Desperate Living is a 1977 American comedy film directed, produced, and written by John Waters. The film stars Liz Renay, Mink Stole, Edith Massey, Susan Lowe, Mary Vivian Pearce, and Jean Hill. It is the third installment of what Waters has labelled the "Trash Trilogy", which also includes Pink Flamingos (1972) and Female Trouble (1974), and the only one to not feature Divine. The film generated a cult following around Renay, who appeared in at least two dozen other films. Plot Neurotic and delusional suburban housewife Peggy Gravel and her overweight nurse, Grizelda Brown, go on the lam after Grizelda smothers Peggy's husband Bosley to death. A cross-dressing policeman arrests the pair and gives them an ultimatum: go to jail or be exiled to Mortville, a filthy shantytown ruled by the evil Queen Carlotta and her treasonous daughter, Princess Coo-Coo. Peggy and Grizelda choose Mortville, and engage in lesbian prison sex. They become associates of self-hating lesbian wrestler Mole McHenry, who wants a sex change to please her lover, Muffy St. Jacques. After confiscating a lottery ticket from Peggy, Mole wins the Maryland Lottery and uses the money to obtain gender reassignment surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. However, Muffy is repulsed by Mole's phalloplasty and insists she cut it off, so Mole gives herself a penectomy. Most of Mortville's social outcasts—criminals, nudists, and sexual deviants—conspire to overthrow Queen Carlotta, who banishes Coo-Coo after she elopes with a garbage collector named Herbert, whom Queen Carlotta's guards later shoot to death. Coo-Coo hides in Peggy and Grizelda's house with her dead lover. When Peggy betrays Coo-Coo to the Queen's guards, Grizelda fights them and dies when the house collapses on her. Peggy, however, joins the queen in terrorizing her subjects, even infecting them (and Princess Coo-Coo) with rabies. Eventually, Mortville's denizens, led by Mole, overthrow Queen Carlotta and execute Peggy by shooting a gun up her anus. To celebrate their freedom, the townsfolk roast Carlotta on a spit and serve her, pig-like, on a platter with an apple in her mouth. Cast Production Art director Vincent Peranio built the exterior sets for Mortville on a 26-acre farm in Hampstead, Maryland, owned by Waters' friend, Peter Koper. The exterior sets were largely constructed of plywood and rubbish Peranio and Waters had collected from around Baltimore. Production manager Robert Maier recalled the challenges of shooting without adequate facilities, how the cast and crew overwhelmed