If you’ve never heard of this next film, lace up your boots and corset, grab your prettiest pearls and get ready to paint the town — plus your lips — red.
Celebrating its 49th anniversary today, raise a glass in honor of the oddest film to hit the silver screen. Jim Sharman’s “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” originally released in 1975, is an utterly perfect showcase of everything camp, queer and 80s — before the 80s even began. This masterpiece took its wild storyline, drag-inspired makeup and sequined corsets to new heights, cementing itself in the LGBTQ+ Community as a cult classic for years to come.
The movie stars Barry Bostwick as Brad and Susan Sarandon as Janet, an unsuspecting couple that wanders into a house of peculiarity, songs and sex. As the story progresses, the pair trade their button-ups for bras and their loafers for black leather stilettos, a not-so-subtle commentary on how gender exploration in the world of fashion is only met with judgment and discrimination.
In 2024, fans continue to celebrate this feat of progress. Small theaters across the United States hold showings of the movie — including Columbus’ Studio 35, located at 3055 Indianola Ave., which will host a screening on Oct. 5, according to its website — fit with real actors playing out their parts in front of the screen and an audience that knows every single call-back.
“Don’t get strung out by the way I look,” Tim Curry belts out as Frank-N-Furter, the alien-turned-mad scientist who runs every bit of the show. Every character in the film, along with every audience member, takes this to heart.
Subverting gender norms and social expectations, the androgyny of Curry’s Frank-N-Furter — and by the end of the movie, every other character too — inspires thousands of fashion-loving outcasts to wear their individual styles with pride, never submitting to the hegemonic values of American society.
Frank-N-Furter, followed by his devoted servants, Riff Raff (Richard O’Brien), Magenta (Patricia Quinn) and Columbia (Nell Campbell), makes his entrance in a mild-mannered cape, hiding his true identity until he realizes just how much Brad and Janet need him.
In a spectacular strip show, he reveals his full outfit, a dark, shimmering corset, underwear and sultry, sheer tights. The others match his energy, with sparkly top hats, leather jackets, sequined blazers and booty shorts.
“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” uses unexpected clothing choices and never ending sexual innuendos to not only encourage its audience to wear what they want to with pride, but also to shed light on how anyone different is looked at as “alien,” or not welcome into this world.
In one of Frank-N-Furter’s first songs in the film, he sings the song “Sweet Transvestite” and tells viewers that he’s “from Transsexual, Transylvania.” Later in the film, it is revealed that these are the respective home planet and galaxy Frank-N-Furter comes from. If it isn’t obvious enough, this is a beautiful — albeit, direct — denunciation of the way that gender expression and ambiguity was — and still is — viewed in the United States.
Over the course of the film, Brad and Janet’s rejection of the conventional and their intrigue in everything “alien” comes through in their character design. By the end of the movie, each character is made up as an exact replica of Frank-N-Furter, including his very own creation, a “perfect” male specimen named Rocky (Peter Hinwood).
The only exceptions are Riff Raff and Magenta, who take on the space-age aesthetic, a style totally ahead of its time. Even with five years to go until the 80s hit, these costumes were made up with the tallest hair they could get and metallic tops with black shoulder extensions that reached far past their arms.
As one of the first big hits to tackle gender and sexual expression, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” did so with style and wisdom beyond its years. Coming up on its 49th anniversary, it’s clear that this is only one celebration of many more to come.
