John Waters has never shied away from controversy and his favourite films list makes for interesting reading. The man who said ‘I thank God I was raised Catholic, so sex will always be dirty,’ lists the art-house Andy Warhol film “Chelsea Girls”, which has no formal narrative in its depiction of the real life residents at the Chelsea Hotel in New York of 1966, and the Russ Meyer exploitation flick “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”, as two of his favourites.

Another one of his choices is “La Maman et la putain” (which translated reads: “The Mother and the Whore”), Jean Eustache’s little seen film about an unconventional love triangle in Paris. It is another that lacks a conventional narrative structure and clocks in at nearly four hours in length.

Waters, in the films he makes and the films he chooses as his favourites, likes female lead characters. Elia Kazan’s provocative “Baby Doll” about an old man who persuades another to let him marry his daughter, and “Boom”, about Elizabeth Taylor’s Sissy Goforth, both adapted from Tennessee Williams plays, are two examples of the director’s individualistic tastes.

John Waters Top10Films

1. All That Heaven Allows (Sirk)
2. Baby Doll (Kazan)
3. Boom! (Losey)
4. Brink of Life (Bergman)
5. The Chelsea Girls (Warhol)
6. 8 1/2 (Fellini)
7. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Meyer)
8. La Maman et la putain (Eustache)
9. The Tingler (W. Castle)
10. The Wizard of Oz (Fleming)