The Rocky Horror Picture Show is now 50 years old, a B-picture horror-schlocker campfest extravaganza based on Richard O’Brien’s original stage musical from 1973; it has carried on as an international theatrical touring phenomenon ever since. That live show, with the vital element of regular audience participation and dress-up, may in fact now have a bit more energy and point than the movie itself, which (whisper it) perhaps suffers a few longueurs.
The undoubted star is the sonorous and feline Tim Curry playing Dr Frank-N-Furter, a vampirically queer alien sex god, proselytising here on Earth for borderless pleasure and describing himself as a “sweet transvestite transsexual from Transylvania”. Dr Furter toys with the affections of the many followers and servants at his giant castle in middle America, including his butler Riff-Raff (played by O’Brien) and tearaway Eddie (played by Meat Loaf). Dr Furter is actually focused on his Frankensteinian project of creating Rocky Horror (Peter Hinwood), the ideal hunky blond male to service his needs. Even Dr Frankenstein didn’t actually want to have sex with his monster.
