Pink Flamingos had its world premiere on March 17, 1972, at a screening sponsored by the Baltimore Film Festival. The event was held on the campus of the
University of Baltimore, where it sold out for three successive shows. The film had aroused particular interest among fans of underground cinema following the success of
Multiple Maniacs, which had begun to be screened in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. for
Pink Flamingos, showing testimonials about the film from midnight moviegoers. Being picked up by the then-small independent company
New Line Cinema,
Pink Flamingos was later distributed to
Ben Barenholtz, the owner of the
Elgin Theater in New York City. At the Elgin, Barenholtz had been promoting the
midnight movie scene, primarily by screening
Alejandro Jodorowsky's
acid western film
El Topo (1970), which had become a "very significant success" in "micro-independent terms". Barenholtz felt that being of an avant-garde nature,
Pink Flamingos would fit in well with this crowd, subsequently screening it at midnight on Friday and Saturday nights. The original
trailer used by New Line Cinema did not feature any footage from the actual film, and instead consisted almost entirely of interviews with filmgoers who had just seen the film. This trailer was included at the end the 25th anniversary re-release. The film soon gained a cult following of filmgoers who came to the Elgin Theatre for repeat viewings, a group Barenholtz characterized as initially composed primarily of "downtown gay people, more of the hipper set", but after a while, Barenholtz noted that this group eventually broadened as the film also became popular with "working-class kids from New Jersey who would become a little rowdy". Many of these cult cinema fans learned all of the lines in the film, and recited them at the screenings, a phenomenon which later became associated with another popular midnight movie of the era,
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).
Ban The film was initially
banned in Switzerland and Australia, as well as in some provinces in Canada and Norway. The film was originally rated as R18 by the
Classification Office in
New Zealand with no cuts, but was later refused classification on a re-submission in 2024, effectively banning the film.
Home media Pink Flamingos was released on
VHS and
Betamax in 1981, and the re-release in 1997 from
New Line Home Video became the second best-selling VHS for its week of release. The film was released in the John Waters Collection DVD box set along with the original NC-17 version of
A Dirty Shame,
Desperate Living,
Female Trouble,
Hairspray,
Pecker, and
Polyester. The film was also released in a 2004 special edition with
audio commentaries and
deleted scenes as introduced by Waters in the 25th anniversary re-release (
see below). The film was released on
Blu-ray on June 28, 2022, by
the Criterion Collection, featuring a new
4K restoration.
Alternative versions • The 25th anniversary re-release version contains a re-recorded music soundtrack, re-mixed for stereo, plus 15 minutes of
deleted scenes following the film, The Japanese laserdisc version contains a blur superimposed over all displays of pubic hair. Prints also exist that were censored by the Maryland Censor Board. • The first UK video release of
Pink Flamingos in November 1981 (prior to
BBFC video regulation requirements) was completely uncut. It was issued by Palace as part of a package of Waters films they had acquired from New Line Cinema. The package included
Mondo Trasho (double-billed with
Sex Madness),
Multiple Maniacs (double-billed with
Cocaine Fiends),
Desperate Living, and
Female Trouble. The 1990 video re-release of
Pink Flamingos (which required BBFC approval) was cut by three minutes and four seconds (3:04), the 1997 issue lost two minutes and forty-two seconds (2:42), and the pre-edited 1999 print lost two minutes and eight seconds (2:08). • The 2009 Sydney Underground Film Festival screened the film in
Odorama for the first time, using scratch 'n' sniff cards similar to the ones used in Waters' later work
Polyester. • John Waters recast the film with children and rewrote the script to make it kid-friendly in a 2014 project,
Kiddie Flamingos. The 74-minute video features children wearing wigs and costumes modeled on the originals and performing roles originated by Divine, Mink Stole, Edith Massey, and others. Waters has said the new version, filmed in one day with actors drawn mostly from friends' children, is in some ways more perverse than the original. The film was shown on a continuous loop in the Black Box gallery at the Baltimore Museum of Art from September 2016 through January 2017. ==Reception==