“Who wants to be famous? Who wants to die for art?” I should’ve watched this a very long time ago, like before Cecil B. Demented. Divine is Dawn, who storms out of her parents’ house as a teenager since she didn’t get the cha-cha heels she wanted for Christmas, immediately gets pregnant, flash-forward and she’s got a teenage daughter called Taffy (Mink Stole) and a hairdresser husband named Gator.
Divine & The Dashers:
Then the plot goes haywire. Taffy seeks out her real father (also Divine) and stabs him to death, then threatens to join the Hare Krishas. Gator’s aunt Ida throws acid in Dawn’s face, and the Dasher photographers who own Gator’s hair salon try to make the disfigured Dawn famous, everyone agreeing that she looks even more beautiful now. None of the performances are “bad” because they’re all on the same heightened wavelength, but the dialogue is mostly yelling and it finally gets tiresome during the court scene that sends Dawn to the electric chair.
Post-acid Dawn with daughter and caged Aunt Ida (Edith Massey):