Pink Flamingos: Difference between revisions

The film had its [[Film premiere|premiere]] in late 1972 at the third Annual Baltimore Film Festival, held on the campus of the [[University of Baltimore]], where it sold out tickets for three successive screenings; the film had aroused particular interest among fans of underground cinema following the success of ''[[Multiple Maniacs]]'', which had begun to be screened in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and the [[Roxie Cinema]] in San Francisco from the summer of 1976 to fall 1977.<ref>[[#Mil01|Milstead, Heffernan and Yeager 2001]]. pp. 66-67.</ref>

ItThe film soon gained a cult following of filmgoers who would repeatedly come to the Elgin Theatre to watch it, a group Barenholtz would characterize as initially composing primarily of "downtown gay people, more of the hipper set", but, after a while Barenholtz noted that this group eventually broadened, with the film becoming popular with "working-class kids from New Jersey who would become a little rowdy" too. Many of these cult cinema fans learned all of the lines in the film, and would recite them at the screenings, a phenomenon which would later become associated with another popular midnight movie of the era, ''[[The Rocky Horror Picture Show]]'' (1975).<ref>[[#Mil01|Milstead, Heffernan and Yeager 2001]]. pp. 70-71.</ref>

The film was initially [[List of banned films|banned]] in [[Australia]], as well as in some provinces in Canada and Norway. ItThe film was eventually released on VHS in Australia in the late 1980s with a X rating, but distribution of the video has since been discontinued. The 1997 version was cut by the distributor to achieve an R18+ after it was also refused classification. No submissions of the film have been made since, but it has been said that one of the reasons for which it was banned (as a film showing unsimulated sex cannot be rated X in Australia if it also features violence, so the highest a film such as ''Pink Flamingos'' could be rated is R18+) would now not apply, given that the depiction of unsimulated sex was passed within the R18+ rating for ''[[Romance (1999 film)|Romance]]'' in 1999, two years following ''Pink Flamingos''{{'}} re-release.<ref>[http://refused-classification.com/censorship/films/p.html#pink-flamingos Films: P]. Refused-Classification.com. Retrieved October 25, 2011.</ref>

''Pink Flamingos'' was released on [[VHS]] and [[Betamax]] in 1981;, itsand the re-release in 1997 by [[New Line Home Entertainment|New Line Home Video]] became the second best-selling VHS at the time. The film was released in the John Waters Collection DVD box set along with the original NC-17 version of ''[[A Dirty Shame]]'', ''[[Desperate Living]]'', ''[[Female Trouble]]'', ''[[Hairspray (1988 film)|Hairspray]]'', ''[[Pecker (film)|Pecker]]'', and ''[[Polyester (film)|Polyester]]''. ItThe film was also released in a 2004 special edition with [[Audio commentary|audio commentaries]] and [[deleted scene]]s as introduced by Waters in the 25th anniversary re-release ([[#Alternate versions|''see below'']]).

* The 25th anniversary re-release version contains a re-recorded music soundtrack, re-mixed for stereo, plus 15 minutes of [[deleted scene]]s following the film, introduced by Waters. Certain excerpts of music used in the original, including [[Igor Stravinsky]]'s ''[[The Rite of Spring]]'' had to be removed and replaced in the re-release, since the [[music rights]] had never been cleared for the original release.<ref>[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069089/alternateversions ''Pink Flamingos'' (1972) - Alternate versions (IMDb)]</ref>