The Rocky Horror Picture Show
1975
Jim Sharman
I used to have a big hardback copy of The Guinness Book of World Records when I was a kid. It was probably 1998ish. One of the records, I remember clearly, had something to do with The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Something like "Longest Running Cult Movie" or whatever (I don't pretend to know the veracity of any of the records in this book). There was a big picture of Tim Curry in drag, and a description that spoke of crazed theater nerds yelling at the movie as they watched it, and even throwing toast at each other. It was an intriguing read.
But my interest in what the fuck it all meant has always been pretty low-simmering. It's not like I rushed off to rent The Rocky Horror Picture Show from Blockbuster or anything (what my father would have said, I don't even want to consider). But it's always stuck in my mind. What the fuck is this thing? The film is even featured on a proto version of this movie list from 2010. And before that, of course, I was in two different theater organizations (high school, college), and so of course people in those crews were at the very least familiar with the film, if not total worshippers. Yes, I remember sitting in an on-campus townhouse in 2008, very drunk, and very confused as a group of my peers got up and danced to the "Time Warp."
One of those peers, Allison N***, is still one of my good friends, and is also a PoYB contributor, so I hit her up with the question, here in 2022, after finally having watched one of her (I assume) favorite movies (but not the favorite). The question: What the fuck is the deal with The Rocky Horror Picture Show?
It's a very silly movie, and dare I say after one single viewing, completely fucking nonsensical. Sure, you can look up the "plot" on Wikipedia, but c'mon, tell me with a straight face that any character does anything in this movie that makes any sense whatsoever. Like, I don't even know where to begin. Why does Dr. Frank-N-Furter need to create Rocky if he can seemingly seduce anyone he wants? And why does he kill Meat Loaf? And why are these people here? Is it a cult? Why are all the main characters in drag now? Is the RKO tower supposed to be a King Kong reference? And what the fuck is everyone singing about? What the fuck is a "time warp"?
Okay, the last two questions are both a cheat and the answer to the rest of the questions. I get it. This is a musical. Nothing has to make sense, plot-wise, because everything happens in service of the music. You don't have to make sense of the Time Warp, you just have to know that this is a phrase that signals the whole cast to get up and do a synchronized dance. It's unfair to me to single out Rocky Horror for its so-called flaws when it's literally a feature of every other musical out there.
Which is fine, but then so why the fucking cult following? That's really what I'm here to find out. And that led to a hypothesis: Is Rocky Horror only popular because of the cult scene surrounding it, or is it actually a good movie? In other words, is the only way I could ever appreciate this film by attending a midnight screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show and throw rice at the performers and wear lipstick and yell obscenities and all that good stuff? I needed to know if I was doing a disservice to the movie by watching it in my living room on a Tuesday night, at a reasonable hour, with my heterosexual wife, both she and I dressed in our normal garb.
So then Allison goes ahead and dismisses the theory: "I honestly prefer watching it at home to seeing it in theaters. I find the fans and pageantry distracting!" Seems like I can't use that as an excuse. Pam said the same thing too—she's been to a couple Rocky Horror screenings (one of them with Allison, I think), and her impression was that they were sort of fun at best. Nothing life changing. Would I have fun? Probably. I like getting drunk and being obnoxious and crossdressing. But I don't know if I would necessarily enjoy the movie more after the experience.
If that's not the reason, though, then why? Here's Allison again with her own explanation: "I think part of why I like it so much is that I saw it when I was an impressionable young weirdo, and it was so bizarre and sexual and unlike anything I had seen before. And the music was really fun. And then I had friends who liked it, and liking that movie (and other niche pop culture) became a personality trait for a while."
Sometimes the simplest answer is the best answer. It's the answer we came to again and again during the Your Favorite Movie interviews—there is a time in our lives when we are most susceptible to being blown away by unexpected art, and when it happens, we hang onto that art for the rest of our lives, beyond adolescence and well into adulthood.
I can totally see this film being that type of experience for a young preteen. I opened this blog post with evidence that this very film was, in an extremely tangential way, such an experience for me as well, so of course I get it. So this means that my negative perception of Rocky Horror is just me being a cranky mid-30s dude who missed the boat. Not the first time that's happened, and it won't be the last as I'm going through this movie list, but it's still disappointing.
There are other reasons why it might have missed the mark. As I said, I have low opinions of musicals that are turned into movies but don't function like I believe a movie should, plot- and character-wise. I also think that my opinions of "watching bad art for fun" tend toward the negative. Rocky Horror is designed as a spoof of B-movie sci-fi films. That definitely explains a lot, i.e. that Rocky Horror is bad by design because it's poking fun of movies that are bad. But I push back against that notion more often than not; there is too much good art out there to enjoy that I usually regret having to purposefully indulge in bad art. Exceptions? Definitely. Rocky Horror, despite the fact that there is at least one additional level to its "badness," is not an exception.
So I accept defeat, with a caveat: despite my feelings about this film and my disappointment in finding it so lackluster, I will absolutely jump at the chance to attend a midnight screening at some point in my life. I promise to be a good little boy and participate fully and let out the theater nerd that I know is still hidden deep within me.
GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5
NEXT TIME: We're back to the alphabet, and are going to watch Lawrence of Arabia. It's just... it's a three-hour-plus movie. We haven't watched any movies at all since the baby arrived. I sincerely don't know how I'm going to fit it in. But I will eventually! See you back in this column in a few weeks/months!
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