3. Pink Flamingos (1972)

What? — This midnight-movie cult classic offers up a cornucopia of repulsive visual treats that are bound to have you convulsing out of laughter on the floor and leave permanent mental scarring. Pink Flamingos is the first part in eccentric fillmmaker John Waters' trash trilogy, and the synopsis I'm about to drop will surely leave some readers unconvinced. Be warned: The description below hasn't been dressed to impress. It's purely factual and embellishment-free. Just like Waters, this descriptive effort will be for me "an exercise in poor taste."

Divine, alias Babs Johnson, is an outrageously trashy, garishly dressed, expletive-spewing and badly behaved three-hundred-pound "woman" who was recently named "the filthiest person alive" by national tabloids. This news comes as an absolute honor to the outlaw, who is living in hideout in a pink trailer park home with her delinquent son Cracker, voyeuristic family friend Cotton and her egg-loving Mama Edie — who is kept in a giant baby playpen when not whining about her next meal of raw eggs. But the Marbles, a rival filthy couple who run an illicit baby ring and sell toddlers to lesbian couples, fronting the money collected to heroin pushers in elementary schools, are determined to use all necessary means to strip Divine of her title and become the filthiest people alive.

The warring factions spend the film's 93-minute runtime outdoing themselves in graphic displays of sickeningly offensive behavior that have been known to cause sporadic bouts of nausea and hysteria among viewers. Trailer trash Cracker takes the early lead as most contemptuous character with his utterly vile threesome that must be seen to be believed. Among Flamingos' many other high or low points, depending on your outlook, are Divine defrosting a slab of red meat she's just purchased by inserting it in between her legs ("I warmed it up today when I was downtown in my own little oven"), Divine receiving an aggressive male stripper as entertainment on her birthday, Divine giving her son "the most divine gift a mother can give" (I won't spoil the surprise for you) and the infamous yet completely incoherent final moment in which Divine munches on a steaming piece of doggy poo.

Why? — Along with Polyester, the infamous Pink Flamingos are Waters' most shocking films, standing as obscene testaments to the transgressive period from which they came. Flamingos is clearly intended to disrupt the status quo and shake up the politically correct film world by broadening its narrow field of view. The final "poodle" scene alone became so notorious that the film has cultivated a rite of passage appeal with young audiences who are willing to indulge in their voyeuristic urges and test the limits to their tolerance of repugnant behavior.

But it's also an incisive satire about society's obsession with fame and the extent to which certain oddballs are willing to go to reach their lifelong dreams of glory. The parallels one can draw with the current pervasiveness of reality television help Waters' cautionary tale about celebrity culture fully retain its contemporary relevance.

Flamingos' revolting filthiness greatly upset most mainstream critics, but the campy film rapidly thrived in underground queer circles and benefited from very effective word-of-mouth. The success of Flamingos allowed Waters to gradually increase the budget of subsequent features. Polyester is No. 1 on Matthew Hays' list, who says that "Polyester is arguably director John Waters' finest film, an ode to the tasteless. What the film does is truly radical, attacking every notion of bourgeois good taste. In doing so, Waters subversively attacked mainstream culture and all of its insipid hypocrisies."

Almost Made the Cut: Poison (Todd Haynes, 1991)

An homage to Jean Genet in the form of three incendiary short stories about a palette of deviant characters. The 1992 recipient of the Grand Jury Prize – Dramatic at Sundance, Poison interweaves three separate narratives, including the gritty "Homo," which explores the simultaneously erotic and violent prison setting through a story of forbidden love between two inmates.

Haynes' perspective is distinctly queer in that it challenges dominant representations of marginalized people, condemns essentialist right-wing ideologies and highlights the different manifestations of an ever-pervasive societal "poison" — racism, homophobia, AIDS and more.

Basil Tsiokos included Poison on his list, declaring that it "brought much needed film industry and media attention to a new wave of filmmaking featuring unapologetically queer images and subjects in the wake of AIDS."

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