I remember seeing the Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time. It was at the Village Theater in a suburban shopping center not far from my home. It was a small, one screen theater in Stockton, California back in 1976. Nothing like the 24 screen Imax megaplexes where movies are shown today. The owner, Joe Furfaro, put on a great show on Rocky Horror nights. You could see him in the background, smoking his pipe and keeping his well-run theater as neat as a pin. It was a neighborhood theatre with Joe's Pizza on one side and Tower Records (open till midnight) on the other. Everyone would show up loaded with toast, squirt guns and lighters, with audience participation being part of the show. Some even dressed for the occasion. You were expected to know all the lines and responses. The theatre even hired a guy to ride a Harley into the lobby, down the center aisle, in front of the screen and back out the aisle during the Meat Loaf scene. I could not even imagine the insurance ramifications of a corporate megaplex doing anything like that today. It just wouldn't happen. But this was a different place and time. A time with fewer rules and regulations.
I was just a high school kid with a football jersey and a muscle car. I knew nothing about transgender transexuals. Tim Curry in drag was just park of the scene back then and I accepted it. Just like Monty Pythons in drag on public TV. It was part of the culture. Nobody wanted to ban drag shows. At least not in Northern California. We were a lot less angry and a lot more accepting back in the 70s. Since then, we have really gone backwards.
In college I did Rocky Horror at the Varsity Theatre on Second Street, right down the street for the UC Davis campus. It was a classic art deco theater with one screen. They finally got a second screen during a remodeling in 2006. You would get your roommates and your classmates and head downtown at midnight, after a few beers at the Antique Bazaar Bar and Grille. There were no motorcycles inside the theater, but the gay community always had a big contingent there and the costumes were much better.
When Tim Curry died I decided to re-visit this classic movie. This time I would stream it at home. No theater. No audience participation. Nobody there but me. It was not the party I remember. Come to think of it, I had never seen the movie without the traditional audience participation before. This was a first. Maybe this was the movie that bombed during the first release, before it became a midnight movie.
Before watching the movie again, I streamed Strange Journey, the documentary about making Rocky Horror. When I was young, I really didn't think much about who created the movies I liked to watch. I didn't know back then that the guy who played Riff Raff, Richard O'Brien, also wrote the screenplay, the lyrics for the songs and was the creative force behind the movie and the preceding stage show. I didn't even know there was a stage show. How did a guy who grew up on a New Zealand sheep farm come up with a science fiction/horror script about a transgender Dr. Frankenstein from another galaxy. So Riff Raff was a Kiwi? Who knew?
In the documentary Patricia Quinn who played Magenta could have easily walked into a Senior Center anywhere in the country and gone unnoticed. O'Brien and Barry Bostwick looked much older as well. Tim Curry was actually in a wheelchair and would die shortly after the documentary was released. The documentary was actually directed by Linus O'Brien, Richard O'Brien's son. Maybe seeing our movie heroes age is not something you really want.
Not only were the stars of the movie of my youth much older now. I am much older now. Older, more world wise and more cynical. Watching Rocky Horror today is a different experience. If you remove the catchy dance moves, the rock and roll motorcycles and the audience participation, what you have left is a much darker movie. First of all, I recogized the narrator, Charles Gray, as the villain in a James Bond movie. Ernst Stavro Blofeld is standing on his desk teaching you how to dance the Time Warp complete with diagrams. This is just damned weird. Then he leads you into a story where Frank-N-Furter kills Eddie with an axe because he steals the spotlight, then poor Eddie is cooked and eaten in a cannibalistic feast. At the end of the movie, Riff Raff takes charge and then tells Frank-N-Furter that his 'mission' has failed because his lifestyle is too extreme. First he kills Columbia for no reason with a laser gun, then kills Frank-N-Furter in cold blood. OK. So Frank-N-Furter may be too extreme, but Columbia and Rocky are just innocents. Riff Raff seemed to be going along with the program until Frank-N-Furter started beating him with a whip. In the finale, Riff Raff kills all three of them and then transports himself, his incestuous sister and the whole bloody castle back to his home planet, leaving Brad, Janet and Dr. Scott confused in the burnt wreckage. Lost in time. Lost in space. what the F...?
This is not the celebration of gay and transgender culture and sexual freedom that it is supposed to be. Riff Raff is the epitome of the reactionary right in a finale worthy of a Sam Peckinpah western where almost everybody dies and the few witnesses left are confused by it all. Janet gets to witness the death of the first two men she ever has sex with. Dr. Scott is left to ponder the senseless death of his bad seed nephew. Then Brad, not very confident about his sexuality to begin with, seems even more confused. It makes you wonder how long this marriage will last and what will be brought up if they ever go to marriage counseling. Wow. No wonder OBrien put Shock Treatment, the non-sequel sequel, in a different universe with two entirely different Brads and Janets. Nobody really wants to see the next chapter in this dark story.
This is a journey I don't think I needed to take. The magic of Rocky Horror must take place in a theatre with a cooperative audience after midnight. Not streamed at home as a solo event. Another time. Another place. It can't be analyzed rationally. Don't dream it. Be it.