John Waters, nicknamed by some as “the Pope of Trash,” rose to fame with a series of shaggy, amateurish, Baltimore-set features which later became cult works offering a distinctive perspective on American life. Suburban habits and customs are his targets, his pleasure dome.

Waters exploded into the cultural scene in 1972 with Pink Flamingos, his third feature, a darkly comic, unwholesome parade depicting murder, bestiality, rape, dismemberment, coprophagia, and other dizzying sexual perversions. A notorious scene showed, in one continuous take free of artifice or special effects, the actor Divine eating a morsel of dog excrement. In the same movie viewers are exposed to the spectacle of an “Egg Lady” begging for poultry from her crib and asking for the rape and murder of chicken.

A transgressive black comedy, Pink Flamingos was written, produced, directed, edited, and “composed” by Waters. Made on a shoe-string budget of $12,000, it was shot on weekends in Phoenix, a suburb of Baltimore. The set was like a hippie community, with the cast and crew operating out of a farmhouse without hot water or other basic comforts.

Pink Flamingos made an underground star of Divine, the flamboyant 300-pound transvestite. In the following decade, the duo developed what could be described as a version of the famous Josef Von Sternberg-Marlene Dietrich relationship — without that couple’s notorious gossipy intrigue and sadomasochistic relationship (acknowledged by both director and star).

In the film, Waters depicts a dysfunctional family before the term was invented and gained popularity. Divine plays Babs Johnson, a criminal on the lam. She lives with her dim-witted, egg-loving mother Edie (Edith Massey), her degenerate son Crackers (Danny Mills), and her duplicitous traveling companion, Cotton (Mary Vivian Pierce). They share residence in a trailer in the middle of nowhere, framed by two plastic pink flamingos.

The central theme is the desperate need to achieve celebrity status by all and any means. After learning that Babs has been named “the filthiest person alive” by a tabloid paper, her jealous rivals Connie and Raymond Marble (Mink Stole and David Lochary) set out to take the title away from her and destroy her career. For Babs’ birthday party the Marbles send her a box of human feces with a card addressing her as “Fatso,” signed by “The Filthiest People Alive.” Their act enrages Babs, who now seeks revenge.

Along with the expected verbal assaults, Waters also breaks taboos. Raymond makes money by exposing himself in public parks with the help of an extra-large Polish sausage tied to his own private parts. Outraged by the sight, ladies flee and Raymond steals their purses. One of the film’s most infamous scenes involves sexual intercourse between Crackers and Cookie, crushing a live chicken between their bodies while being watched by Cotton through the window.

Giving middle-class audiences a shake-up, Pink Flamingos had an effect on punk culture with its royal-blue hairdos and half-shaved heads. In the 1970s, on Halloween night, youths could be spotted in the West Village, especially in the gay neighborhood of Christopher Street, imitating Divine and her cohorts.

Pink Flamingos premiered in 1972 at the third Baltimore Film Festival, held on the University of Baltimore campus, where it played to sold-out audiences for three shows. Gradually, relying on word-of-mouth, the movie gained a following and repeat viewing in the art-house circuit. Cherished by young moviegoers, it ran for years in New York and Los Angeles. It was screened as a midnight movie at the Elgin Theater, in Chelsea (now the Joyce Theater). Ben Barenholtz, the Elgin’s owner, had been promoting midnight movies, like Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo, made in 1970. Barenholtz felt that Pink Flamingos would fit in well with this crowd, and showed it on Friday and Saturday nights.

After screenings at universities and basements across the U.S., the film was distributed theatrically by Saliva Films, and later by New Line. As expected, the movie divided critics. It was called an abomination by some, an instant classic by others. Most mainstream critics did not know what to make of it. In a short dismissive review, the daily “Variety” described Pink Flamingos as “one of the vilest, stupid and repulsive films ever made.”

Early public recognition reaffirmed Waters’ commitment to his brand of cinema. In 1975, Pink Flamingos was accepted into the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, which has one of the world’s largest film departments. Waters’ reputation for excess enthralled the cognoscenti but not the executives in Hollywood. The director later recalled that “Pink Flamingos is still the movie that gets me in the door, and then quickly thrown out the door.”

After his “success de scandal,” Waters lost several years in failed attempts to make a sequel, titled Flamingos Forever. Meanwhile, the number of fans of Pink Flamingos continued to grow with each successive showing. It became more than just a midnight movie with limited appeal.

In the past, the wading birds were a “straight” (in both senses of the word) attempt at making working-class neighborhoods more attractive. People owned and displayed them without irony. The movie wrecked that. After its release, pink flamingos became a fixture of high-end sensibility, shorthand for tongue-in-cheek tackiness and camp. The lawn sculptures turned into “loaded objects” of rich people mocking bad taste. However, plastic flamingos are now extinct. As Waters himself explained, “You can’t have anything that innocent anymore.”

Over the years, the spectatorship broadened beyond young viewers, film students, and gay men. Pink Flamingos has become a notorious classic and one of Waters’ most profitable pictures, grossing worldwide north of $10 million.

Pink Flamingos paved the way for other “shocking” midnight movies, such as Golden Globe nominee David Lynch’s Eraserhead, released in 1977. Fans learned by heart the film’s most famous lines and recite them at screenings, a phenomenon closely associated with The Rocky Horror Show, a critical and commercial flop that became the most popular midnight movie ever made.