I watched this on Netflix for the first time over the weekend and I haven't been able to get it out of my mind ever since. I went in only knowing about The Time Warp and maybe having heard a few of the other songs on (of all things) a tribute episode of Glee.
First off, it isn't actually a very good movie, perhaps deliberately. Plot-wise, it's nonsensical and the narrative swerved more randomly than a rogue dodgem car. It starts as a typical "couple's car breaks down near a spooky haunted house" B movie, but by the end, it has breezed through bits of Frankenstein, Dracula and ends up on Plan 9 From Outer Space where the bad guys are aliens, randomly. It ends with Frank-N-Furter dying to laser guns and Rocky re-enacting the ending of King Kong with Frank's lifeless body in his arms. Frank was abusive toward his creation/lover and Rocky cheated on him with Janet, but it's still presented as a romantic tragedy.
Nobody's motivations (especially Frank, Riff Raff and Magenta) make any sense and it's not even clear what the overall message is supposed to be. Is it meant to force the viewer to confront hypocritical social mores of the late 1960s / early 1970s or serve as a cautionary tale? Is it meant to celebrate or decry decadence? Also, the protagonists seemingly forget that Frank-N-Furter straight up murdered someone right in front of them, and feel sympathy towards him at the end.
Susan Sarandon is wonderful in this, as is Tim Curry, who hams it up in makeup, a corset and fishnet stockings. Even Meatloaf (seriously) puts in work, even if his character made no sense whatsoever.
This isn't to say that it wasn't a significant piece of work. The whole time I was watching, I couldn't tear my eyes away, despite how confusing it all was. The songs were catchy, the editing jarring and the whole thing had a look that was distinctive and has since become iconic.
I imagined I was watching a movie made in the late 1980s, which made it all the more surprising when I found out it had been made in 1973. Clearly it was ahead of its time and had some influence on films made after it. I later found out that it drew its inspiration from classic horror and sci fi, so in many ways it was to rock musicals what Castlevania was to video games.
Finally it surprised me just how much LGBTQ+ themes figured into the story and characters. Frank-N-Furter is probably not the best example of representation, being both a murderer and sex pest (he seduced both Janet and Brad under false pretences after crawling into bed with each in turn). Still, the rest of the characters run the gamut - Rocky, Magenta and Danny are all gay or bisexual and at the very least the conventioneers engage in a bit of cross dressing. Both Brad and Janet however discover throughout the course of their stories that they are bisexual and none of this is displayed in any kind of negative light, which I can only imagine was highly unusual (and probably scandalous) at the time of release.
All in all, it's a movie choc full of sexual themes while at the same time being very light on any actual nudity. The whole thing seems like it would have been very risqué for its time, or at least what I imagine the early 1970s to be like. I suppose the period that brought us Grease and Deep Throat might have been a little less conservative than that, but this was about as far removed from Father Knows Best as The Matrix is to us today, so to some section of the populace, this would have looked properly obscene.
What are your thoughts? Have you ever done the full theatre experience with the audience cosplaying and pantomiming the movie? Is it as important or influential as all that? Is it a weird anomaly or was it the Citizen Kane of drag queen rock opera?
First off, it isn't actually a very good movie, perhaps deliberately. Plot-wise, it's nonsensical and the narrative swerved more randomly than a rogue dodgem car. It starts as a typical "couple's car breaks down near a spooky haunted house" B movie, but by the end, it has breezed through bits of Frankenstein, Dracula and ends up on Plan 9 From Outer Space where the bad guys are aliens, randomly. It ends with Frank-N-Furter dying to laser guns and Rocky re-enacting the ending of King Kong with Frank's lifeless body in his arms. Frank was abusive toward his creation/lover and Rocky cheated on him with Janet, but it's still presented as a romantic tragedy.
Nobody's motivations (especially Frank, Riff Raff and Magenta) make any sense and it's not even clear what the overall message is supposed to be. Is it meant to force the viewer to confront hypocritical social mores of the late 1960s / early 1970s or serve as a cautionary tale? Is it meant to celebrate or decry decadence? Also, the protagonists seemingly forget that Frank-N-Furter straight up murdered someone right in front of them, and feel sympathy towards him at the end.
Susan Sarandon is wonderful in this, as is Tim Curry, who hams it up in makeup, a corset and fishnet stockings. Even Meatloaf (seriously) puts in work, even if his character made no sense whatsoever.
This isn't to say that it wasn't a significant piece of work. The whole time I was watching, I couldn't tear my eyes away, despite how confusing it all was. The songs were catchy, the editing jarring and the whole thing had a look that was distinctive and has since become iconic.
I imagined I was watching a movie made in the late 1980s, which made it all the more surprising when I found out it had been made in 1973. Clearly it was ahead of its time and had some influence on films made after it. I later found out that it drew its inspiration from classic horror and sci fi, so in many ways it was to rock musicals what Castlevania was to video games.
Finally it surprised me just how much LGBTQ+ themes figured into the story and characters. Frank-N-Furter is probably not the best example of representation, being both a murderer and sex pest (he seduced both Janet and Brad under false pretences after crawling into bed with each in turn). Still, the rest of the characters run the gamut - Rocky, Magenta and Danny are all gay or bisexual and at the very least the conventioneers engage in a bit of cross dressing. Both Brad and Janet however discover throughout the course of their stories that they are bisexual and none of this is displayed in any kind of negative light, which I can only imagine was highly unusual (and probably scandalous) at the time of release.
All in all, it's a movie choc full of sexual themes while at the same time being very light on any actual nudity. The whole thing seems like it would have been very risqué for its time, or at least what I imagine the early 1970s to be like. I suppose the period that brought us Grease and Deep Throat might have been a little less conservative than that, but this was about as far removed from Father Knows Best as The Matrix is to us today, so to some section of the populace, this would have looked properly obscene.
What are your thoughts? Have you ever done the full theatre experience with the audience cosplaying and pantomiming the movie? Is it as important or influential as all that? Is it a weird anomaly or was it the Citizen Kane of drag queen rock opera?
