Desperate Living makes for a fittingly grotesque, soapily dramatic end to director-writer John Waters’ “Trash Trilogy” and an unnerving exploration of the scummiest of U.S. slums’ inhabitants—despite Waters’ shock overuse and many unnerving illogicalities even for the film’s deliberately phony nature. Initially following severely deranged housewife Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) as she accidentally kills her husband with her maid Grizelda Brown (Jean Hill), the two go on the run to Mortville, the only town that accepts murderers, thieves, rapists and the like with little consequence. Upon entering the rickety town of rooves-for-walls, toiletless residences, aggressive lesbian sexual culture, and unnecessarily overdramatic people, the pair cling to whatever parties they find—or rather crash into. They quickly meet a lesbian couple in self-hating ex-wrestler Mole McHenry (Susan Henry) and her curvy lover Muffy St. Jacques (Liz Renay), and get introduced to the town’s lawless dynamics and hierarchy—primarily set by the town’s queen, tyrant Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey). The now quartet must survive by whatever means, whether through lust, must, money, murder or other mischief.

Waters deploys an over-the-top, whimsical sewer fest, allowing the film to take wider swings than typical comedy dramas. Instead of subtly implying different themes of classism, greed, desperation, and general empowered hatred, he serves it all on a disgusting plate. Everyone screams the worst things at each other, manipulates, throws feces and dead rats, and tears each other’s skin off, but they’re plain about why: “Dealing with poor people is a waste of time, only the rich should be allowed to live!” Peggy insists to the queen upon agreeing that they vanquish the town by injecting rabies into the queen’s daughter—an acceptable idea to be shared aloud. In such a way, Living and its cast of astounding actors dot out problems of (both in expectation and reality) class, gender, sexuality, race, and the most corruptible human flaws in lust and greed. It hammily portrays how vicious poverty can be, the range of effects it harbors, and how humans adapt. Even love can arise from the dumps because the human spirit prevails: “Every piece of trash reminded me of you,” a trash picker professes to the queen’s daughter. Waters knows how to break the rules of quality storytelling to provoke instead of evoke.

While there is a lot to unpack, it should also be clear that Living is both overly grotesque and underdeveloped in many ways. While Waters’ rule-breaking melodrama is distinct, it sometimes feels just bad. For example, the entire rabies plan quickly turns into a ponderously unrealistic scheme. Queen Carlotta orders her subjects to fetch a rabid bat and rat poop to throw together a serum. The ingredients alone are hard to come by, but to believe that rabies can be concocted in a pot like a witch’s potion is unnervingly preposterous. The film’s predominantly lesbian culture is also overly primitivized, showing too many as worthless sex deviants instead of struggling survivors. The few kids involved also feel entirely overlooked. While this may in part be due to the film’s very NOT child-friendly world—Mole literally scissors off her newly acquired male genitalia on camera when Muffy’s disgusted—their involvement would’ve added much more depth to the film. Without spoiling, those kids go through the wringer, and room to see them cope would’ve been beneficial.

Nevertheless, Desperate Living owns its title with proud entrails, underwear tread marks, and death behind it to confront viewers. No matter how wealthy you are, what your job is, or if you’re a person of color, trans, queer in any way, or the opposite of all that, you must understand too many live on the fringes, entirely abandoned by their governments or larger societies. Desperate Living understands this brutal reality, sufficiently translating it through Waters’ now classic unrelenting lens.

Screens in 35 mm Friday, 11/29, 11:59 pm @ Coolidge Corner Theatre
Part of the continuing Coolidge Award tribute to John Waters