Desperate Living presented by Michael Arcos

For a small but dedicated cadre of fans, “Desperate Living,” John Waters’s fifth and most difficult to watch commercial feature, occupies the highest peak atop the director’s trash heap of a filmography. Waters described it as “a lesbian melodrama about revolution,” but Desperate Living managed to offend so many lesbians that their protests prevented it from being shown in Boston. It managed to offend nearly everyone else too, by pursuing violence and grossness further than any other film in Waters’s — and possibly anyone else’s — body of work. Cathartic, honest, relentless, and confrontational, the one and only John Water is here to illuminate and decapitate America as only he can. Come get wild with our season finale and HAPPY SOUTHERN DECADENCE Y’ALL!