Susan Lowe

Special feature from Criterion’s release of Desperate Living, where writer-director John Waters tours the Baltimore location that served as the site of Mortville, the twisted penal colony inhabited by fugitives, outcasts, and deviants – including hysterical housewife Peggy Gravel and her fed-up housekeeper – and presided over by the despotic Queen Carlotta.

Harris Glenn Milstead, aka Divine (1945-1988) was the ultimate outsider turned underground hero. Spitting in the face of the status quos of body image, gender identity, sexuality, and preconceived notions of beauty, Divine succeeded in becoming an internationally recognized icon, recording artist, and character actor of stage and screen. Glenn went from the often-mocked, schoolyard fat kid to underdog royalty, standing up for millions of gay men and women, drag queens and punk rockers, and countless other socially ostracized misfits and freaks. With a completely committed in-your-face style, he blurred the line between performer and personality, and revolutionized pop culture.

Interview outtakes from Jeffrey Schwarz's 2013 documentary 'I Am Divine' which feature director John Waters; actors Susan Lowe, Mink Stole, George Figgs, and Mary Vivian Pearce; film critic Dennis Dermody; production designer Vincent Peranio; and production manager Pat Moran. Produced for The Criterion Collection.

Produced for The Criterion Collecton.

A young lunatic director and his devoted cult of cinema terrorists kidnap a Hollywood movie goddess and force her to star in their radical underground movie.

Short film from 2004.

A prim and proper schoolgirl goes against her society grandmother's wishes when she dates a motorcycle-riding juvenile delinquent.

Beverly is the perfect happy homemaker, along with her doting husband and two children, but this nuclear family just might explode when her fascination with serial killers collides with her ever-so-proper code of ethics.

A Baltimore teenager who picks up a second-hand camera starts snapping his way to stardom, soon turning into a nationwide sensation, with a fateful choice between his life and his art.

A documentary on the career of filmmaker John Waters. Featuring interviews with actors and fellow film-makers. The life and death of the actor Divine is also discussed.

'Pleasantly plump' teenager Tracy Turnblad achieves her dream of becoming a regular on the Corny Collins Dance Show. Now a teen hero, she starts using her fame to speak out for the causes she believes in, most of all integration. In doing so, she earns the wrath of the show's former star, Amber Von Tussle, as well as Amber's manipulative, pro-segregation parents. The rivalry comes to a head as Amber and Tracy vie for the title of Miss Auto Show 1963.

Blessed with a keen sense of smell and cursed with a philandering pornographer husband, a parasitic mother, and a pair of delinquent children, the long-suffering Francine Fishpaw turns to the bottle as her life falls apart -- until deliverance appears in the form of a hunk named Todd Tomorrow. Originally screened with "Odorama" scratch and sniff cards so the audience could (at their own risk) smell along with the film.

After killing her husband, Peggy Gravel and her murderous maid Grizelda wind up in the crazy town of Mortville, where Queen Carlotta presides over a sleazy collection of misfits.

Teenage delinquent Dawn Davenport, incensed after her parents do not give her the cha-cha heels she wanted for Christmas, runs away from home. After an illegitimate child and hairstylist husband bring her more misery, she's enticed into a life of crime when the owners of her husband's salon promise her fame and fortune.

The Cavalcade of Perversion, a traveling freak show, acts as a front for Divine, who is out for blood after discovering her lover's affair.

A day in the lives of a hit-and-run driver and her victim, and the bizarre things that happen to them before and after they collide (sexual assault by a crazed foot-fetishist, visions of the Virgin Mary, strange chicken-foot grafting operations).