SILVER

"Crime is beauty." When her parents refuse to buy her a pair of cha-cha heels for Christmas, Dawn Davenport spirals into a debaucherous life of crime that ends in mass murder. Propelled by the glamorous excess of Divine, FEMALE TROUBLE is a perversely satisfying comic melodrama that upends Hollywood notions of morality, beauty and sentimentality. It's a bona fide crowd-pleaser from director John Waters, the “King of Sleaze,” who shot this grungy masterpiece on 16mm in his native Baltimore with his motley cast and crew of locals dubbed Dreamlanders. DIR/SCR/PROD John Waters. U.S., 1974, color, 98 min. RATED NC-17

AFI Member passes accepted.