I saw it first in '77. 90% of the audience were virgins, and most of them had *no idea[/] of what was going to happen. Me included. My friends and I were blown away! I don’t even think we were high. (Not then, anyway). We went back regularly but never dressed up. Took some props. Learned some lines.
Nowadays we enjoy it on DVD, and yell the lines. It still works for us.
Anyway, we still love it. To me, it’s outside standard theater experiences, movie reviews, other cults, fetishes, or paraphilias. It just is.
I saw it a few times at the Tiffany on Sunset Blvd back in the day. Damn, like 25 years ago. It was a blast. I probably couldn’t tolerate it now in the theater let alone on TV.
It’s definitely the audience participation that made it so fun.
I saw it the first time in around 1978 or so at the midnight movie with my best friend. We were both in high school, and both a little shocked by the transvestitism and stuff — but it was still so much fun we couldn’t wait to go back again with our props to participate. Examples of these included:
[ul]
[li]A newspaper to put over your head during the rain scene, just like Janet did.[/li][li]Squirt guns (or, better still, a recycled windex bottle) to help create the rain during the rain scene.[/li][li]Toilet paper, to throw during the scene when someone yells “Great Scott!” (Scott tissue, ya know)[/li][li]Rice to throw at the wedding[/li][li]Party hats & noisemakers[/li][/ul]
You also learned how to dance the timewarp, and there were also certain scenes that required certain responses. The narrator usually got waaaay too many calls of “Where’s your neck, asshole?”
My absolute favorite, though, was the response to when Magenta served dinner ---- “Oh, shit. Meatloaf again?”
I don’t know if anyone could have predicted it would become a cult classic, but it was certainly meant to be campy, trashy fun.
To the OP, the RHPS can be either really funny or really obnoxious, depending on how you feel about those old science-fiction and horror flicks and how well you appreciate the spoof/tribute involved.
It was probably funnier a few decades back when there was still a chance that someone might actually be shocked by the cross-dressing and homo/bisexual elements, but I think it’s still a pretty entertaining film. And I’ve watched it on video several times, with no chemical enchancement!
I was in high school and had picked the day I was going to kill myself. I was in a school musical, in a crappy little bit part that anyone could have played or it could’ve been cut and no one would know the difference. The director, choreographer and producer (who was also my teacher for two of six classes) hated me for no reason I could figure out (and this is not high school melodrama; they truly hated me) But it was the part to which I’d made a commitment and I was going to fulfil that commitment. We would close on a Saturday night and by Sunday morning I’d be dead.
Somewhere during rehearsals, I made my way to the Bijou Theatre for a midnight showing of RHPS. It played every Friday and Saturday night. After that first night I started going to every show. Everything else in life still sucked and I was still going to kill myself after the last performance of the school musical.
Then the musical got held over for a week. I couldn’t kill myself until the following Saturday night.
That day came, and it went. I found that despite how badly everything else in my life sucked, those two weekend midnight shows were enough to get me through the week. I started developing friendships with some of the other regulars and met someone who became my best friend for a few years after. I stayed involved with RHPS through two colleges and beyond. I’ve seen the movie several hundred times in a half-dozen states.
I fell away from going to the show in Madison because I absolutely loathe the cast here, but I have the movie on DVD and watch it every once in a while.
Say whatever you want about RHPS. Think it’s crap, it sucks, whatever. I know different.
Well, I was introduced to RHPS when I was 14 - around 1985 or so. At the time, there was fuck-all to do in my small town on the weekends and us “freaks” (the kids with the mohawks, other New Wavers, skaters, gay\lesbian folks, “Drama Club” types) enjoyed being around each other and not being hassled by rednecks.
Of course, there was more fun to come. Liquor and/or weed were consumed in unholy quantities either in the seating area* or in the “emergency exit” corridor. People “hooked up” in cars or in nearby hotels. All kinds of delicious, freaky adult stuff was going on with this silly movie as background.
Of course, I routinely brought a lighter and the 20 lb. bag of rice for props. You know those cheap-ass lighters? The kind that are sort of “rectangular” compared to Bics? If you carefully pry off the “flame guard”, you can then adjust the flame far beyond the levels intended by the manufacturer. It became sort of my RHPS trademark to have a lighter that would create a flame 12" or higher. No one ever sat around me during that scene and I’m still surprised that my hand wasn’t somehow blown off. I still remember half the theatre lighting up when I flicked that lighter.
And then there was good ol’ Officer Fowler. He was a county cop who was stuck patrolling this madness. I remember getting shitty drunk one night and asking him why he put up with all of it. He said something I’ll never forget: “Son, if I take you in for minor in possession, then I’ve gotta take the rest of you in for minor in possession or public drunkeness. I really don’t wanna fill out the paperwork for 300 drunk teenagers, so as long as you don’t hurt anybody, I’m OK with it”.**
Ahhhhh… good times!
And to think that back then you could sit in the dead center of a movie theatre and smoke a joint and the only thing the cop would say if he saw you would be a polite “please put out your cigarette”. I imagine nowadays that they’d haul you off to the Nicotine Re-Education Center and charge you with “Crimes Against Humanity”.
** - It should be noted that Officer Fowler knew all of us and that most of the “adults” that drove us all to the RHPS didn’t drink for some reason. He wasn’t letting teenagers drive drunk, he was just allowing us to let off steam and get crazy. He only busted people for fighting or people that were stupid enough to get caught with drugs out in the open. He was a good guy.
It’s one of the worst films ever made, and the pallid dorks who caper about and mimic the action make a Star Trek convention look like the World Surfing Championships.
It’s alright, I hated it too. After all the parties/weddings/birthdays I worked bar at through the 90s, I wouldn’t give a fuck if I never heard the Timewarp again.
When I was at college, it came to town at the Alahambra in Bradford. About half my year all got dressed up and went to it. Wearing white make up and Stockings & Suspenders if your a man isn’t my idea of a good night out. And I got caalled a stiff when some of them came to the pub afterwards and I wouldn’t go near them.
“For your Dining enjoyment, E.T.'s Fried Head!!!”.
SLK played ‘Rocky’ at the Camelview Theatre in Scottsdale in 85-86. Not very many lines, but I got to run around the Theatre in Gold Underwear, and Play with Janet’s breasts during 'Touch-a Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me. Our Janet was a stripper named Lydia Lash, and I was a foolish virgin schoolboy at the time. Talk about your formative experiences.
I went to the theater to see it circa 1980. Audience participation and all, I was unimpressed. I wondered what kind of life a person must lead in order to put the effort into audience participation that some of those dorks did. Costumes, props, memorization of scenes and responses…crimony! Didn’t they have families, jobs, school, hobbies or anything else in their lives other than Rocky Horror every fucking week?
I strongly suspect that many of them mutated into the karaoke enthusiasts that I grew to loathe when I was a karaoke host. i.e. They had “their” songs that they would sing every fucking week and were convinced that the other patrons were showing up specifically for their performances.
