The movie critic Rex Reed hated the film, to the point that in his review he had asked, "Where do these people come from? Where do they go when the sun goes down? Isn't there a law or something?" The quote was posted on the Waverly Theater poster, and in Village Voice ads for the film. When Female Trouble was released on DVD, this quote was on the front of its box.
John Waters says that as a child he used to play 'car accident', had his own stage at home to put on shows for family members and often would put a coat hanger up his sleeve in order to pretend he had a hook for a hand.
As they had done in Pink Flamingos, John Waters filmed a scene of Divine from his car, hoping to get double-takes to Dawn Davenport striding down the street, but no-one seemed fazed at all. Waters believes this was because they saw the scars and assumed Divine was a mentally ill woman. The man who pops out his glass eye was a friend of Waters'.
John Waters had Divine take trampoline lessons at a local YMCA; Divine was terrified about breaking his neck but managed to do the trampoline scene in one take.
Divine was injected with a real needle in the liquid eyeliner scene. Divine also took a dose of vomit-inducing medicine, but this had no effect at first so Earl's vomiting on Taffy had to be faked. A nurse was on the set to supervise both scenes.