DESPERATE LIVING

The neurotic, delirious housewife Peggy flees from her surburban hell together with her overweight maid Grizelda, who squashed Peggy’s husband. But it gets even worse, when they are banished by a cross-dressing cop to a life in exile. The shanty town of Mortville is filled with criminals, lunatics, and “sexual deviants”, who are just plotting a rebellion to depose the hated Queen Carlotta. “Desperate Living” works ideally as a double with Werner Herzog’s “Even Dwarves Started Small”: it is a fairy tale full of snot and slime, a camp parody of fascist regimes and a sincere ode to lived anarchism. Edith Massey, one of the most tremendous Dreamlanders, provides a brilliant performance as Queen Carlotta, who is carried around in a sedan chair and receives pleasure from boys in leather.