Female Trouble (1974) on Netflix
Dawn Davenport, a delinquent high school student, is expelled and refused the cha-cha heels she wants for Christmas. She runs away from home and hitchhikes, and Earl Peterson picks her up.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.1/1011,925 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1960, Dawn Davenport is a delinquent high school student in Baltimore. She is expelled for bad behavior. For Christmas she wants cha-cha heels, but her parents will not buy them. In a rage she smashes the presents and pulls the family Christmas tree down on her mother. She leaves the house barely dressed and hitchhikes. A repulsive, lecherous man, Earl Peterson, gives her a ride to a dump, and there they have sex on a discarded mattress. Dawn becomes pregnant, and Earl refuses to support her. She gives birth to a daughter, Taffy, and often beats and punishes her.
Cast
- Michael Potteras Gater
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Female Trouble (1974)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- John Waters dedicated the film to Manson Family member Charles "Tex" Watson, whom he visited in prison; those visits gave him the film's "crime is beauty" idea, and a wooden toy helicopter Watson made for Waters appears in the opening credits.
- Divine insisted on doing his own stunts. Waters took him to a YMCA for trampoline lessons until he could flip without his wig coming off, and he also crossed a real river in drag in sleet and rain, at the risk of being swept downstream.
- The birth scene was held back until the end of the shoot so that Dreamlander Susan Lowe's real newborn son could play Dawn's baby. The umbilical cord was made from prophylactics stuffed with liver, and the scene badly confused Lowe's mother-in-law, over from England to meet her grandchild.
- The title came from a hospital visit. Waters credits actress Cookie Mueller, whom he and Mink Stole visited in Provincetown; asked what had happened, she answered, "Just a little female trouble, hon."
- Dawn Davenport's look was lifted from photography: Waters said in 2015 that he based it on the woman in Diane Arbus's famous 1966 picture of a young Brooklyn family on a Sunday outing.
- Female Trouble was the last film Waters made with David Lochary, who plays Donald Dasher. Lochary was meant to appear in Waters' next film, Desperate Living, but was on PCP during production and died months after Female Trouble came out.
