Alicia I love this movie so much

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

melvelvit-1 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!

lizphairian I was 15 and we had just gotten a satellite dish, i was flipping channels and was greeted by someone running over what looked like a REAL dog, then i saw and heard Mink Stole for the very first time and was hooked. I sat and watched in horror and stunned silence as i witnessed the wildest movie i had ever seen. I was speechless and a little scared to laugh out loud. This movie really opened my eyes, i had know idea a person would/could/should make a film like this...clueless. Anyway, this movie has some of the best lines of all time. "I was raped by those lottery officials" "I'm so hungry i could eat cancer" "I want a wang and i want it now" The list goes on and on you can just about quote almost every single thing anyone says. Years later a friend was a waters freak, and we watched it together and was able to understand a lot more of the filthy stuff, plus i had missed the beginning the first time, and wow what a beginning. I will never miss a chance to see this fantastic movie.

NateManD "Desperate Living" is about as disgusting as "Pink Flamingos" and at times worse. Mink Stole plays Peggy Gravel, a paranoid schizo housewife. Her and her maid Grizelda, who's a 400 lb. black woman, kill Peggy's husband. They flee in guilt and are stopped by a cop with an underwear fetish before driving to Mortville. Mortville is a town made up of all garbage. The evil queen Carlotta (Edith Masey) presides over the town in a fascist manner, her guards are forced to fulfill her bizarre sexual needs. The queen disowns her daughter princess Coo-Coo for wanting to marry Herbert, a nudist garbage man. We are treated to strange bright colored costumes and trash art galore. Delirious Peggy continues to bicker. Her and Grizela reside in an trashy apartment with a lesbian couple. The mean butchy Moe, longs to be a man and her lover Muffy is the the pretty one; blond and big breasted. In the films most hilarious and morbid flashback, we learn how Muffy had to flee to Mortville as a criminal. She gets upset at her stoned babysitter; not only for having a party while while she was away, but for leaving her baby in the refrigerator. She shoves the babysitter's face in dog food and screams "Eat dog food Bitch! Try and stick my baby in the refrigerator!" The sitter ends up suffocating in the dog food. Then Muffy kills her alcoholic husband, when his head gets caught in the car window. Although "Desperate Living" is missing drag actor Devine, it still is disgusting, depraved and hilarious as ever. With raunchy sex, nudity, perverse humor and low budget gore; it's in a town of its own.

jazzest After rich housewife Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) accidentally murders her husband and runs away with her overweight black maid Grizelda Brown (Jean Hill) to Mortville, a community of outcasts and criminals ruled by Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey), Desperate Living starts losing the power of John Waters's greatest merit--attack on the norm of the American value. For a Waters film, the more fictitious and metaphysical its format is, the less effective the outcome of his attack is; that's why realistic (for Waters) Female Trouble is intense but fairytale-ish Desperate Living is not. Freaky actors screaming and doing nonsense are amusing to watch, but, needless to say, missing irreplaceable Divine is a significant disadvantage for early Waters.