DESPERATE LIVING is an hilarious assault on "good taste" and the last real John waters film before he went mainstream in the '80s. This "Alice In Wonderland on acid" cartoon full of "sex & savagery" (not to mention necrophilia, incest, and cannibalism) kicks off when suburban mom Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) goes on the lam with her 400 lb. maid after the hefty domestic kills the man of the house by sitting on him. "Thelma & Louise" make their way to Mortville, a safe haven for criminals ruled over by the megalomanical nymphomaniac Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey) but as Mole the lesbian points out, "it isn't very pretty what a town without pity can do" and they land right smack in the middle of a dictatorship ripe for bloody revolution.
I wouldn't watch something like this unless I was stoned and at first it was so shrill (with everybody screaming until I thought I'd get a headache) but once I started laughing I couldn't stop right up until the hysterical, anarchic ending. There's as many inventive deaths and set- piece slaying in this movie as there are in any good giallo and that kept me happy, too.
I think the reason why I never tried too hard to track DESPERATE LIVING down before was because Divine wasn't in it but former Hollywood glamor girl and Mickey Cohen moll Liz Renay more than made up for it. Liz was an ex- con and a stripper at that point in her life and had no problem shedding her inhibitions to run around nude, bend over to have the queen kiss her butt, or get raped by her lesbian lover after a sex-change operation. I'm sorry I waited so long to see this -it's outrageous fun!
I wouldn't watch something like this unless I was stoned and at first it was so shrill (with everybody screaming until I thought I'd get a headache) but once I started laughing I couldn't stop right up until the hysterical, anarchic ending. There's as many inventive deaths and set- piece slaying in this movie as there are in any good giallo and that kept me happy, too.
I think the reason why I never tried too hard to track DESPERATE LIVING down before was because Divine wasn't in it but former Hollywood glamor girl and Mickey Cohen moll Liz Renay more than made up for it. Liz was an ex- con and a stripper at that point in her life and had no problem shedding her inhibitions to run around nude, bend over to have the queen kiss her butt, or get raped by her lesbian lover after a sex-change operation. I'm sorry I waited so long to see this -it's outrageous fun!