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John Waters has spent fifty years making films about the people that polite society ignores, fears, or despises, and making them the heroes. His films are simultaneously transgressive and deeply humane — he has genuine affection for his characters, even the ones doing terrible things. His work operates in a noir-adjacent space: crime, transgression, outsider communities, the underside of American suburban life. He is also one of the funniest filmmakers who has ever lived.
Divine as Francine Fishpaw, a housewife in suburban Baltimore whose husband is a sleazy pornographer, whose son is a foot fetishist, and whose daughter is a teenage delinquent. Tab Hunter as the man who may be her salvation. Shot in Odorama — scratch-and-sniff cards were distributed to audiences. Waters at his most commercially accessible and still completely himself.
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Mink Stole as Peggy Gravel, a neurotic housewife who murders her husband with the help of her enormous nurse Grizelda and flees to Mortville — a town for criminals and degenerates ruled by Queen Carlotta, who requires all her subjects to undergo sex reassignment surgery. Waters without Divine, who was busy. His most formally inventive film and his most politically direct.
Streaming: Available for rental on Amazon
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Kathleen Turner as Beverly Sutphin, a perfect Baltimore housewife and mother who murders people who violate her sense of social propriety. Not returning library books. Wearing white shoes after Labor Day. Refusing to recycle. Turner commits completely and the film is one of the most subversive comedies about American domesticity ever made.
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Divine competing with a married couple for the title of the filthiest person alive. The film that made Waters's reputation and remains his most notorious work. The last scene is real. Waters warned you in the opening titles.
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Tracy Turnblad wants to dance on television in 1962 Baltimore. Waters's most commercially successful film and his most accessible — a genuine crowd-pleaser that is also a film about racial integration, body positivity, and the absolute moral bankruptcy of television producers. Ricki Lake. Divine in a dual role. Debbie Harry as the villain.
Streaming: Available for rental on Amazon
Polyester (1981) and Desperate Living (1977) are generally considered his best films. Serial Mom (1994) is his most accessible.
No. Waters's early films in particular contain extreme content including genuine transgression. His later films (from Hairspray onward) are more accessible.