Rocky Horror at 50: Why the Queer icon lives on

In October 1975, after just six weeks of filming on a tiny budget, The Rocky Horror Picture Show landed in eight cinemas throughout North America. Critics were unimpressed – in their words, it was “laboured”, “tasteless”, and “lacking in both charm and dramatic impact”. Screenings were cancelled, the film failed to place on any charts, and from the outside, it seemed to have been consigned to the dregs of cinema history. 

So why are audiences across the world still flocking to screenings every week, hand-crafting inspired costumes, and memorising not only the lines in the film, but a plethora of additional ‘call-backs’? And why has the film been publicly screened three times on campus already this year, two of which were accompanied by meticulously rehearsed ‘shadow cast’ performances?

The answer, as you may be able to guess, lies within the LGBTQ+ community. As mainstream audiences shrugged the film off as crude and unappealing, many Queer and trans* viewers found something special in its B-movie kitschiness. An entire subculture began to grow around the film, leading to it being widely considered as the definitive cult classic.

A large part of this lies within the charm of the film itself. For those who haven’t watched it, here’s a whistle-stop synopsis: straight-laced sweethearts Brad and Janet get stuck with a flat tyre on a night out, leading them to the castle of the fabulous Dr Frank-n-Furter and his weird cult of groupies and servants. Hijinks (as well as fishnets and unregulated science experiments) ensue. You can already see why people love it: it’s bold, it’s sexy, and it’s full of catchy dance numbers. 

The brilliance of the film goes deeper than just its eye candy and the ‘Time Warp’, though. By throwing our all-American hero and heroine into the deep end (quite literally, in a certain scene involving a swimming pool and several feather boas), the film shines a light on the kind of characters who wouldn’t usually have had their own movie back in the seventies. Frank-n-Furter, for example, cross-dresses throughout, sings of his desire to look like a woman, and expresses sexual interest in both male and female characters – and yet, (spoiler alert) when he’s gunned down by two traitorous servants in the climactic scene, we aren’t meant to laugh, but to mourn. The same can’t often be said for other Queer film characters, who are so regularly constrained to the roles of gay best friend, horror movie canon fodder, or creepy gender-non-conforming villain. Instead, Rocky Horror offers LGBTQ+ characters with emotional depth, diverse relationships, and a range of moral compasses - like real people. 

In fact, for all of its glamour and melodrama, real people are at the heart of Rocky Horror. The key message is one of authenticity. One of its publicity slogans echoes the line Frank repeatedly sings in ‘Rose Tint My World’: “Don’t dream it, be it.” Plenty of Queer audiences have found affinity in the characters’ desires to express themselves freely, and joy in their bold acts of self-definition. 

However, it would be a mistake to suggest the significance of Rocky Horror is found purely in the film. As put by Hannah, who directed Warwick Drag Society’s November and January shadow-cast performances (as well as playing Janet): “People come to see Rocky Horror not for the story, not for the acting, but for the community; I’d argue the audience is the most important part of the show.” 

Indeed, speaking to cast members, a common theme in their responses was the importance of the social culture around the film. Harvey, who played Frank, commented: “Each time I watched the movie I felt a sense of pride, and when watching it with other Queer people, it really felt like I was in a community of people just like me.” 

Rocky Horror is undeniably the audience participation film. Staples of the film’s culture include ‘shadow casts’ like Warwick Drag Society’s (fans will dress up and reenact scenes from the film in real time, as it’s projected behind them), call-backs (audiences yell back at the characters in between dialogue, with the most iconic call-back lines dating all the way back to the seventies), and even props (everything from newspapers and rubber gloves, to slices of toast and toilet rolls). From these bizarre acts of involvement, rituals formed, and from those a sense of group identity was born. The Rocky Horror cult is now global – even today, more than fifty years after its floundering debut, we can feel the importance that both public screenings and social media fanspaces hold for Queer community and connection.

In short, The Rocky Horror Picture Show still resonates with LGBTQ+ audiences because it’s both powerful and fun. As Hannah nicely sums it up: “Rocky Horror is Queer spectacle embodied. The whole thing is messy, unfiltered uniqueness, wrapped in feather boas and fishnets.”

Image: Mark James Miller / Wikimedia Commons