The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

The Rocky Horror Picture Show has a cultural impact beyond just being a movie.  The quality of such a film to most people has no bearing on their enjoyment of it, which for many hinges on a theatrical showing involving audience participation.  A good example is The Room, which invited some of the same sort of ritual antics with a movie that is borderline unwatchable otherwise.

It may come as a surprise that I am one of the few fans of Rocky Horror that has never been to a showing in a cinema.  Dressing up is not my thing and neither are crowds.  I pretty much know this movie by heart after seeing it so many times anyway, so the participation thing wouldn't be a drawback.  I just have a hard time fitting in with any crowd, even the weirder or more offbeat, and feel like I would be the odd man out like I would at almost any other type of party, which is what the viewings of this ultimately are.  

That means I am left with judging the movie not on a midnight movie experience but, rather, as a movie on its own.  For me Rocky Horror is an oddity as I typically do not like musicals.  I have been able to enjoy a few older ones, like Singin' in the Rain and My Fair Lady, but even with great music and actual plots they are often an endurance test.  Style wise, Rocky Horror follows a typical pattern of musical movies of getting most of the story out of the way early so it can finish up with a big, flashy medley of songs at the end.  Still, despite some pacing issues, and despite not seeing it with an audience, I feel about it the same way almost all of its fans do.  Unlike The Room, where people are intentionally making fun of the movie, Rocky Horror is consistently rewatchable no matter what the setting. 

Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) and his fiancé Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon) are on their way to tell their old science teacher Dr. Everett Scott (Jonathan Adams) about their impending nuptials.  On the way they suffer a blowout and, hoping that they may have a phone, inquire at a castle they passed a few miles back.  The are greeted by servants Riff Raff (Richard O'Brien) and Magenta (Patricia Quinn), and soon meet the master of the house: Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry).

It turns out they arrived on a night when Dr. Frank-N-Furter is bringing to life a muscular creature he has created named Rocky (Peter Hinwood) to serve his sexual needs.  The straitlaced Brad and Janet are forced to stay overnight, and soon find themselves tested by Frank-N-Furter and Rocky, as well as discovering the murder and debauchery the doctor has been up to.  Soon his secret is revealed, although everyone is quite under his spell by that point. 

This all began as The Rocky Horror Show, written by Richard O'Brien as a tribute to his favorite old-time science fiction movies with a rock music soundtrack, ranging from then current glam rock to older '50s songs like "Hot Patootie, Bless My Soul!", which in the movie (and the Los Angeles stage production) featured singer Meat Loaf, who would go on to major fame a couple of years later on his own.  Over the objections of 20th Century Fox, who wanted popular pop stars in the film, director Jim Sharman insisted on using as much of the original cast as possible, including O'Brien, Tim Curry, Patricia Quinn and Nell Campbell, billed here as "Little Nell".  

Though it bombed on the traditional film circuit it quite quickly found a midnight audience.  I have mentioned is that part of that is that the movie lends itself to repeat viewings.  It does have many horror elements, heavily borrowing from Hammer or Amicus films while making reference to the RKO horror films and King Kong.  It even has Hammer and James Bond veteran Charles Gray as the film's narrator.  Much of the enjoyment stems from Tim Curry and his performance as Frank-N-Furter, clad in different variations of women's lingerie and spiked heels.  While it feels both naive for our own time and strangely progressive for the early 1970s, this did come out at the time that David Bowie was still in his Ziggy Stardust phase and many British glam rockers were projecting androgynous or bisexual personalities, so being an English production at the heart this was not too out of step with current fads of the time. 

Unlike most musicals almost everything in Rocky Horror is memorable, which is probably why I like it more than many others.  The best examples of the genre that have withstood the test of time have instantly recognizable songs throughout, and this has "The Time Warp", "Sweet Transvestite" and "I'm Going Home", the latter the most underrated gem in the film.  It also is not afraid to have actors not known for musical theater sing, much like in Ken Russell's version of Tommy, although O'Brien and Sharman did have a singer named Trevor White do the vocals for Rocky as Peter Hinwood couldn't do the songs himself.  In addition to the performances, though I wouldn't say the choreography is the greatest, still has plenty of interesting camera movements and shots.  The "Over at the Frankenstein Place" segment, with the zooms to the castle and Riff Raff singing his lines from a window, are quite well done, as are a good portion of everything through Rocky's creation.

It is after that, however, where some of the cracks show.  Still plenty of good music, and "I'm Going Home" comes during the "floor show" portion, but the original show was not the length of a feature film.  Some of the attempts to stretch it out drag a bit, and the whole "Don't Dream It, Be It" segment reminded me of why I don't care for musicals.  After a while we are outside the plot and into pure performance which I never think fits well into a movie.  After all of that is out of the way it does have a good ending, which I assume is also how the stage show ended, but for some reason American cuts leave out the "Superheroes" piece, which makes a jarring cut to the Criminologist bringing things to a close. 

Even knowing this it is a movie I look forward to watching whenever I can.  I still appreciate that even almost 50 years later it causes controversy, with knee-jerk reactions to portrayals of trans and gay characters, despite the fact that Curry and O'Brien have both denied that Frank-N-Furter was neither.  Instead, he's pansexual, something that there really wasn't an idea of at the time, but that falls more within the modern trend of slapping a label on every minor sexual variation.  Also, he is the villain, and his sexuality has nothing to do with it.  As Columbia (Campbell) says, it is him.  He's a narcissist that uses people and disposes of them.  It's just that playing the character in such a confident manner Curry made him feel like he was the hero. 

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Time: 100 minutes

Starring: Tim Curry. Barry Bostwick, Susan Sarandon, Richard O'Brien, Patricia Quinn, Nell Campbell, Jonathan Adams, Charles Gray

Director: Jim Sharman