Film

A Dirty Shame

John Waters' deliberately trashy comedy about sexual awakening, class warfare, and the collision between repression and liberation in a Baltimore neighbourhood. A farce pitched at maximum volume, stylised like a comic book, where good taste is the joke and sincerity is absent entirely. For fans of Waters' cheerful transgression and audiences who enjoy their comedy indecent.

TMDb rating2.7

If you liked this

Hairspray1988

Waters' gentler masterpiece about race, body positivity, and 1960s Baltimore. It has the same eye for outsiders finding their power and the same infectious joy—just with slightly more restraint and a better soundtrack.

But It's older and slower, and the retro setting might feel precious if you're expecting the anarchic energy of his trashier work.

Hairspray poster

Pecker1998

Waters exploring art, ambition, and staying true to yourself in a Baltimore that's changing. Sharper and more melancholy than A Dirty Shame, but with the same affection for weirdos and the same darkly comic view of family.

But More introspective than outrageous. If you want Wall-to-wall debauchery, you might find the tonal range frustrating.

Pecker poster

Pink Flamingos1972

The film that made Waters infamous. Grotesque, genuinely shocking, and absolutely committed to its own wrongness—it's the ancestor of everything he'd make, including this one, just turned up to eleven.

But It's not funny in a conventional way. It's genuinely vile in places, and the shock value obscures what's actually quite an intimate family portrait.

Pink Flamingos poster

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Serial Mom1994

Both feature an ordinary woman whose sudden transformation reshapes her entire town's power structure; both use the grotesque to critique sexual and social conformity.

This is Waters at his most structurally ambitious: a suburban housewife goes on a murder spree in defence of good manners and family values. Same director, same Baltimore obsession, same collision of repression and violence—but here the fantasy is genuinely dark and the satire cuts harder.

But It's a murder film at heart, so the mood is far colder. The transgression has real teeth, which can make it feel less like fun and more like provocation.

Serial Mom poster
More like this (7)

Mulholland Drive2001

Like A Dirty Shame, it's about a woman's radical transformation and the collision of different sexual moralities in a town. Lynchian where Waters is comedic, but both find strangeness in ordinary desire and class anxiety.

But Three hours of oblique, deliberately confusing narrative. The pleasure is in confusion itself, which lands very differently from Waters' direct confrontation.

Mulholland Drive poster

Eating Raoul1982

A couple stumbles into crime through a series of sexual misadventures. Like A Dirty Shame, it's absurdist satire about prudes and perverts, with genuine warmth for its characters and a great dark streak of humour.

But Lower budget and slower pacing. The comedy is dryer and the direction less flashy, so it might feel quaint after Waters.

Eating Raoul poster

Zoolander2001

A comedy pitched entirely at cartoon exaggeration, with a cast committed to idiocy and a willingness to make the same joke four times if it's funny enough. Similar aesthetic philosophy to Waters, just applied to fashion.

But Aggressively silly without the transgressive edge. It's safe comedy about beauty obsession rather than Waters' provocation about desire itself.

Zoolander poster

Cry-Baby1990

Waters directing Johnny Depp in a 1950s musical comedy about young rebels and repressed townspeople. The DNA is identical to A Dirty Shame, just set in the past with better production design and more actual melody.

But Sweeter and more sentimental. If you're here for transgression, this one ends on genuine emotion rather than chaos.

Cry-Baby poster

Tropic Thunder2008

A film that swings for the fence with tasteless satire and doesn't apologise. Committed to its own outrageousness and willing to break rules for a laugh, with genuine invention underneath the provocation.

But Mainstream enough that it pulls its punches where Waters doesn't. The raunchiness feels like it's winking rather than burning.

Tropic Thunder poster

The Kentucky Fried Movie1977

Sketch comedy at maximum absurdity from early Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker. Anything-goes construction, bad taste comedy, and zero patience for conventional form—a spiritual cousin even if the comedic targets differ.

But Episodic structure means it's uneven. Some sketches will kill; others will leave you cold. It's deliberately scattershot rather than focused.

The Kentucky Fried Movie poster

Happiness1998

Both examine sexual desire as a destabilising force in communities that try desperately to regulate it; both refuse to separate the grotesque from the sincere.

Todd Solondz's comedy-drama about suburban despair, sexual dysfunction, and the gap between aspiration and reality in New Jersey. Like Waters, it treats deviance and desire without sentimentality; unlike him, it finds genuine suffering alongside the comedy.

But It's devastatingly bleak beneath the humour, with scenes of real darkness that aren't played for laughs. The comedy serves the tragedy, not the other way around. Much harder to stomach.

Happiness poster

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