THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW - Give yourself over to absolute pleasure

Author's Rating:

Pros: Great music! Nay - awesome music!

Cons: Your Rocky enjoyment will greatly depend on how down you are with bad movies

The Bottom Line: 
Is Rocky for everyone? No - but if you don't mind loosening up your sexual inhibitions and don't mind having some fun, then let yourself go for absolute pleasure

Author's Review
I'm kind of shocked that it's taken me - a lover of bad movies and exploitation flicks - this long to finally getting around to reviewing the Rocky Horror Picture Show. If you were to look up "Cult Classic" in the dictionary, the definition would be "See: Rocky Horror". Released back in 1975 by a befuddled 20th Century Fox, this rock and roll musical fantasy flick opened to negative reviews and no box office draw and promptly flopped. Rocky would have sunk beneath the cinematic waves if it hadn't been for one young enterprising young advertising executive, who organized an midnight showing on April Fools' Day at the Waverly Theater. The manager of the Waverly, who had several successful midnight runs of El Topo and Night of The Living Dead, began playing the soundtrack before the show and getting folks warmed worked up into a party like atmosphere.

The audiences began to respond - by booing the villain and cheering the heroes and so on. It wasn't a until a little bit later where people to would begin to shout counterpoint dialogue back at the screen. And of course at the Halloween costume party, there was no looking back. Suddenly Rocky took off like an . . . um - rocket, and continues to play world wide to this day, with fans singing along with the cast, dancing in the aisles, dressing like characters and replicating on-screen action with props brought from home.

The plot is pretty standard B-movie fare: All-American couple Brad and Janet (Barry "I was in Megaforce" Bostwick and Susan "Breath through your eyes" Sarandon) get a flat tire on a loney country road in the middle of a rainstorm. The pair seek refuge in a creepy castle they saw back up the road a couple of miles, the home (homo?) of Doctor Frank N. Furter (Played by Tim Curry's sneer), just a sweet transvestite from the planet Transsexual in the galaxy of Transylvania. The pair have arrived on a very special night, as Frank is about to unveil his latest creation, a blond muscle man named Rocky (Peter Hinwood, who pretty much had his career sunk by this film). Awash with strangeness at every turn, suddenly Brad and Janet find themselves thrust into a world of lust and vice and sexuality beyond either of their wildest imaginations - and life will never be the same. . . .

Part comedy, part rock opera, part burlesque show, part horror B-movie, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is not for everyone - but then if it was, it wouldn't have been a flop all those years ago, would it? It's bawdy, it's blasphemous, it's loud and colorful, it's raunchy and it's just plain fun. While the plot is more or less non-existent, the music is catchy and downright addictive - and despite its b-movie trappings, really, really good (my first real exposure to Meat Loaf was via my years as a cast member in Rocky).

When you get right down to it, the movie is cheap, gaudy camp with audacious acting and b-movie dialogue. Why then has it lasted for so long?

I think it's because Richard O'Brian managed to skillfully construct a love letter to the monster movies of old - invoking King Kong, Flash Gordon, The Invisible Man and so on - and melding them into his lewd rock opera. Beyond being just a simple homage, Richard uses it as a starting point for the very personal feelings of alienation and sexual confusion. It's an honest attempt at dealing with the tough sexual and social issues of the seventies - a openness of homosexuality, and a tolerance for sexual expression in a era where it was tough to be gay. It's a coming of age for socially confused youngsters and a right of initiation,- what is felt on screen is mirrored in the hearts of the fans. In short, it's a movie that says 'Don't dream it, be it'.

I think that Rocky's greatest strength is also its weakness. Once you take the film out of it's natural environment - the midnight showing, complete with rowdy audience throwing toast - some of fun is lost. The energy of the crowd goes a long way to filling in some of the deficiencies of the movie. Viewed without the midnight sideshow, it's simply a fun and goofy musical filled with pleasure and vice and some old school rock and roll, and those that dismiss it out of hand for it's themes do Rocky a great disservice.

THE DVD -
The DVD of the Rocky Horror Picture Show looks amazing, far better than any theatrical print I've seen - dust, scratches, cigarette reel change burns are all gone. The colors look great and are nice and sharp. Considering the vintage and low budget nature of the film, that the DVD should look so good is astounding. And of course we get an anamorphic Widescreen that looks to be about the right aspect ratio of 1.66:1.

The sound is a Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound, and while I don't approve of an artificial 5.1 mix where there is none, Rocky sounds great, and the surround sound capabilities shine of the audience participation track really shines.

I should also mention that we get two different versions of the film here. The American version and the slightly longer UK version print. I'll save you the trouble of watching the two and trying to9 figure out the difference - the UK version includes the song Superheroes at the very end and a different bed of music under the end credits. Honestly, if I was going to watch just one, skip the American version and go UK.

THE EXTRAS -
Fox serves up the goods with a wonderful two disc set. For starters, disc One sports commentary by writer/actor/Rocky God Richard O'Brien and actress Patricia Quinn. Mellow and laid back the two offer insight into both the movie and the original stage production and have just a good time watching their movie. The next set of extras on the disc is where the gold of the set are.

While nothing will quite recreate the true Rocky Horror movie going experience (aside from inviting 500 of your closest friends over for movies and arming them with rice and squirt guns), Fox has done their level best to make the DVD as close to the midnight experience as possible. The booklet provides you with a list of props you'll need on hand, plus a subtitle track prompting you when to throw the toast or when to put the newspaper over your head. Then when you turn on the Theatrical Experience feature, whenever a pair of lips appears on screen, when you hit enter you'll get a rocky fan cast performing in front of the screen.

If that's too much work for you, turn on the second audio commentary track, which featuring an introduction from Rocky fan club president Sal Piro before running turning your rear channel speakers over to an extremely vocal RHPS audience who then proceed to spend the rest of the movie shouting back at the screen and performing their own dialogue. This is a pretty accurate recreation of seeing Rocky in the theatre, since most of this track is pretty unintelligible.

The remainder of disc one is an assortment of DVD-ROM features, including an timeline to Rocky accurate as of up to a couple of years ago, a trivia game, a story generator, a "jump to a song" jukebox feature, some bios on cast and crew and a handful of Rocky weblinks (probably out of date, by now). There's also an Easter egg, that allows you to view the film as originally intended - with the opening 20 minutes entirely in black and white until Riff Raff opens the door to reveal the Transylvanians doing the Time Warp.

Meanwhile, over on disc two we get an hour long documentary on the genesis of Rocky and it's progression from stage to film to cult icon. It's a pretty comprehensive history of the film with interviews from all the cast members (save for Peter Hinwood, who washed his hands of Rocky and walked away in disgust after the movie went cult and torpedoed his career). besides the documentary, we get plenty of face time from just about everyone in the film, some excerpts from VH1's Behind the Music, a "Where Are They Now" feature, including O'Brien, Quinn, Susan Sarandon, Meat loaf and Barry Bostwick. There's also a pop-up video version of Hot Patootie and a karaoke version of Sweet Transvestite and Toucha Toucha Touch Me.

That's not all! There are two additional musical numbers - Superheroes and the seldom seen Once In a While. While I think I prefer the Superheroes ending over the domestic, Once in A While was the wrong tone and would have dragged the film down. While it's cool to see it here, it was wise to leave this on the cutting room floor.

Then we get the misprint ending that swaps the dialogue from the US version running over footage from the UK version - fun for the novelty of getting the Man With No Neck's narration over the footage for Superheroes, but not that interesting. There's the alternate ending that rolls the credits over the Time Warp, a ton of photos and promotional material, a dozen outtakes (fun for seeing the musical numbers performed without the music, but not much else), and two theatrical trailers.

Whew. As you can see - we get a pretty comprehensive package. Probably the only thing left out of the mix is the trailer to Shock Treatment, the not nearly as well received sequel to Rocky.

THE BOTTOM LINE -
While it's been years since I've been in the cast of my local Rocky Horror (what - this comes as a big shock to you?), the movie has not lost any of its charm. Sweet Transvestite still kicks ass, I still get the urge to ride my air bike when Eddie busts out of the deep freeze, and I still cant help but occasional throw a call back or two to the television. While I probably wont ever go see the film in the theaters again (Rocky is not a world for the middle aged), I'm happy to have this DVD in my collection.