In his second hardcore feature, Roger Watkins side-steps his merciless contempt for both character and viewer established in Her Name Was Lisa and attempts a more traditional comédie de moeurs in the guise of the ‘boring heteronormativity meets kinky dream sequences’ trope of X. But it’s a Roger Watkins film, so no matter how you shake it, things are gonna get weird. His usual visual flourishes thankfully escape the restraints likely imposed by the producer. It comes out a little Fellini-esque.
Samantha Fox, Kandi Barbour, Robin Byrd and Christine De Schaffer play the titular Pink Ladies, a quartet of disenfranchised housewives. The opening racquetball sequence, washed in Watkins’ usual clinically white backgrounds, drifts in and out of caustic chaos as ELP’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” batters down. Leslie (De Schaffer), who can’t play racquetball to save her life, is excluded from the sex scene with coach/voyeur creep Ron Hudd because she’s being pelted by the automated racketball launcher.
Like all of Watkins’ flicks, the soundtrack pops. “Sister Midnight” from Iggy Pop’s The Idiot plays during a BDSM scene between Leslie and her repressed husband (Alan Adrian). The Gus Kahn standard “I’m Through With Love” is the soundtrack to one of Vanessa del Rio’s rides on the proverbial carousel of married men. And “Ride of the Valkyrie” (Watkins’ nom de plume Richard Mahler was partly a nod to Wagner) plays during one of the final scenes, which can only be described as our merry band of housewives fantasizing about having sex with a pack of flesh-and-blood Skittles.
In Her Name Was Lisa, Corruption, American Babylon and Decadence, Watkins seems to be saying “I fucking hate these people.” In The Pink Ladies, he’s merely mumbling “These people are fucking idiots.” It is said he really disliked this film. It’s not his greatest work, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off it.
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