The Rocky Horror Picture Show
HORROR-THON 2020 • POD PEOPLE
10/10
DIRECTOR: Jim Sharman
RELEASED: 1975
STARRING: Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick
RUNTIME: 1 hour, 40 minutes
WATCH ON: Rent on Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango at Home
SCARE LEVEL: None
COSTUME INSPO LEVEL: Off the charts
This isn’t a horror movie. It’s a musical wearing horror’s clothes, and those clothes are fishnets. It made the Horror-Thon anyway, and it’s never coming off.
Clean-cut newly engaged couple Brad and Janet get a flat tire on a rainy night. They go looking for a phone and knock on the door of a castle, where a very specific party is underway. The host is Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a self-described sweet transvestite from Transexual, Transylvania.
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Tonight he’s unveiling his latest creation: Rocky, a blond, bronzed, gold-hot-panted man built in a lab for exactly one purpose.
From there it’s a delivery guy on a motorcycle (Meat Loaf, briefly), a dinner party where the entrée is a problem, a scientist in a wheelchair who’s not who he seems, and a floor show in full cabaret drag.
The butler and the maid turn out to be aliens with their own plan for Frank. The castle blasts off into space. Brad and Janet are left crawling in the dirt wondering what just happened.
MY HUMBLE OPINION
Tim Curry is the whole movie. He comes down that elevator in a cape, turns around, and owns the screen for the rest of the runtime. I don’t think anyone else could play Frank without looking like they are doing an impression of Tim Curry.
The wardrobe deserves its own post. Corset, pearls, garters, platform heels, lipstick on a man that looks better than any lipstick I could wear. Sue Blane’s costumes have been copied at every Halloween party since 1975, but no one has ever topped them. My sister and I even begged our parents to let us dress up as Columbia and Magenta - they never let us. With good reason.
It’s also a strange movie to watch on a couch. Rocky Horror is meant for a packed theater at midnight, with people yelling the lines back at the screen and throwing toast. At home, you notice the pace drags between songs, Brad is the most boring person alive, and Time Warp is suspiciously early.
Doesn’t matter. Susan Sarandon’s big number in her slip is a good time. Meat Loaf gets an ice pick. I’d still watch this any time, any day, any place.
Fun fact for your next dinner party
Patricia Quinn only took the role in the play because she loved “Science Fiction - Double Feature.” She was so upset when she didn’t get to sing the song in the movie, she agreed to lip-sync the words as the pair of red lips in the beginning.