The Rocky Horror Picture Show at 50: A Retrospective

If I may, let me take you back to the early ‘90s where I grew up in Ipswich in the east of England. To me, Tim Curry was just the manic butler from Clue and Richard O’Brien was the irreverent host of The Crystal Maze, poking fun at a bunch of contestants in jump suits trying to win a paint-balling weekend in Swindon. The “Time Warp” was something people did at wedding parties when they were drunk enough to hit the dance floor, usually wedged into the DJ’s set somewhere between Black Lace’s “Superman” and the “Grease Megamix.”

My taste in movies was pretty standard in those days, but then I found The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I was conscious of it from the VHS box at the local video rental store, but I’d always taken the title at face value. So it blew my tiny little mind when I recorded a late screening on TV one night and finally sat down to watch it.

Not only was Rocky Horror a raucous musical with an outsider edge, it paid homage to a lot of the classic sci-fi and horror flicks I loved as a kid – “Science Fiction/Double Feature” may well be the greatest song about movies ever written. At the centre of it all, you also had Tim Curry absolutely rocking the joint in stockings and suspenders.  Or “serving c**t,” as I believe is the correct terminology today.

Beyond the great tunes and wicked naughtiness, Rocky Horror really spoke to me as a shy teenager. I got such a kick out of Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s outrageous self-confidence and I really took one line to heart in a way perhaps different from how it was intended: “Don’t dream it, be it.” It might sound lame, but that made me push myself to be more outgoing at a time when I could barely speak to a stranger and my social anxiety was really upsetting me. I can honestly say that without that kick up the backside, I might not be sitting here in the Czech Republic writing this article now. I’d probably still be back in Ipswich clinging to my mum’s apron strings and working a regular job instead.

I couldn’t wait to show the movie to my little sister and it wasn’t long before we knew all the songs and were constantly quoting lines to each other. I recall watching it with her in the living room one day when my dad came in. It was just at the moment when Frank flings off his cape and reveals his full glory during “Sweet Transvestite.” My dad was mortified. “What on Earth are you two watching?” He said, and stormed off into the garden to do something in the shed.

We were pretty tickled by this and needless to say we didn’t bother trying to involve dad when we got into Hedwig and the Angry Inch several years later. It was my gateway into the weird world of cult cinema and his reaction sums up why Rocky Horror regularly appears near the top of cult movie lists. It’s a movie that, if you buy into it, it makes you feel like you’re part of a special club. But if it’s not your thing, there’s every chance you might even react badly to it.

Not only is Rocky Horror a cult movie, it’s also a queer cult movie, which I have no doubt also contributed to my dad’s horrified reaction. He’s not overtly homophobic or transphobic, but he is from an older generation and it’s safe to say this kind of movie isn’t his cup of tea. Queer culture wasn’t very well represented on our TV or cinema screens back then, nor on the streets of a provincial town like Ipswich, so finding his kids watching it made him feel deeply uncomfortable.

These memories of my early relationship with Rocky Horror tap into what made it such a cult success in the ‘70s, and also why some people within the LGBQT+ community consider it problematic today. But more on those points later.

In case you have somehow read all this and don’t actually know what The Rocky Horror Picture Show is about, here’s a rundown of the plot. Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) and Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon) are two very square high school sweethearts attending the wedding of their friends. This prompts Brad to pop the question to Janet, and they decide to celebrate their engagement by heading off to tell their science teacher Dr Scott (Jonathan Adams) all about it. That’s how square they are.

On the way they get caught in a storm with a flat tire and venture out through the night to a nearby castle to seek assistance. They arrive in the middle of a celebration; the house’s master, mad scientist and sexually adventurous alien Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry), has unlocked the secret of life and is just about to unveil his new creation to his “unconventional conventionists.”

Stripped of their wet clothing and invited to stay the night, Brad and Janet witness the birth of Rocky (Peter Hinwood), a blonde Adonis in very tight gold shorts designed for Frank’s carnal pleasure. This doesn’t go down very well with his servants Riff Raff (Richard O’Brien) and Magenta (Patricia Quinn), nor Columbia (Little Nell), one of Frank’s former lovers who still holds a candle for him. 

Frank has a voracious sexual appetite and swings just about every way. He sets about seducing both Janet and Brad, unlocking desires hidden within both of them. But it’s never easy having a good time and things take a turn with the accidental defrosting and murder of Eddie (Meat Loaf), another of Frank’s old flings.

After cannibalising Eddie’s corpse for dinner, Frank and his guests perform a floor show. By this stage, Riff Raff and Magenta have had enough and decide they want to return to their home planet of Transsexual. They zap Frank to death for his crimes and the humans manage to escape from the castle before it blasts off into outer space.

It’s a pretty wacky premise that pays homage to classic horror films like The Old Dark House and Frankenstein while also name-checking many sci-fi movies of the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s. We also get regular utaways to Charles Gray as The Narrator, who drily fills us in on the details and teaches us the steps to the “Time Warp.”

Add a large dollop of rock ‘n’ roll, Steve Reeves muscle movies, sex farce, cross-dressing, and ‘70s glam, and it was a far cry from all those glossy MGM musicals I’d grown up with as a kid. This was both a curse and a blessing for the movie when The Rocky Horror Picture Show first opened in 1975.

It all started with Richard O’Brien, an out-of-work actor who had appeared as a stuntman in Carry on Cowboy and Casino Royale. In between jobs, he started writing a musical to keep himself busy on long winter evenings, drawing from his love of old sci-fi and horror movies. Initially called They Came From Denton High, O’Brien showed the unfinished work to his friend and theatre director Jim Sharman.

Sharman loved it, suggested changing the title to The Rocky Horror Show, and arranged to stage it in a tiny space above the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, London. Holding just over 60 people, it was known as Upstairs and was given over to more experimental and left-field productions. It was the perfect place for a transgressive new rock musical.

When it came to casting, the most crucial was finding someone for the role of Dr Frank-N-Furter, Fortunately, Richard O’Brien bumped into Tim Curry, a then unknown actor who he had worked with previously on a London production of Hair. Curry’s evolution of the character was also serendipitious. Originally playing Frank with a German accent, he found the right note after hearing a woman speaking with a faux-posh accent and deciding: “Yes, he should speak like the Queen.”

O’Brien himself took the role of Riff Raff, Frank’s not-so-loyal butler, and the original cast also included a few actors who would end up in the feature film version a few years later: Patricia Quinn as Magenta, Nell “Little Nell” Campbell as Colombia; and Jonathan Adams, who played the Narrator in the stage version but switched to the role of wheelchair-bound Dr. Everett Scott in the movie.

The Rocky Horror Show premiered in June 1973 and became an instant hit, earning rave reviews and winning the Evening Standard’s Best Musical award. Tim Curry was especially singled out for his performance. The success meant that the troupe needed a new venue, upgrading to the Chelsea Classic Cinema before finding a permanent home for the next six years at the 500-seater Kings Road Theatre. It was at the latter that record producer Lou Adler saw the show and snapped up the U.S. theatrical rights.

Only Curry from the original London cast appeared when the show made its Stateside debut in the Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles in March 1974. It ran for nine months and it was just as popular with American audiences as it was back home in the UK. Gordon Stulburg of 20th Century Fox loved it too, and the studio offered Adler an initial budget of around $1 million to make a feature film version. The stage production would continue to grow in stature, playing in front of 1000-people crowds on Broadway and new versions popping up in other U.S. cities and Australia. Not bad for a fringe musical originally written as a lark just to kill a bit of time.

Jim Sharman was in the director’s chair and Fox’s only real demand was that he cast some American actors for the audience across the pond. In came Barry Bostwick (who had previously played Danny Zuko in the original production of Grease) and a young actress called Susan Sarandon to play Brad and Janet respectively.

Other notable additions were a young singer and actor called Meat Loaf to play Eddie, reprising the role from the L.A. and Broadway productions; Peter Hinwood as Rocky; and Charles Gray as the Narrator. A few years earlier, Gray had played the campiest iteration of Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever, a popular entry for LGBQT+ readings of the Bond franchise, and his presence certainly ups the queer quotient.

Filming of The Rocky Horror Picture Show took place in the UK over six weeks between October and December 1974. While interiors were shot in Bray Studios and Elstree Studios, one major location set had appropriate horror connections: Oakley Court, a rundown gothic pile near Hammer studios that had appeared in The Innocents, stood in for Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s mansion. Conditions in the house were cold and wet, with rain sometimes coming in through what was left of the roof – not ideal for the actors, who spent most of the shoot dressed in just their undies. Susan Sarandon came down with a nasty bout of pneumonia and, to make matters worse, her trailer where she would huddle to keep warm caught on fire.

Things inevitably got cut due to the modest budget, and sometimes it was to the film’s benefit. The opening sequence with “Science Fiction/Double Feature” was originally intended to accompany clips from the movies referenced, but acquiring the rights proved too costly. Instead, we got the iconic red lips set against the black background, with the mouth provided by Patricia Quinn miming to Richard O’Brien’s vocals.

The film was released in August 1975 in the UK and a month later in the United States. Although signs were encouraging in Los Angeles, it flopped at the box office and was withdrawn due to poor attendance. Fox tried a different angle, releasing it as a double-bill with Brian De Palma’s The Phantom of the Paradise, but it still failed to take off.

Luckily, the early-to-mid ‘70s was the era of the Midnight Movie, with left-field choices like El Topo, Pink Flamingos, and Reefer Madness playing well to late-night crowds and giving birth to the concept of a cult flick. Once The Rocky Horror Picture Show found its home at the Waverly Theater in New York in 1976, it began its ascent to become one of the greatest cult films ever made.

Chiming with an alternative audience, the cult following of Rocky Horror is now the stuff of legend. It perhaps isn’t surprising that it did so well in that late time spot – not only did it give people a chance to get a little loosened up in advance, it’s a movie that always feels like you should watch it when the squares are all safely tucked up in bed.

Screenings developed a life of their own. The soundtrack would play before the film rolled to generate a party atmosphere and people would see it over and over – one superfan claims he has watched it more than 1300 times. Some started dressing up as the characters, cheering the heroes, and booing the villains. The moment audiences started riffing on the movie is even etched in Rocky Horror lore. On Labour Day weekend 1976, regular attendee Louis Farese responded to the sight of Janet walking in the rain with a newspaper over her head by shouting: “Buy an umbrella, you cheap bitch!”

Since that point, callbacks are customary with well-worn responses becoming part of the repertoire, as have props that fans bring along to use during certain moments: Rice to toss around in the wedding scene; water pistols to squirt during the rainstorm; rubber marigold gloves to snap at the same time as Frank; and hot dogs to throw whenever someone says “hot dog.”

These raucous events spread to other cities and the phenomenon has grown over the decades, with members of the community doing whole fan-casts in front of the screen and live floor shows during the movie. The midnight screenings also turned a flop into an unlikely hit. The Rocky Horror Picture Show went on to gross over $170 million worldwide and become the longest continually-running film release ever – thanks to 20th Century Fox’s policy of making archival movies available to theatres at any time, it is technically still in its initial release.

Rocky Horror has even survived Disney’s acquisition of Fox in 2019 – that’s right, Dr. Frank-N-Furter is now part of the House of Mouse stable, but I guess we shouldn’t expect floor shows at Disney World anytime soon. After the takeover, the company began archiving classic Fox movies in the Disney Vault, but Rocky Horror was one exception. Disney has cordially agreed to allow midnight repertory screenings and fan-based material to continue.

50 years later, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is still a quintessential cult movie. Like many others in the strange subgenre, it doesn’t always stand up as a typically good film. The pacing is all over the place, it creaks from one scene to the next, and there is a lot of dead air between musical numbers. Richard O’Brien recalls how one fan thanked him for leaving spaces in the dialogue so audiences could respond during screenings. That was certainly not the intention, but rather a combination of wobbly direction and erratic editing. But we don’t watch cult movies to see a perfectly polished masterpiece; we come for that undefinable X-factor that makes it a cult flick in the first place. Rocky Horror still has that in spades.

Cult movies come and go – only a very select crowd would turn out at midnight to watch El Topo these days, for example – and I think part of Rocky Horror’s enduring popularity is its inclusivity. Sure, it might upset some people like my dad, but it invites everyone to join the fun. Just compare its sensibility to that of Pink Flamingos, released the year before. Both are low-budget, grungy, aimed at outsiders, and centre around a man in drag, but the difference can be summed up in two quotes:

Babs Johnson (Pink Flamingos): “Kill everyone now! Condone first-degree murder! Advocate cannibalism! Eat shit! Filth is my politics! Filth is my life!”

Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Rocky Horror): “Give yourself over to absolute pleasure. Swim the warm waters of sins of the flesh. Erotic nightmares beyond any measure, and sensual daydreams to treasure forever. Can't you just see it? Don't dream it, be it…”

John Waters and Divine were abrasively trying to subvert the norm and antagonise as many of the right people as they could manage. Frankie threw open his cape and asked people of every gender and sexual preference to loosen up a bit. Many accepted the invite to the extent that Rocky Horror has now fully entered regular pop culture with a whole episode of Glee devoted to it, and a made-for-TV remake with transgender actress Laverne Cox stepping into Tim Curry’s platform heels.

Which brings us to how perceptions of Rocky Horror have changed over half a century, particularly with queer viewers. The above examples reveal how, in our current era of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Frankie and the gang have been thoroughly embraced by a wider audience. But there is plenty of blog space and podcast minutes devoted to how attitudes within the LGBQT+ community have changed negatively towards the film.

It should be remembered that Rocky Horror originally came out six years after the Stonewall Uprising in 1969, when the patrons of a popular gay bar in New York City grew sick of homophobic and violent raids by cops and fought back. It was a landmark moment of civil disobedience and the first Pride March took place in the city the following summer.

Just a few years later, The Rocky Horror Picture Show was groundbreaking in the sense that it brought queer themes into the relative mainstream – it may have performed poorly at first, but let’s not forget it was released by a major Hollywood studio. What was more, its queer characters – in particular Frank-N-Furter – weren’t cuddly, sympathetic, or figures of fun. They were punk, they were glam, they were edgy and promiscuous, but they were also very cool and welcomed everyone to the party. Come on in, the movie said. You might find something you like. Or something you didn’t know you liked. Or just have fun, whatever floats your boat.

Elements of Rocky Horror haven’t always sat easily with the LGBTQ+ community, especially in more recent times. Some see it as outright problematic regarding Frank’s behaviour – not only does he adhere to Divine’s manifesto by indulging in murder and cannibalism, he basically forces himself on Brad and Janet. The blow is softened because they both enjoy their tryst and Janet is liberated from her buttoned-up attitudes, seemingly ready to explore her sexuality to the full. But Brad is conflicted (“It’s beyond me, help me mommy!”) and, no matter which way you slice it, the seduction scenes are sexual assault because Frank initiates both encounters assertively and under false pretences.

Some modern viewers interpret this forceful seduction as perpetuating the troubling old trope of portraying queer characters as predatory and/or perverted, presenting danger and perhaps seeking to “turn” straight people. While I can’t recommend sitting through the entire Laverne Cox version, it is interesting to see how the seductions have been slightly tweaked for a modern sensibility.

Then there are issues surrounding the outdated terms transvestite, transsexual, and what Frank actually represents. As with any group in society, the language in which the queer community defines itself has evolved and become more diverse over the past 50 years. It hasn’t helped that Richard O’Brien, who identifies as third gender, has gone on record with derogatory comments about transgender women and made himself look like a bit of a dinosaur. Even so, the more balanced content creators and critics tend to acknowledge that, while some elements have dated badly, Rocky Horror is still a landmark moment in queer cinema that has contributed significantly to the normalisation of the LGBTQ+ community.

Sadly, I have yet to enjoy the full-on midnight movie experience of The Rocky Horror Picture Show on the big screen, but I have seen a stage version. It was here in Brno a few years back when my partner’s parents came to visit. We decided to take them to a local theatre production as a surprise.

And what a surprise it was! Neither of them had seen the show or the movie before and it was all in Czech. I don’t know why we thought it was a good idea; language aside, her folks are very conservative. They’re basically a British version of what Brad and Janet would have turned out like if they hadn’t stumbled upon Frankie’s castle that dark and stormy night.

I was sitting next to her dad in that tiny performance space and I could feel the mortification and disapproval radiating from every atom of his being. It was awkward as hell but I did take some satisfaction – we never really got along and I received a sense of devilish glee from seeing him so uncomfortable. Maybe that’s bad of me, but it goes to show one thing: Even after all these years, Rocky Horror has lost none of its cult power to delight, liberate, and titillate some, and totally freak out others.

So there you have it, our look back at The Rocky Horror Picture Show as it celebrates its 50th anniversary. Are you a regular Frankie fan, and how does it hold up for you? Let us know!