Not exactly sure what the motivation for this NPR article is, but they asked Female Trouble director John Waters to name some of his favorite films. Female Trouble is one of mine, but topping John’s list? It’s the legendary underground film Sins of the Fleshapoids, directed by Mike Kuchar and starring his brother George. Here’s the director’s take on the cult classic:

Kuchar and his brother George are “very, very famous underground filmmakers. They started making 8mm crackpot melodramas in their mother’s Bronx apartment with kind of stolen thrift-shop costumes and soundtracks lifted from Hollywood movies and they’re really great…. Sins of the Fleshapoids really shows what an underground movie was…. There is a close-up of an unflushed toilet with ridiculous soundtrack music. They were the first to do vulgarity in an almost opera style.”

Made in 1965, the film was released on DVD exactly 40 years later by the great Other Cinema. Here’s my own review of the film. Also, you can purchase the film from Other Cinema or from your favorite online retailer. Yeah, I usually like doing the Amazon kickback thing, but I want to encourage supporting the distributor directly, so follow that link.

And it really kind of ticks me off that NPR doesn’t help support “the little guy” and provide a link to the Other Cinema site. Sure, they put up links to the mainstream films Waters also recommends, but they can’t bother to throw their weight to a small company that could use the support? Waters has stated that Fleshapoids was the greatest inspiration on his own directing style, so it’s probably the most important film on the entire list. But still no link. That blows.

Anyway, below is the rest of Waters’ list. It’s just the titles, if you want his full commentary, go to the NPR article.

Baadasssss!, dir. Mario Van Peebles
Final Destination 3, dir. James Wong
Wanda, dir. Barbara Loden
The Honeymoon Killers, dir. Leonard Kastle
Crash, dir. David Cronenberg
Head-On, dir. Faith Akin
In a Glass Cage, dir. Augustin Villaronga

One last thing, it seems that just about every new John Waters article I’ve read in the past couple of months he’s managed to bring up Final Destination 3 as one of his favorite films, no matter what he’s writing or being asked about. I haven’t seen that series beyond the first one (snooze), but maybe John will be happy to hear that the fourth film will be in 3-D.

(Originally found this via the all-powerful GreenCine Daily.)