tek's rating:

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (R)
20th Century Studios; IMDb; official fan site; Rotten Tomatoes; TCM; TV Tropes; Wikia; Wikipedia
review sites: Badmovies.org; Council of Geeks; Dread Central; PopHorror
streaming sites: Amazon; Google Play; Hulu; iTunes; Movies Anywhere; Vudu; YouTube

Um... I guess this is based on a stage show, of which I've never seen any production. But maybe I will someday, who knows? The movie came out in 1975 (the year I was born), but the first time I ever saw it, I think, was in 1998 or so. I knew there was this whole tradition about people watching it... the stage show or the movie, I dunno... and the way they act... Whatever. It's a weird cult thing, and the movie contains plenty of elements that normally I wouldn't like, but I can totally get into the idea of just... letting go of how I normally feel about such things, and just enjoy the insanity of it all. I do remember the first time I watched it with... a friend of a friend... and we threw popcorn at the TV screen. That was fun. And... it's the kind of thing I see bits of on TV from time to time, but I haven't really watched it all the way through since then. Until Halloween 2011, so that's when I continue this review that I started in probably 2010, after an episode of Glee.

Okay... so, there's this couple named Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) and Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon). They get engaged after the wedding of a couple of friends of theirs. Then they're driving through a storm, planning to meet another old friend and former science teacher of theirs, Dr. Everett Scott. But they get a flat tire, and so they hike through the rain to a castle they'd passed awhile back. It turns out to belong to a scientist named Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry), who, along with his handyman, Riff Raff, and domestic, Magenta, and groupie, Columbia, are having a party, in celebration of Frank's Frankensteinlike creation... of a man named Rocky Horror. Who, btw, doesn't look anything like Frankenstein's monster. No, he's more of an Adonis. Brad and Janet just want to use the phone, but instead they get swept up in the complete insanity of Frank and all these other freaks. There's also a motorcycling bad boy named Eddie (Meat Loaf), and occasional cut-scenes to a "criminologist" who's acting as narrator of all this madness, and eventually Dr. Scott shows up.

I don't want to spoil any of the stuff that goes on, but... it'd be hard to do, anyway. It's just, you know, madness. And apparently some of the characters are from another planet. And there's a lot of sexuality, which normally I would find disturbing, but here it's kind of fun. Like I said in the first paragraph. Also there are a ton of fun songs, most notably "The Time Warp," which I also enjoyed on an episode of The Drew Carey Show. (Also enjoyed some songs from the movie in that episode of Glee that I mentioned.) Really, I don't know what else to say except to repeat that I love the insanity. (But not enough to give the movie a "loved" rating.)

The movie was remade for TV in 2016.


B-movies index
musical films index
Halloweenish movies
musicals

Novel: Frankenstein
(The following is a list of things I've seen or want to see. There have been countless other things that have adapted or parodied the novel.)

Adaptations: Frankenstein (1931) * The Curse of Frankenstein * Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Loose adaptations: Young Frankenstein * I, Frankenstein * Victor Frankenstein
Parodies: The Rocky Horror Picture Show * Frankenweenie (1984) * Transylvania 6-5000 * Mary Shelley's Frankenhole * Frankenweenie (2012)
Ensembles: The Munsters * Drak Pack * The Monster Squad * Van Helsing * Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl * Hotel Transylvania * Once Upon a Time * Penny Dreadful