Dribbles
- Susan Lowe as Vikki
- Channing Wilroy as Prosecutor
- Elizabeth Coffey as Ernestine
Theme song
Production notes
- The unique production design is by Dreamlander Vincent Peranio, who created Dawn's apartment in a condemned suite above a friend's store.
- Waters explained in a 2015 interview that Dawn Davenport's look was based on the woman in the famous 1966 Diane Arbus photograph of a young Brooklyn family on a Sunday outing.
- Divine chose to perform his own stunts, the most difficult of which involved doing flips on a trampoline during his nightclub act. Waters took Divine to a YMCA, where he took lessons until the act was perfected. Divine also nailed a difficult outdoor stunt involving sleet and rain, to the point where he did the athletic stunt without his wig being dislodged.
- The birth scene was saved until the end of shooting, when Dreamlander Susan Lowe gave birth to a son and agreed to Waters' request that they film her son as Dawn's baby. 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.
- Although Dawn Davenport was executed at the end of the film, US capital punishment was suspended from 1972 to 1976 due to the Supreme Court's ruling in the case of Furman v. Georgia. Maryland did not formally reinstate capital punishment until July 1, 1975 and its constitutionality was not affirmed until 1976. Furthermore, asphyxiation in the gas chamber was the authorized method of execution, not electrocution. In the film, the jury pronounces Dawn's sentence, an act typically performed by a judge in actual court cases.
- On the 2004 DVD Director's Special Comments, Waters states that the original working title of the film was "Rotten Mind, Rotten Face". He changed it because he did not want to leave the door open for hostile film critics to refer to his film as "rotten".
Reception
Alternate versions
The initial 16mm release of the film which was shown at colleges ran 92 minutes. However, when the film was blown up to 35mm and shown theatrically, it was cut to 89 minutes. This version was the only version seen in the United States for many years. However, a recent restoration was done of the original cut, which runs 97 minutes; it has played at this 97-minute length in Europe, however, since its initial release.The 97-minute version was shown only in select theaters and was included in an out-of-print DVD set paired with Pink Flamingos. This version also has a soundtrack remixed in stereo surround. The 97-minute version contains some additional scenes, including the chase through the woods, as well as an appearance by Sally Turner, the Elizabeth Taylor look-alike customer in the Lipstick Beauty Salon.
The film was shown in the 89-minute cut when re-released in 2002.
The 97-minute version is now available on DVD and includes an audio commentary by Waters.
The Criterion Collection released a restored version of the film in 4K on DVD and Blu-ray on June 26, 2018.