Starring Carmen Maura, Eva Siva, Alaska and Félix Rotaeta, the plot follows the wild adventures of three friends: Pepi, an independent modern woman; Luci, a mousy, masochistic housewife; and Bom, a lesbian punk rock singer.

[3] Pepi, a young independent woman living in Madrid, is filling up her Superman sticker album when she receives an unexpected visit from a neighbour policeman who has spotted her marijuana plants whilst spying on her via binoculars from across the street.

When he threatens to whip and kick her out, with a renewed sense of liberation Luci leaves her husband and her home, moving in with Bom.

The three friends, Pepi, Luci and Bom are immersed in Madrid's youth scene, attending parties, clubs, concerts and meeting outrageous characters.

She becomes a creative writer for advertising spots designing ads for sweating, menstruating dolls and multipurpose panties that absorb urine and can double as a dildo.

[5][6] Many actors that appear in minor roles went on to play more important ones in Almodóvar's subsequent films:[7] Kiti Manver (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) plays a hot-tempered, Andalusian rock singer; Julieta Serrano (Dark Habits); Cecilia Roth (All About My Mother); Fabio MacNamara (Labyrinth of Passion), a singer and painter, plays a transvestite Avon lady;[8] Cristina Sánchez Pascual (Dark Habits) appears as a high-pitch bearded woman frustrated in a marriage to a homosexual, in a parody of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

[11] The genesis of Pepi, Luci, Bom was a story written by Almodóvar called General Erections published in 1978 in the magazine El Víbora.

[12] Performing with them in a small role in Dirty Hands by Jean-Paul Sartre, Almodóvar met Maura and Rotaeta, who encouraged him to make a film out of General Erections.

[13] At the time, Almodóvar was working for Telefónica, Spain's national telephone company, as an administrative employee, therefore the shooting took place on weekends with a group of volunteers.

The real-life residence of gay pop artist painters Costus (Juan Carrero and Enrique Naya), who also appear in the film, served as the place where Luci and Bom set up their home.

[13] More money was needed and backing from Pepón Coromina, a Catalan producer, allowed Almodóvar to add 30 more minutes of film, shot over the following six months of 1980.

[19] Pedro Crespo, in the conservative newspaper ABC, described the film a "merely a variation on the age old tradition of vulgar comedy transformed into a contemporary language".

[20] Pepi, Luci, Bom was released in the United States in 1992, only after Almodóvar became a famous art house film director.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times considered the film a "rough unfunny comedy notable for its bathroom jokes, humorous rape scene and abysmal home movie cinematography".

[20] Rita Kempley of The Washington Post called it an "amateurish directorial debut, a smutty sexual sideshow most safely viewed in a full body condom".

[2] With its many kitsch elements, campy style, outrageous humour, and open sexuality, the film became emblematic of a cultural movement of its time, La Movida Madrileña.

As with the female characters in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), All About My Mother (1999) and Volver (2006), Pepi and Bom are self-sufficient, independent and their friendship is shown as more important than any sexual or love attachment.

[9] By contrast, men are either non-existent or presented unsympathetically, such as the policeman in Pepi, Luci, Bom, Raimunda's abusive husband in Volver or Pepa's unfaithful lover in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

While the friendship of these two remains strong, Bom and Luci's affair ends when the latter returns to a heterosexual life of abuse with her husband.

The film also takes on other themes frequent in Almodóvar's filmography: sexual heterodoxy, drug addiction and a love of pop culture.

[24] The comic book origins of the film are evident in its loose structure, provocative vulgarity and the intertitles made by Spanish illustrator Ceesepe, then an unknown member of La Movida Madrileña.

[25] Almodóvar confronts the spectator with unexpected outrageous situations, including a lesbian golden shower scene in the middle of a knitting lesson.

[30] Here there is a drag queen called Roxy, played by Fabio McNamara, Almodóvar's singing partner in a glam rock parody duo.

[31] Almódovar does not linger in the oddness of the sexual relationship between a traditional housewife in her forties and a rebellious punk teenager, which is presented without judgment as nothing out of the ordinary.

[33] The counterculture song "Murciana marrana", written by Fabio McNamara, is prominently featured, performed by Alaska and Los Pegamoides with a mixture of vulgarity and absurdity.