THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975)
By the time I first encountered the film version of Richard O’Brien’s bizarre musical paean to ‘50s horror movies and polymorphous perversity, it was already a well-established cult classic, regularly attended by freaks and frat boys, geeks and fad-of-the-week trendies. But underneath the audience-participation spectacle was a gleefully subversive last gasp celebration of gender-blind free love (before pop culture sexuality became more repressive yet somehow simultaneously more commodified, fetishized and pervasive in the neo-con '80s and '90s). The invocation of Tim Curry’s infamous sweet transvestite Dr. Frank-n-Furter to “Give yourself over to absolute pleasure” became highly questionable advice in the AIDS era; even in the no-holes-barred world of the film's Transsexual Transylvanians, Frank’s lifestyle’s too extreme (and the character, like many overreaching sensualists before him, meets a tragic demise). Yet, the Rocky cult continues to flourish, years after its early ‘80s heyday, with screenings often serving as safe havens for GLBT (and straight!) misfits seeking community, acceptance and glamour in the midst of a “Science Fiction Double Feature” lost in time, lost in space and meaning. (Mee-eeaaaaa-nnniiinnnggg!!!!)
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