The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Right, I'll just come out and say it: The Rocky Horror Picture Show makes my skin crawl. One star. I've sat with that verdict, I've second-guessed it, and I keep landing in the same place. This film is not for me. Not even slightly.

I know exactly what you're thinking. "It's a cult classic." "You don't get it." "You have to see it live, with the audience." Maybe all of that is true. I'm willing to accept that I might be the wrong person in the wrong room for this one. But here's the thing: I can acknowledge a cultural phenomenon and still find it genuinely unbearable to sit through, and that's precisely where I've landed with Rocky Horror.

From the moment the screen filled with fishnets, something in my gut tightened and never relaxed. There's a particular flavour of deliberately absurdist, camp chaos that certain films pull off and I adore them for it. I've got real affection for Clue, for instance, which leans hard into its own daftness with a kind of gleeful, controlled anarchy. Rocky Horror, though, felt to me like chaos for chaos's sake, glitter thrown at the wall and celebrated regardless of whether any of it sticks.

The singing is enormous and over the top, which I understand is precisely the point. The acting is deliberately absurd, which again, intentional. The plot is a surreal, logic-free carnival ride that explicitly asks you to throw your hands up and go with it. And normally I can do that. I can meet a film on its own strange terms. Here, though, the terms felt like a contract I couldn't bring myself to sign. Two hours of this musical madness felt less like a party I'd wandered into and more like a punishment I couldn't see the end of.

Part of me wonders if the experience is so bound up in the ritual of it, the audience participation, the callbacks, the dressing up, the communal midnight energy, that watching it in any normal context strips it of whatever magic it's supposed to have. Maybe the film itself was never really the point. Maybe it's always been a vessel, a reason to gather, and the actual footage on screen is almost incidental. If that's the case, then judging it as a film feels beside the point, but then again, a film is what I watched, and a film is what I'm reviewing.

I respect Tim Curry's commitment enormously. I'll give him that without hesitation. He throws himself into it completely and there's no half-measures from him at any point. But commitment to a bit, however total, doesn't automatically make the bit land for every viewer. And for me, it didn't land once.

I respect the legacy. I genuinely do. I understand why generations of misfits and outsiders have taken Rocky Horror to their hearts, and I think there's something beautiful about a film creating that kind of community and belonging. The fans are wonderful. The phenomenon is fascinating. The film, for me personally, was close to agony.

Maybe I'm not in on the joke. Maybe I am the joke. Either way, I couldn't stand it, and I'd rather be honest about that than pretend otherwise for the sake of cultural credibility. One star.

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

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Related on Movies With Macca

More with Tim Curry: Muppet Treasure Island (1996) · Clue (1985)
More from United Kingdom: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) · Blue (1993)
More from the 1970s: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Here and Elsewhere (1976) · Italianamerican (1974) · Punishment Park (1971)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
More science fiction: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Fantastic Planet (1973) · Nightmare City (1980) · The Long Walk (2025)