|
I'm gonna give you some terrible thrills... Released: 1975 Director: Jim Sharman The recent death of Meatloaf got me thinking about The Rocky Horror Picture Show again. And as the film is a personal favorite and has significant meaning to me I decided to make this my pick for the month. I'm sure most of you know the premise but I'll quickly recap it on the off chance anyone is unfamiliar. The story follows a square midwestern couple, Brad and Janet. The film opens with the couple at a wedding where Brad finally decides to propose to Janet. Both being very excited they decide to go visit an old friend who was responsible for their meeting. On the way to his house they get lost in the rain and their car suffers a flat tire. Not knowing what to do they walk to the only place for miles, a dark and mysterious mansion. The couple are welcomed in and find much more than they bargained for in the house's bizarre, flamboyant, extremely sexually charged, and corrupting owner Dr. Frankenfurter.  The Rocky Horror Picture Show (and the stage play it is derived from) came at a time when LGBT media was still on the fringes. The movie in its general release was a flop. But not long after its failure at the box office it found its audience in a big way. This being the mid-70s midnight movies had become the natural habitat for film nerds, weirdos, and people looking to see the stranger films "respectable" theaters didn't show in the day and the gay rights movement was picking up steam so Rocky Horror just managed to hit in the right place at the right time. The film quickly became a sensation with late night crowds and those wishing to see an actual LGBT film. Midnight screenings of Rocky Horror would go nationwide and traditions were born around the film. Fans dressed up as the characters and yelled jokes at the film. Live casts mimed the film. And to this day all of these things happen.  So you can't talk about this movie without talking about the one thing at the forefront of it. That is of course Tim Curry. It feels like an understatement to call him the heart and soul of the film and say this is a performance of a lifetime. Everything is does in the film is flamboyant and bombastic. He just oozes sexuality and his character never seems to let up in his constant horniness (hornyness?). His singing is impeccable and it's no wonder why this movie is the thing most closely associated with him. He just chews the scenery and appears to love every minute of it. You just can't look away. The movie itself is a melding of 1950s B sci-fi, 70s excesses, and vintage lingerie catalogs. So they really needed someone who could be all that and he nails it. There are many ways you can just say he's great in this. He literally marches into the film and throws open a cape to reveal himself as a genderbending sex god.  Of course none of that means the rest of the cast is dead weight. They all play their parts well but with one exception none of them are given as much to work with as Curry. The actor I'm referring to is Meatloaf. He appears suddenly and for that time he steals the movie. His character Eddie is the personification of rock n roll rebellion. Despite his brief appearance in the film he looms large over it even for the rest of its run time. In fact his abrupt departure is due directly to the fact that he has the guts to upstage Frankenfurter at his own party.  The music of course is glam rock because that style embodied exactly the kind of flamboyance and disregard for social norms of the time this movie goes for. Glam rock singers weren't necessarily queer (though some were, most notably David Bowie) but they weren't afraid to flaunt themselves in glitter and women's clothes. Richard O'Brien in his appearance is very obviously lifting from Roxy Music era Brian Eno. It makes perfect sense that this musical genre would anchor the film and be the contrast to the uptight midwestern Brad and Janet. The music and its aesthetics might as well be from another planet from them (which is literally the case in the movie). Many of O'Brien's favorite pop culture references line the film. Classic films, B horror and sci-fi, kitschy comic book ads, and old lingerie.  On a personal level The Rocky Horror Picture Show has meant a lot to me. Growing up gay in the 90s there was very little representation in pop culture. When you did see gay people (almost always men) they were offensive outdated stereotypes, the butt of the joke, or just being othered. Coming across this on Comedy Central at the age of 12 was a sort of revelation. The movie is very explicitly queer and is celebratory about it. A rare thing at the time and I'm sure even rarer in the 70s. It was all kind of strange but wonderful to me. I watched the movie over and over again and testament to what the movie is trying to say about the nature of gender I was never entirely sure if Dr. Frankenfurter was supposed to be a man or a woman the first few times I saw it. He just existed as liberation from the trappings of what is traditionally considered gender and sexuality. I wouldn't actually go to one of the midnight shows until I was about 18 or 19 because my very uptight and Catholic mother thought the people at those things were some kind of perverts who would whisk me away forever. But by then I'd seen the movie more times than I could even guess. I'm sure that if she actually sat down and watched the movie at that time she would have been mortified. The soundtrack album was one of the first CDs I ever got and I listened to it over and over. When I finally did go to a midnight show as a barely out gay baby it was magic. It was the first safe space I ever found. I was generally insecure and afraid about letting people besides my friends know I'm gay but these shows were a place where no one gave a poo poo (and okay I liked seeing the guys wearing very little clothes). And I'm sure that's why they caught on in the 70s. It was a gathering place for not just LGBT youth but people who felt left out in general. Even the movie takes a moment to show everyone that muscles and a chiseled body aren't everything. I'm long past the part of my life where I need RHPS as my safe space but I'm eternally grateful for it and I hope it's continued to be that for other LGBTQ kids or the misfits and "weirdos". A lot of it probably seems quaint now but I'm sure that The Rocky Horror Picture Show will always have its place. I must also say that the midnight shows and all the fanfare around them has kind of overshadowed that it's just generally a really good movie on its own. I've noticed a lot of people have a hard time separating the two but none of it would work if the movie in the middle of it wasn't something special. If you've never seen the movie without the audience participation I highly recommend watching the film at home.  Previous Movies of the Month
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2022 09:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 6, 2024 07:11 |
|
|
It still amazes me that this was Tim Curry's first credited film role. Even his role in Legend pales in comparison. I remember the VHS for this at the local rental places always being solid red. It stuck out in a sea of thousands of other VHS tapes there were all black.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2022 06:39
|
|
|
Zogo posted:It still amazes me that this was Tim Curry's first credited film role. Even his role in Legend pales in comparison. It's such a shame he was mostly relegated to direct to video trash after a certain point. He's a great actor and deserved to be bigger than he was. I know his career was more as a character actor but he should have been given a lot more substantial work than he had been over the years and it's a drat shame. And yeah those tapes looked cool. I'm pretty sure they were released for the 15th Anniversary of the movie.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2022 07:33
|
|
|
CPL593H posted:It's such a shame he was mostly relegated to direct to video trash after a certain point. He's a great actor and deserved to be bigger than he was. I know his career was more as a character actor but he should have been given a lot more substantial work than he had been over the years and it's a drat shame. And yeah those tapes looked cool. I'm pretty sure they were released for the 15th Anniversary of the movie. I think Curry's thing was that he always enjoyed working on the stage far more than he did working in movies and he used DTV trash to help fund productions he was passionate about, and his TV work was pretty much exclusively limited to voice acting. The stroke he suffered a decade ago really didn't help things, though. As far as I know, he's still restricted to a wheelchair and his speech capacity is very, very limited. Anyway, the first time I ever saw Rocky Horror was at a midnight screening here in Iowa, and so I had no idea what in the everloving gently caress was going on with all the stuff people were yelling at the screen, why people were bringing newspapers and rubber gloves and water pistols into the theater ... it was an incredibly strange experience. And then my opinion of it was tainted a little further when Glee (a show that I hated, but my ex-wife loved, and so I got roped into watching it on Tuesday nights) did its own Rocky Horror take, and the autotuned singing drove me loving nuts. Maybe a decade later, shortly after my ex-wife and I had split up in 2018, I decided to give the movie another shot and I really, really dug it. It probably helped that during the intervening time, I had become a genuinely big fan of John Waters' work, which is obviously queer as it can get. I really owe the movie another watch, it's been a while. Timby fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Feb 6, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2022 07:51
|
|
|
I’m still of the mind that Michael C Hall could pull off a solid Dr Franknfurter. He is a stage actor with the singing chops and just enough weirdness to him. My mom is catholic and bigoted in ways but she always has fond memories of going to midnight showings of rocky horror in loving college station, tx while at school. Weirdest thing.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2022 18:17
|
|
|
What a delightful movie. Also, I'm that guy who always has to recommend Shock Treatment! It is so awesome, the ultimate underrated cult musical. And a loose follow-up to Rocky Horror. Love that early 80s music, great songs by Richard O'Brien. Jessica Harper! Oh yes. Rocky Horror, I had the pleasure of seeing that in a friend's yard projector a couple summers back, lotta fun. Also saw it at one of those Harvard Square midnight shows once. Rookie numbers, but I do dig that flick quite a bit. drat it!
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2022 02:11
|
|
|
Heavy Metal posted:What a delightful movie. Also, I'm that guy who always has to recommend Shock Treatment! It is so awesome, the ultimate underrated cult musical. And a loose follow-up to Rocky Horror. Love that early 80s music, great songs by Richard O'Brien. Jessica Harper! Oh yes. Harvard Square was where I saw it first and several more times. That theater is closed now but I think that shadow cast is still around. It was great because the guy who played Frankenfurter went on a whole rant about March of the Penguins before the show and the people coming out of that movie giving funny looks to Rocky Horror people. So a few months later I went back and March of the Penguins had just been re-released because of the Oscars and he just started making fun of it again.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2022 03:56
|
|
|
CPL593H posted:Harvard Square was where I saw it first and several more times. That theater is closed now but I think that shadow cast is still around. It was great because the guy who played Frankenfurter went on a whole rant about March of the Penguins before the show and the people coming out of that movie giving funny looks to Rocky Horror people. So a few months later I went back and March of the Penguins had just been re-released because of the Oscars and he just started making fun of it again. This is also where I would go to see Rocky Horror and between 2010 and 2012 I probably saw it at least a dozen times or more (it would be higher if I hadn't been going to college on the other side of the state). Honestly, Rocky Horror might be the movie I've seen more than any other. But I stopped going to the screenings once the theater switched over to digital and they started screening the film off of a Blu Ray disc. Having watched it on a vintage film print so many times, a crisp clean Blu Ray in a theater just felt off -- it's not a movie that should be pristine. That said, I still think watching it at home is a blast and I finally watched it again just last month for the first time in about a decade. It still holds up, and there's parts of it -- namely the Floor Show in the final act -- that are downright beautiful. It's a ton of fun, the music is fantastic, it's absolutely one of my all time favorite films.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2022 18:54
|
|
|
George H.W. oval office posted:I’m still of the mind that Michael C Hall could pull off a solid Dr Franknfurter. He is a stage actor with the singing chops and just enough weirdness to him. I knew a dude when I was in College Station that played Rocky during screenings and he was the same way. Not exactly the same I guess because he was super baptist. we were talking about horror novels one day and I mentioned reading Lovecraft and he turned out to be one of those people that think it’s real and you can summon Hastur the Unnameable (but in reality he is just the devil, tricking you) or whatever by reading pulp fiction from the 30s.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2022 19:09
|
|
|
I'm actually kind of surprised this movie hasn't been a Movie of the Month yet. I saw it for the first time when I was 12 (my older sisters were theater kids) and I've gotten to introduce a few people to it over the years. Usually, they start off uninterested/unimpressed with the intro and by the end they've done a complete turnaround.George H.W. oval office posted:college station, tx Drunkboxer posted:College Station
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2022 22:26
|
|
|
I grew up in a boring town as a straight cis guy (still am, but used to be too), and I saw this when I was a teenager. Before watching, I didn't have any exposure to anything gay-adjacent (like I didn't know any gay people I can recall). Conceivably due to my lack of exposure, my initial impression of the movie was less an allegory to a "gay lifestyle" and more of a platonic ideal of self-expression and sexual decompartmentalization. Who was I to say if Frank was gay, straight, male, female, or something else altogether? Was Brad a straight (and straight-laced) guy caught up in a night of oozing revelry and decadent excessiveness, or was it an unmasking of the ego, revealing the nature he never knew? I loved Frank being this magnetic libertine muse, which enabled everyone caught in his sphere to join along as if he radiated pheromones of delirium. He penetrates the main event, and the throng palpably pauses as if they're watching Charon getting ready to stroke them across the river Styx if the other side was dripping with supreme delights of utter licentiousness. Philosophy aside, I also find it an enjoyable movie to watch. It's got an amusing direction, a catchy score, and it always delights me. On a side note, I listened to the audiobook for Dracula. Tim Curry voiced Van Helsing, and I couldn't stop thinking of Frank N Furter the entire time. Let me tell you, the vibe for that book was very different.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2022 02:17
|
|
|
I watched it! Like a week ago, for the first time. I think they showed us the Time Warp scene in like fifth grade once, god knows why, but you got me to finally sit down and watch the whole thing properly, so thanks for that. Enjoyable enough right up until the moment Curry opens his mouth, and then I was just grinning from ear to ear. You cannot make a movie like this unless you have a cast that is willing to just throw themselves into what you're trying to do.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2022 07:17
|
|
|
Kazzah posted:I watched it! Like a week ago, for the first time. I think they showed us the Time Warp scene in like fifth grade once, god knows why, but you got me to finally sit down and watch the whole thing properly, so thanks for that. Enjoyable enough right up until the moment Curry opens his mouth, and then I was just grinning from ear to ear. You cannot make a movie like this unless you have a cast that is willing to just throw themselves into what you're trying to do. He also manages to have a great entrance twice within about 30 seconds. I just love when they're standing by the elevator and he's tapping his foot to the beat of the song and then when the guitar comes in he spins around looking larger than life.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 03:30
|
|
|
I saw this movie many, many times by myself on video before I ever caught a midnight showing (which I think was some time in 2003.) So while I knew its reputation and some of the ways people "interacted" with it, my experience was a bit different. I think I even saw bits and pieces on like, Comedy Central before renting the film and watching it in its entirety. Of course I was sold by the first number- I love vintage sci-fi and monster movies, so when the lyrics are about Leo G. Carroll in Tarantula and reference things like the specific short story Night of the Demon was based on, I was in. Even things like the Criminologist narrating struck me as a nod to the films of Ed Wood (Glen or Glenda and Plan 9 From Outer Space in specific), though both the play and the movie predate his cult by a little. (He was still alive in 1975, even.) One thing the film benefits from is some really strong production design and cinematography. The DP was Peter Suschitzky, who would later photograph The Empire Strikes Back and many of Cronenberg's movies, and he really helps sell the atmosphere. The pacing flags a bit in the second act, like sending the Transylvanian guests away makes sense for the story but saps some of the energy. But it picks up a lot for the finale. It's interesting that Superheroes was cut from the US version for so long, presumably to make the ending seem "less down" but without that song I think you miss some of the catharsis. Like the lyrics are obtuse and metaphorical but it's a nice little elegy, one of the best songs in the whole thing. I think a long time before I actually saw the film I envisioned it as something sleazier and nastier; like, there's implied sex, brief nudity, and a couple of "fucks", but it's almost tame. (Indeed the one flaw with a lot of the audience banter is it's often just spelling out what's barely a double entendre in the film to begin with.) But it was always meant to be sort of a pleasant, fun thing. Has a note of tragedy, but still sends you out humming a tune.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 05:53
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 6, 2024 07:11 |
|
|
Maxwell Lord posted:Even things like the Criminologist narrating struck me as a nod to the films of Ed Wood (Glen or Glenda and Plan 9 From Outer Space in specific), though both the play and the movie predate his cult by a little. (He was still alive in 1975, even.) I feel like that type of character was pretty common in a lot of Ed Wood tier movies, educational films, etc. but the opening of Frankenstein also comes to mind.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2022 15:05
|
|