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Amos Lassen wrote on 02/21/2011:

“PINK FLAMINGOS”
Filth to Be Judged By
Amos Lassen
“Pink Flamingos”—what memories come to mind!!!!!!!!!!!! Perhaps one of the most infamous films of all times shows how trash can be regarded as film---and we love it. This is the movie by which all other trash movies are measured. John Waters’ early film has become a classic of bad taste. “Pink Flamingos” is a must see movie and for those of you who have not seen it, run to get a copy—you may never be the same afterwards.
“Pink Flamingos” is the film that called attention to John Waters and his sense of warped talent and this is his hallmark. Divine is “the filthiest person alive’ as she says of herself (sexual identification not important). She plays Babs Johnson who lives in a trailer in the area near Baltimore with Cracker, her perverted son and with Edie, the Egg Lady who happens to be Babs’s mother. Mom lives in a playpen and eats volumes of eggs dressed in her underwear. Also in the group is Miss Cotton, a pal.
Raymond and Connie Marble work a black market adoption agency in their basement and they want Divine’s title of the filthiest person alive so they declare war on her. Babs goes into hiding and the Marbles find her and begin the battle of filth.
I have often wondered if Waters used the film as a ruler to see how far he could go. It is so tasteless and rude that we wonder why it was made and then we find ourselves watching it over and over. It is little more than an exercise in bad taste and is not for the queasy or the faint of heart. It really is not a movie made for review or summary as it is the penultimate bad joke. It is about everything perverse and is a tribute to that. No review can come near describing the movie as it is not just a movie but an experience starring a very fat and ugly drag queen that eats dog poop for no reason whatsoever. But the movie is real, there is no pretense. It manages to make the most disgusting character in film appear to be endearing in a really sick way.
Some say it is nothing more than distasteful while I say it is a sign of the times and the direction in which America was going. This is the one that says “we did it all” and nothing s left to the imagination. Waters has pulled all the perversity of the world into one film. It is hard to decide whether to laugh or to groan but I must admit that there is something about “Pink Flamingos” that Makes me watch every so often. Bad taste or not, I love this movie—I suppose I am as tasteless as the people that made the film and I am damned proud of that.