by the then-small independent company New Line Cinema, Pink Flamingos was later distributed to Ben Barenholtz, the owner of the Elgin Theater in New York City. At the Elgin Theater, Barenholtz had been promoting the midnight movie scene, primarily by screening Alejandro Jodorowsky's acid western film El Topo (1970), which had become a "very significant success" in "micro-independent terms". Barenholtz felt that being of an avant-garde nature, Pink Flamingos would fit in well with this crowd, subsequently screening it at midnight on Friday and Saturday nights. The film soon gained a cult following of filmgoers who repeatedly came to the Elgin Theatre to watch it, a group Barenholtz characterized as initially composed primarily of "downtown gay people, more of the hipper set", but after a while Barenholtz noted that this group eventually broadened as the film also became popular with "working-class kids from New Jersey who would become a little rowdy". Many of these cult cinema fans learned all of the lines in the film, and recited them at the screenings, a phenomenon which later became associated with another popular midnight movie of the era, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). Ban The film was initially banned in Switzerland and Australia, as well as in some provinces in Canada and Norway. The film was eventually released uncut on VHS in Australia in 1984 with an X rating, but distribution of the video has since been discontinued. The 1997 version was cut by the distributor to achieve an R18+ after it was also refused classification. No submissions of the film have been made since, but it has been said that one of the reasons for which it was banned (as a film showing actual sexual activity cannot be rated X in Australia if it also features violence, so the highest a film such as Pink Flamingos could be rated is R18+) would now not apply, given that the depiction of actual sex was passed within the R18+ rating for Romance in 1999, two years following Pink Flamingos re-release. Home media Pink Flamingos was released on VHS and Betamax in 1981, and the re-release in 1997 New Line Home Video became the second best-selling VHS for its week of release. The film was released in the John Waters Collection DVD box set along with the original NC-17 version of A Dirty Shame, Desperate Living, Female Trouble, Hairspray, Pecker, and Polyester. The film