Female Trouble follows delinquent high school student Dawn Davenport (Divine), who runs away from home, gets pregnant while hitchhiking, and embarks upon a life of crime. Also starring David Lochary in his final film with Waters, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole and, in her second-to-last film with Waters,Edith Massey. The film is dedicated to Manson Family member Charles Tex Watson. Waters’ prison visits to Watson inspired the film’s crime-is-beauty theme and the banality-of-evil motif.
Waters / Watson Matrix: Pathology: Art
| What Tex Watson embodied in his Pathology | Dawn Davenport embodies in her Art |
| Bland, all-American exterior masking violent delusion | Dawn’s ordinary girl façade hides volcanic narcissism |
| Narcissistic belief in spiritual destiny | Dawn believes she’s destined for fame, no matter the cost |
| Participated in and helped orchestrate both the Tate & LaBianca murders | Dawn’s crimes become her art and her identity |
| Craved attention even in prison | Dawn becomes a star because of her crimes |
| Claimed philosophical insight after the murders | Dawn embraces ugliness, violence, and spectacle as glamour |
| Cult dynamics, obedience to a delusional ideology | Dawn follows beauty salon owners Donald and Donna Dasher’s Crime is Beauty aesthetic cult to the end |
Waters’ favorite of all of his movies, with the incomparable Divine embracing ugliness, violence and spectacle in a bravura performance. A C+ when watched alone, it blossoms into full High Camp at a Midnight Screening.
