For our Cinema Flashback season, we've been celebrating 50 years of cinema at Eden Court, with an audience-nominated week of big screen classics. The wild card in the deck was the Mystery Movie, chosen by Eden Court Cinema-goer (and movie icon) Tilda Swinton. 

Following last night's screening, we can now reveal the Mystery Movie was... John Waters' Hairspray (1988). Find out why Tilda chose it...

John Waters - ‘the Pope of filth’ - as he loves to remind us he was once called - has contributed a flavour into the cinema landscape that is at once unique, consistently brilliant in its confidence and spirit, and worshipped by its die-hard admirers while at the same time rarely placed in the canon of any but the most comprehensive film lists.

Entirely self-determined and unapologetically boundary-pushing, this filmography is worth exploring for anybody looking to know the span of late 20th century cinema culture. Hairspray (1988), which I have selected as a gateway for the uninitiated, is not only known more widely due to the enormous reach of both the 2007 remake and the smash musical adaptation which continues to travel the world - but also for the final performance of the sublime Divine, who appeared in all of Waters’ films from 1968 until his death three weeks after the mainstream breakthrough release of Hairspray. 

I chose this film for Eden Court because I know he and John would love to think of being here with us in the Highlands. And because it’s chock full of vim, vigour and the silliest of fun.

- Tilda Swinton, May 2026