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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Ann Lee

‘Everybody was fondling underwater!’: the Rocky Horror Picture Show at 50 – an oral history

Patricia Quinn’s mouth featured in the opening credits of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Lip service … Patricia Quinn’s mouth featured in the opening credits of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Photograph: Allstar Picture Library Ltd/Alamy

The Rocky Horror Picture Show was released in cinemas in late 1975 with little fanfare, but the provocative musical, with its campy parody of sci-fi and horror B-movies, fabulous costumes and rollicking songs, dug its glittering heels in and refused to let go for the next 50 years.

The film was an adaptation of the hit musical The Rocky Horror Show, created by Richard O’Brien when he was an unemployed actor. The story of Dr Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry), an alien, transvestite scientist, decked out like a bewitching glam rock god and hellbent on seducing everyone around him, galvanised audiences into participating in a way that had never been seen before.

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