Pink Flamingos is a 1972 US crime comedy by John Waters. With Divine, David Lochary and Mary Vivian Pearce. See IMDb
The BBFC agreed to an uncut 18 rated DVD release in 2008 but the release was cancelled.
The BBFC addressed the 3 remaining cuts:
- 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.
Previous Versions
Released uncut for the pre-cert video:
After a long delay, out of fear of a BBFC rejection, the video was eventually passed 18 after 3:04s of BBFC cuts for:
The cuts, justified on grounds of sexual violence, degradation, animal cruelty, and obscenity, were:
- Cuts were made to remove sight of chickens being roughly handled and killed during a bizarre sexual assault on a woman. [The chicken is crushed between the copulating lovers].
- Cuts were made to reduce a scene in which Channing the butler masturbates over a captive woman and injects semen into her vagina with a syringe
- Cuts were made to reduce a scene in which a man flexes his anus in close up, making it look as if the anus is singing.
- Cuts were made to remove all sight of Babs fellating her son in explicit detail
- Cuts were made to remove sight of Babs eating real dog excrement.
The elastic singing anus cuts were restored for:
Then the excrement eating cuts were additionally restored for:
