Susan Walsh in Female Trouble (1974)

Clips

Pics

Review

John Waters’s third feature film, Female Trouble (1974), stars Divine as Dawn Davenport, who becomes a teenage runaway, then an unwed mother, then a prostitute after her parents refuse to buy her “cha cha heels” for Christmas. When her daughter, Taffy (Mink Stole), grows into a teenager, Dawn is overwhelmed by the responsibilities of parenthood and chains Taffy up in the attic and goes to a beauty salon, where she meets Gator (Michael Potter). The two get married quickly but the marriage falls apart when Dawn catches Gator constantly cheating on her. Then, after a fight in which her mother-in-law (Edith Massey) scars her face with acid, Dawn hooks up with Donald and Donna Dasher (David Lochary and Mary Vivian Pearce), who use her scarred face to market her as a high-fashion model. Eventually Dawn reaches a pinnacle of fame and strangles her Hare Krishna daughter in front of a crowd, then fires a gun into the crowd, killing some spectators. Dawn tries to evade capture, but the police soon catch her and she is sentenced to death in the electric chair, an honor for which she is effusively grateful. We get to see skin from Elizabeth Coffey, Susan Walsh, and Anne Figgs, who shows all three B’s. That’s the kind of trouble Mr Skin likes!