The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Watching “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” was not a particularly pleasant experience. I went into it with an open mind because I knew what a massive cult classic it is, but as I watched it, I felt like I was slowly losing my mind! The film starts off ok, but as it crawls along, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” becomes increasingly incomprehensible and insufferable. I didn’t hate this movie, there were definitely a couple of things I liked about it, but overall, I thoroughly disliked “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

Before I start berating how aggravating “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is, I’ll just mention the aspects of it that were half-decent.

The cast here are pretty good I guess, Tim Curry chews up scenery as the hammy and sexually-aggressive Dr Frank-N-Furter, Richard O’Brien’s Riff Raff is fairly entertaining and Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick are alright. The real highlights in the cast are Charles “Jump to the Left” Gray and Meat Loaf; sadly Gray only appears very briefly and (SPOILER ALERT) Meat Loaf’s character is bludgeoned to death with a pickaxe about two minutes after he enters the movie.

The sets are elaborate, well-designed and quite nice to look at and the costumes are an acquired taste.

The songs in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” have their ups-and-downs, some of them (like “Science Fiction/ Double Feature” and “Time Warp”) are genuinely great, but others are grating, incoherent and just downright annoying (“I Can Make You a Man” and “Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me” are sheer torture.)

I’m pretty sure that “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is supposed to be funny… it’s not. Every gag falls flat and some of the jokes are more disturbing than amusing.

My biggest problem with “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” however, is that the film isn’t really about anything. There isn’t a driving objective or goal that the characters are aiming for, they simply meander from sing-along sequence to sing-along sequence before the movie ends. At least the filmmakers attempted to create a plot that didn’t adhere to storytelling rules (yes I know this film is based on a stage show), but without a proper story, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is very boring.

To summarise, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is an intensely bizarre mix of songs with varying degrees of quality and some really, really uncomfortable moments. After watching the recent (and incredible) Elton John biopic “Rocketman”, I thought I may have gained a new-found appreciation for the musical genre, but considering how awful my experience with “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” was, I’m still not a fan of musicals.