It’s Hallowe’en. It’s a dark and rainy night. I’m home all alone. The trick-or-treaters have been sparse — I’ve only had twenty kids all night, so I’m handing out great fistfuls of candy to each. You know what that means…
It’s time for Rocky Horror!
I’ve turned the sound way up and am soaking up the vibes. I’d put on fishnet stockings if I had any.
This movie is right there in my happy place. I’ve been watching it yearly since about 1976.
Uh-oh. The elevator scene just started. Bye.
Off topic but Covid with furin cleavage site in bats
random summary
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/new-coronavirus-subspecies-sars-cov-2-mutation-discovered-brazilian-bat
paper:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.24.684489v1
It’s always time for a late night, science fiction, double feature picture show!
I just watched that a couple of nights ago, and the songs have been running through my head ever since.
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I first heard of RHPS when it was released and I saw the lips with the “A Different Set Of Jaws” tag line in the theater’s poster displays. I’d never seen a trailer or read a review, and so I took it at face value and assumed it was horror, probably with cannibalism and other depravations I was still too innocent to consume. I was expecting sickening scenes like one that still haunts me from Midnight Cowboy, where some white-haired socialite on tv was torturing her purse poodle with false eyelashes and breath spray (I swear I didn’t imagine this, though I’ve never seen it in any broadcast showings of it).
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Fast forward several years and a cross-country move later, and the midnight showings at the local repertory art house finally got my attention and curiosity enough to talk a friend into going to see it. Needless to say it defied all my expectations. I loved it and was hooked, seeing it every weekend, going alone if need be.
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I’ve since lost count of the number of total times I’ve seen it, but I think I’ve seen it in 6 states and ~ 10 different theaters (many of which sadly no longer exist). It was interesting seeing how different cities varied in the audience participation lines, and I’m pretty sure I imported a CA line to OH (the reaction was one that indicated it was new to them and that they liked it, so maybe they used it again). :)
bcw bcw–
Thanks for providing direct links. I’m not prepared to search online for “functional furin cleavage site”.
Halloween, eh?
Sure, Rocky Horror.
I first saw it in… um, 1978 in an all-nighter at Adealide Uni.
But time marches on…
[PS that night included Flesh Gordon. (not a typo)]
Enjoy!
Happy Halloween to all those who celebrate it.
There’sdefinitley such a thing a scomfort viewing (movies, TV, etc..) just as there’s comfort food.
I just recently found out that Tim Curry had a stroke in 2012 and has been in a wheelchair ever since. It’s a bummer.
Our community theatre usually does a production of RHPS every year. When we went to see Newsies (the theatre is being quietly subversive this year), the director announced that RHPS was canceled this year as the Atlas Theatre (where they usually do the show) is down for renovations. There were many sighs of disappointment. My sister is the theatre manager for the city, so I’m guessing that was music to her ears! (The theatre here struggles to get enough money, so the more patrons, the better!)
Maybe the rain
is really to blame.
So I’ll remove the cause,
but not
… the symptom!
Ah yes, … but do you do the call backs?
Sorry to say, but it’s a sick movie.
see i thought you were gonna post that song he did for a tv adaptation of the worst witch
I only recently learned that Richard O’Brien (Riff Raff) is the voice of Lawrence in Phineas and Ferb.
@JohnMorales – there is a good chance I was at that showing.
Flesh Gordon: Doctor, What are they?
Dr. Flexi Jerkoff: Some sort of penisaurus I believe.
My son has a different tradition for Halloween—he plays Brad in a shadow cast (ok, he is only one of two or three Brads in the cast, since Halloween is their biggest show of the year, but he got to play Brad 6 times this October (plus twice in September and will have one more show in November). This is the 50th anniversary year.
Two of the shows this year were with Little Nell as a guest, last year one with Patricia Quinn, and the year before with Barry Bostwick.
You could join a shadow cast as Dr. Everett V. Scott—you wouldn’t even have to stress your legs!
This parody of the disco scene is still really Rocky adjacent, what with the sax solo and the surprise Frank-N-Furter impersonator (Dori Hartley).
Paradise Garage
Album version with lyrics (mostly right) and extended sax and outro chatter here.
Did you throw rice at your TV as the newlyweds leave the church?
The movie is fantastic, even better if you’re part of an audience, but nothing beats a good stage performance. It’s been quite some time since I last went to one, but I’d already lost count of the number of times I had seen it by then.
It’s my “The Big Lebowski” night.
Saw it with my lab crew live at the Kings Road Theater, London, in 1976. Had no idea what I was in for, but being a huge 50’s 60’s sci fi and monster flick fan, it was a mind blowing experience! Got in to the matinee for 50 P !
I actually had the great good fortune to play Frank-N-Furter in a student production for Halloween when I was a postgrad. One photograph and one only exists of this, to be leaked to newspapers in the unlikely event I do something noteworthy.
I’ve seen Rocky Horror several times, but it’s been years except for snippets. I saw It once at a midnight show at the Roxie in San Francisco where some of the audience in costume went on stage during “The Time Warp” number and joined in.
Flesh Gordon is another movie from my surreal movie era. As Wikipedia says, “Not to be confused with Flash Gordon.” Doh!
Another movie from that period: Harold and Maude.
My retirement plan is to revisit the surreal. I prefer surreality to reality.
I’ve only seen Rocky Horror once after was introduced to me by She Who Is Not To Be Named. Though I’ve got most of the songs on my playlist, I just never had the opportunity to revisit it.
That said, I watched the following during my Halloween movie night:
Witchfinder General
The Call of Cthulhu
The Whisperer in Darkness
The Resurrected
Solomon Kane
@ 12 weylguy wrote: Sorry to say, but it’s a sick movie.
I reply, take off your bigot glasses, sit back and enjoy the fun. It’s not as if they are trying to turn you into a transvestite IRL (although that would not be nearly as perverted or evil as guyliner vancehole or stephen sadistic fascist miller). There is nothing wrong with a little fun, crazed comedy like The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
I’ve noticed that PZ has been posting fewer of the magat cult atrocities, lately.
The magat cult atrocities are a murderous gish gallop of throwing as much excrement at the wall as possible and hoping that people will normalize their evil and become numb to it.
In our group, we are trying to not allow normalization of the massive amount of excrement the magats are throwing and that the complicit corrupt corporate media is magnifying. I wonder if PZ feels that, too.
I’m going to return to observing and I’m getting back to work now. I just wanted to express that.
I think what first hooked me for good when I saw it at the Showcase (literally torn down to put up a parking lot) was the Creatures of the Night shadow cast’s interaction with the movie itself. Not only did they act out the whole movie, but at points became part of the movie. Like when the camera slowly zooms in on the Criminologist, one of them jumped up on stage to grab at his necktie and appear to pull him down. Or several of them waving away the fog over the swimming pool. And working together to get the final shot spinning until the centrifugal force throws them off stage. It was so creative just delighted me no end. :)
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I saw a video of a broadcast of a showing in Minneapolis that occasionally cut to the audience. One girl had a freakin’ super soaker and another idiot was shown dumping out a 25 lb bag of rice from the balcony. I would not have been happy to be sitting near or below either of them. And people wonder why theaters had to ban most props. Sticky floors, rice grains, water and dancing add up to a lawsuit waiting to happen. It’s sad that some people always have to take it too far. This is why we can’t have fun things.
I capped off my month of horror with Malum and it scared the hell out of me, partly that the protagonist was dealing with the unfurling shitshow at the police station alone, partly because pacing and intensity, and largely for the multiple genius jump scares. I put it up there as one of the best horror movies I’ve seen but note people have not liked it, many of them having seen and loved Last Shift. I didn’t have that background going in so Malum was fresh for me.
Terribly sad what happened to Tim Curry. I’d post the Dresden Dolls version of SFDF, but you know what it’s like. :-)
We only had four door knocks. We did the same thing as PZ – closed the curtains and turned up the volume on Rocky Horror.
I guess it has become an aging boomer tradition.
We met Barry Bostwick at the San Jose GalaxyCon in August – a very personable guy.
The local theater group on Cannery Row in Monterey does a fantastic production of Rocky Horror every year.
We”ll probably go support them next year after we return from our Hawaiian celebration of our 50th anniversary.
We’re also going to the 60th anniversary Star Trek Convention in Vegas in August.
We’ve decided to spend our kids’ inheritance having a wonderful retirement while we can.
Next year is going to be a blast!
rorschach, sic transit gloria mundi.
Far as I can tell, at least he’s kept his wit and his personality pretty well.
So there’s that.
But I think we can all agree “It was great when it all began……
michaelbarnes, see my #5. Was quite the experience.
But, still… for you,
@12. weylguy : “Sorry to say, but it’s a sick movie.”
“Sadly”, so NOT in the slang sense of “sick” as in “wicked, cool, ace” etc ..
So. How so? Gather you find it objectionable then but why?
@25. shermanj :
Yeah, been wondering the same thing here too.