[Susan Foreman]

Originally Posted by Susan Foreman

'Pink Flamingos' (1971) - Pre-order available from Criterion Films direct for Blu-ray - $31.96

Release date: June 28

This is now available for pre-order on Amazon UK - £22:99

Release date: July 25

According to Melon Farmers:

"Cut by the BBFC for varying amounts for an 18 rating between 1990 and 1999. Uncut and 18 rated for 2008 DVD but this was never released. Formally uncut and BBFC 18 rated for 2022 Blu-ray. Uncut and MPAA NC-17 rated in the US.

UK: Passed 18 uncut for sexual violence, strong real sex, nudity:

2022 Sony/Criterion Collection (RB) Blu-ray at UK Amazon #ad released on 25th July 2022

The BBFC agreed to an uncut 18 rated DVD release in 2008 but the release was cancelled. The BBFC commented in 2008 about the 3 cuts to be waived:

• Probably the most difficult scene was the one featuring a man assaulting a woman with live chickens. However, a careful viewing of the scene suggested that the handling of the chickens, although rough, was no stronger than other scenes of animals being manhandled that had been passed in other films. Furthermore, although the chickens were killed, the killing was quick and clean and therefore not in breach of BBFC policy on animal cruelty.
• The scene showing a man masturbating and injecting semen into a woman's vagina was grotesque and repulsive, rather than erotic. Although the Board had previously expressed concerns about the non-consensual nature of the scene, the datedness of the film and the lack of credibility of the scene, argued against intervention. With regard to the sexual violence in the scene, the Board's conclusion was that the scene was so over-the-top and so divorced from reality, that the likely response was disgust, shock and horror, rather than arousal.
• The brief explicit fellatio could be justified by the wider context of the film, in that the whole purpose of the film was to shock, disgust and amuse (in a blackly comic fashion), rather than to arouse, and the explicitness of the image was important in creating the film's effect

The BBFC's ratings info from 2022 reads:

nudity : There is focus on a man's dilating anus, in close-up detail. There is wider full nudity.

sex : There is a scene of unsimulated fellatio between a fictional mother and son. There are other strong sex scenes, as well as references to ejaculation, masturbation and troilism. A man's semen is seen, in close-up detail.

sexual violence and sexual threat : A man rapes a woman, while daubing her in chicken blood. After masturbating over her, a man artificially inseminates an unconscious female prisoner. A man exposes himself to schoolgirls.

other issues: In unsimulated footage, a woman puts dog excrement in her mouth. There is infrequent very strong language ('c**t'), regular strong language ('f**k', 'motherf**ker') and discriminatory terms such as 'fag', 'dyke' and 'queen'. A chicken is killed on-screen. Threat, gore and implied violence are strong. There is brief drug misuse. "

"When a pair of sociopaths (MINK STOLE and DAVID LOCHARY) with a habit of kidnapping women in order to impregnate them attempt to challenge her title, Divine resolves to show them and the world the true meaning of the word filthy. Incest, cannibalism, shrimping, and film history’s most legendary gross-out ending—Waters and his merry band of Dreamlanders leave no taboo unsmashed in this gleefully subversive ode to outsiderhood, in which camp spectacle and pitch-black satire are wielded in an all-out assault on respectability"