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 Following their escape from Dr. Frank-N-Furter at the end of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Brad and Janet return to their home town of Denton to discover that the entire city has been transformed into a TV studio where everyone is either a star or an audience member. Janet is quickly whisked into stardom, while boring old Brad is imprisoned in a soap opera taking place in a mental hospital.    Following the insane success of Rocky Horror, writer/director Richard O'Brien went to work on a direct sequel. The movie (which brought back Frank-N-Furter and Rocky as zombies, with a gay Brad and a pregnant Janet) was scripted but failed to get the original cast -- Tim Curry didn't want to return, Barry Bostwick couldn't return due to prior commitments, and Susan Sarandon wanted too much money. The script was reworked to be Brad and Janet-centric with an all new Brad and Janet, telling a new story about their life following the adventure in the castle. Production was troubled at every step along the way, including a 1980 Screen Actors Guild strike that stopped production and caused them to lose multiple locations, necessitating moving the entire production into an indoor studio. The movie was never given a full theatrical release, instead sent to the midnight slot that had done so well for Rocky Horror, and the film never found the audience it deserved. Reviews at the time criticized the plot as nonsensical and outlandish: after all, what's more ridiculous than a world where everyone is a TV star in search of an audience? The movie bombed, Richard O'Brien walked back the work saying it was a mistake, and Shock Treatment was relegated to the annals of 'useless theater kid knowledge'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGoUwRkT56k Where the movie becomes really interesting, however, is in just how oddly prescient the entire thing is. Shock Treatment released in 1981, the same year that Ronald Reagan took office, and the movie is a picture-perfect snapshot of the upcoming era that Reagan would usher in. Denton, USA is a small town Reagan nightmare, full of shiny happy television people talking about the joys of buying things, perfect WASP couples in seemingly-perfect traditional marriages, and miserable people continually fed a stream of mood altering drugs in order to make them 'fit in' better. One of the early musical numbers is about how badly Brad and Janet's relationship is going, but through the lens of consumerism and the items they have around the house. Nobody's talking to another person about their feelings, but they are talking about microwaves and knife sharpeners and new refrigerators! Janet's dad sings a song about how great it is to be a man as he mows the lawn with a military helmet on, ranting about 'faggots' and 'weak men', which the audience eats up and cheers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRwBo2B4mTo What's even more wild is that the movie predicts and satirizes the rise of reality television and even influencer culture well before those things became actual concepts. Shock Treatment posits a world in which everyone is close to being a star, or is stuck in a perpetual loop of watching the stars go about their lives in hopes that maybe they'll be picked for the next big TV show and get their own big break. Janet's parents go on television (in the close-up framing that would come to define reality TV 'confessional' segments) to discuss how broken their marriage is in hopes of winning some new kitchen appliances. The whole thing is sponsored by a nebulous evil corporation, who makes sure that its products show up in the right places at the right times, and who are maliciously controlling things behind the scenes to further their own agenda. Both performer and audience are complicit in Shock Treatment -- the stars are pill-popping attention seekers who desperately want to fix something flawed in their lives, and the audience is happy to give it to them. But the critique isn't just for the performers: the audience themselves are dressed ugly, tacky outfits, happily cheering on racism and mean-spiritedness when it fits their interests, and switching allegiances on a dime based on who is more 'popular' in the current moment. And once again it's all under the watchful eye of a corporation whose logo looks like an American flag combined with a swastika, and who is happy to give easy answers and entertainment to anybody willing to sit down and shut up. It's hard not to watch this movie and consider how easily some nebulous 'real life streamer' on Twitch would slide seamlessly into the televised world of Denton without many changes, sponsors and all. Shock Treatment is by no means an incredible movie. The middle section drags a little, and the songs aren't quite as catchy as as anything from Rocky Horror. And that's, of course, the biggest strike against the movie. When put up against the 'lightning in a bottle' Rocky Horror, the movie's just not in the same league. There are no scenery-chewing Tim Curry performances, or infinitely quotable dialogue. In a vacuum, the movie would succeed on its own. As a RHPS sibling, it simply fails. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqksSN6K_V0 What does work is the timely, interesting look at the world a Reagan-era America would come to produce decades later. The David Byrne film True Stories would be a good companion and interesting comparison to this movie, as both are musicals dealing with the concept of 'small town life' through the filter of encroaching 80s capitalism and celebrity. However where True Stories is hopeful and optimistic about life and existence in a hyper media-driven climate, Shock Treatment is cynical, unconvinced, and pessimistic about how corporations, advertising, and media will change us. True Stories looked at the 80s with a sense of dignity and joy towards the average person; Shock Treatment says that we're a nation of observers chasing the next spectacle, with too many of us hoping to become the 'next big thing' rather that just being a good person'. In 2023, which prediction came true? The film is not available for streaming on most services, but there are multiple uploads on YouTube, as well as rentals at a handful of places. So hell, why not watch it from the thread? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE0zN5c4XA8 PKMN Trainer Red fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Sep 1, 2023 |
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Sep 1, 2023 05:24
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YESSSSSSSSSSS I legitimately feel Shock Treatment is a better film than RHPS, even if it's not going to be the passionately inspiring experience that was for so many people. Like, just by nature, RHPS came along at the right time for a lot of people to feel seen or spoken to, and that's why it inspired the initial devotion. But Shock Treatment does feel like a more assured, more confident work. At its core it's about how capitalism appropriates and packages everything, from patriotism to mental health to sexual liberation, whatever the kids are into, they find a way to put it in a box. A particularly great detail that I only noticed when the film was released on DVD is that you often do see the ceilings of the sets- not in a Citizen Kane way but in a way that reminds you you're boxed in. And it's a great looking film- one of the tragedies of Disney buying Fox is it lowers the chances of my ever seeing this in a theater, but it's beautifully shot with vibrant colors. And there's the songs. And specifically the songs sung by Jessica Harper, because by God that voice.
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Sep 1, 2023 09:17
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I can still sing “Denton, U.S.A.” from memory, and I’ve only seen Shock Treatment once!
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Sep 1, 2023 11:43
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I was very confused by the summary until I realised I was thinking of Shock Corridor!
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Sep 1, 2023 12:38
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If I had seen this movie earlier in life, I wouldn't have blown my last resistor for a sister that certified me. In my defense, I was blinded by romance; my condition was critically grave.
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Sep 1, 2023 14:46
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I maintain that this is one of the better songs Richard O'Brien ever wrote. It fully deserves a longer version somewhere, because for how short it is, it's terribly catchy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9wK3koVoPA
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Sep 1, 2023 16:57
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All the songs are pretty short, which is kinda to their benefit. It's a very punchy soundtrack. Like this, which is just a legit great punk-ish rock song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsfFK2JrNNk
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Sep 2, 2023 00:39
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I absolutely hated this movie when I first saw it, then went back to it a few years later and kind of liked it, then once more a couple years ago and loved it. I'm not a big Rocky Horror person, I've seen it a few times including in a theater so it's not like I thought it was an affront to the movie, I just hated it. I have no idea what changed in my brain, because the second time through I loved all the songs and thought they were catchier than anything in Rocky Horror other than the Time Warp.
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Sep 11, 2023 17:14
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Micro-digital awaker
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Sep 12, 2023 22:47
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PKMN Trainer Red posted:I maintain that this is one of the better songs Richard O'Brien ever wrote. It fully deserves a longer version somewhere, because for how short it is, it's terribly catchy. I like Shock Treatment a lot, but maybe not for the same reasons as other people. Like, I remember watching the featurette on the DVD, and one of the filmmakers was saying that for her the whole move revolved around "Bitchin' in the Kitchen." I'd rank it as one of the least-good songs on the soundtrack. I think a problem with the music overall is that the songs are just so short. The tracks on Rocky Horror range from 2 minutes to the 8-minute floorshow scene, whereas almost all of the songs on Shock Treatment are in the neighbourhood of 2.5 minutes. Several musical scenes feel like they're just getting started when they wrap up. And it's a real shame that they had to stage everything so cheaply. At times it reminds me of an experimental rock opera that my friends wrote and produced--in high school, with no budget. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Sep 13, 2023 |
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Sep 13, 2023 14:57
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Was a pretty entertaining musical, I always love Jessica Harper so it's an easy buy in for me. The pacing/plotting is a bit all over the place but I loved how it had a bit more bite to than RHPS. It was really ripping into the culture and tv evangelism movement at times.
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Sep 27, 2023 22:57
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MacheteZombie posted:Was a pretty entertaining musical, I always love Jessica Harper so it's an easy buy in for me. The pacing/plotting is a bit all over the place but I loved how it had a bit more bite to than RHPS. It was really ripping into the culture and tv evangelism movement at times. I think there’s also something of the pop psychology movement in there- things like EST and the various self help fads of the 70s.
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Sep 28, 2023 03:07
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MacheteZombie posted:Was a pretty entertaining musical, I always love Jessica Harper so it's an easy buy in for me. The pacing/plotting is a bit all over the place but I loved how it had a bit more bite to than RHPS. It was really ripping into the culture and tv evangelism movement at times. It benefits from not really having a section like RHPS's floor show that's just song after song in the same spot with nothing to break up the sequence. Even the more song heavy bits are more dynamic.
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Oct 1, 2023 02:51
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I should probably give this another chance! I remember seeing it in the 90s as a teen, and the cultural criticisms were bland and boring compared to RHPS. And so were the songs. It's interesting that it largely predates its messaging having been run into the ground. I'd just assumed they were bandwagoning "safe" targets of criticism to hit a wider audience.
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Oct 2, 2023 22:58
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One of my fav movies ever, and since it's so unsung/unknown I recommend it to everyone pretty often. It's just such a chill cool oddball rock musical. You're looking at an ace!
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Oct 3, 2023 02:45
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