The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Cult movie and collective rock-camp ritual
A box-office flop when it was released in 1975, The Rocky Horror Picture Show has since gained a fervent fan following on a global scale, becoming the quintessential cult live “Sing Along”.
For four decades, audiences, dressed as the characters in this camp rendition of the Frankenstein myth, have gathered in cinemas, theatres and dive bars all over the world, to sing, act and dance to this amazing musical.
I myself have participated in these liberating rituals, as a frequenter of all sing along at the Prince Charles Cinema in London, at my performance of Brad on a shabby stage in Portland, Oregon (No, there is no photographic evidence because it was 4 a.m. and my claque was asleep on the chairs).
Larry Viezel, President of the The Rocky Horror Picture Show Official Fan Club Lamenting the loss of these gathering moments due to the Covid 19 pandemic, he says: “For many people, Rocky Horror is like their home, it's their connection to everyone - all their friends”, .... “I know of many people whose lives were saved by this film. Especially for those in the LGBT community, it's a place where they could be themselves and find people who were their family to be. I want people to still have a place to be” ( The Rocky Horror Picture Show: The film that's saved lives).
The Rocky Horror Picture Show first came to life in 19 73 as a musical show in the tiny studio above London's Royal Court Theatre. It was there, according to mythology, that David Bowie's first wife Angie gave the first input to audience participation when she shouted “No, don't do that!” as creator Richard O'Brien's Riff-Raff threatened to hit Tim Curry's Dr Frank-N-Furter with a laser gun.
O'Brien, who played the hunchbacked butler and Time Warp dancer Riff-Raff, recalls the view from the stage on opening night. “There was a big electrical storm and Vincent Price was sitting in the audience under the skylight. The lightning flashed and lit him up. I thought, ‘Fuck, this is a good omen!'” The theatre was full and sweaty. “There wasn't an inch free. We had a microphone hanging from the ceiling, and it was swinging over the heads of the audience” (Interview -Rocky Horror's Richard O'Brien: ‘I should be dead. I've had an excessive lifestyle’).
The show was an immediate success and first transferred to West End theatres and then to Los Angeles. its film spin-off was a real flop with audiences and critics. The American film critic Roger Ebert in his original review of 1976, rated with two and a half stars, wrote: “The Rocky Horror Picture Show would be funnier, I suspect, if it were not a film. It belongs on a stage, with the performers and the audience joining in a collective parody”.
Nevertheless, its film version has become the cult film par excellence, dominating the late-night circuit and inspiring devotees to turn up weekend after weekend in wigs, corsets, fishnet stockings and whips.
We could only inaugurate the first appointment of the Cinequeer (if you want details come to our party), with the musical rock-camp par excellence. Finally back to the collective ritual!
