Female Trouble (1974) (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

John Waters reaches new heights of scuzzy sublimity in the Divine-starring fan favorite. Now on Blu-ray for the first time. Glamour has never been more grotesque than in Female Trouble, which injects the Hollywood melodrama with anarchic decadence. Divine, director John Waters’ larger-than-life muse, engulfs the screen with charisma as Dawn Davenport, the living embodiment of the film’s lurid mantra, “Crime is beauty,” who progresses from a teenage nightmare hell-bent on getting cha-cha heels for Christmas to a fame monster whose egomaniacal impulses land her in the electric chair. Shot in Waters’ native Baltimore on 16 mm, with a cast drawn from his beloved troupe of regulars, this film­—the director’s favorite of his work with Divine—is an endlessly quotable fan favorite, Female Trouble offers up perverse pleasures that never fail to satisfy.