The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

There are films that define a moment, and then there are films that define a ritual. The Rocky Horror Picture Show, released in 1975 through 20th Century Fox in association with Lou Adler Productions and Michael White Productions, sits firmly in the second category. Based on the stage musical The Rocky Horror Show, which had already proved a hit in London's West End and on Broadway before the cameras rolled, Jim Sharman's adaptation tells the story of Brad and Janet, a freshly engaged couple whose car breaks down on a stormy night, leading them to the grand and very strange home of Dr Frank-N-Furter. What follows is a whirlwind of rock music, outrageous costume, and cheerfully unhinged science fiction that borrows freely from B-movie horror, glam rock, and a general spirit of gleeful transgression. The film ran for exactly 100 minutes, but its cultural afterlife has lasted decades and shows no sign of slowing.

Director Jim Sharman had already worked with much of the creative team on the stage production, and that familiarity shows in how confidently the film commits to its own peculiar universe. Richard O'Brien, who wrote the original stage musical and also appears in the film as the servant Riff Raff, brings a homemade, handcrafted quality to the material that no amount of studio polish could quite replicate. The production is, by most accounts, a modestly budgeted affair, and it carries the pleasantly rough edges of something made more on nerve than on money. It found its footing slowly at the box office before being repositioned as a midnight movie, where audience participation became as much a part of the experience as anything on screen. Audiences began shouting back at the dialogue, throwing toast, arriving in costume. The film essentially became a live performance, a participatory theatre piece that happened to be projected onto a wall.

The cast is worth pausing on, because it is doing something quite specific. Tim Curry, reprising his stage role as Dr Frank-N-Furter, delivers a performance of such committed, unabashed theatricality that it is almost impossible to look away, and if you have enjoyed his work elsewhere (he later turned up in rather different company in films like Clue and Muppet Treasure Island), this remains the role most closely associated with his name. Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick play Brad and Janet as the straightest of straight men, their wide-eyed bewilderment providing the anchor point through which the audience is meant to experience the chaos. Patricia Quinn, as Magenta, rounds out a company that plays everything with total conviction, which is either the whole point or the source of your discomfort, depending on which side of the fence you land on.

For some reason... this film makes my skin crawl. I can't stand it. I get it, it’s a classic. A cult phenomenon. A midnight movie staple. But holy hell, this could not be further from my taste if it tried. From the moment the screen filled with fishnets, I knew I was in for a long, glitter-drenched nightmare. The singing is over the top. The acting is deliberately absurd. The plot is a bizarre, surreal mess that asks you to check logic at the door, and then throw confetti on it. Maybe I’m just not in on the joke. Or maybe I’m the joke. Either way, two hours of this musical madness felt like punishment. I respect the legacy. I respect the fans. I just couldn’t stand the movie.

And I think that is the honest response, actually. There is something almost admirable about a film so certain of what it is, so entirely unbothered by whether you are on board or not. But admiration and enjoyment are not the same thing, and I have sat through enough films that I respect without warming to, like some of the more formally demanding work I have covered from that same era, to know the difference. The cult of Rocky Horror is real, and I would never begrudge anyone their midnight rituals. It just turns out my midnight rituals do not involve fishnet stockings and a glitter cannon. Each to their own.

Rating: ★  | Year: 1975  | Watched: 2025-07-17

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Trailer

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More with Tim Curry: Muppet Treasure Island (1996) · Clue (1985)
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