THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW 25th Anniversary Edition
By: Glenn SandersDate: Tuesday, October 10, 2000
With 25 years of packed midnight screenings, and a worldwide cult following that spans generations, there's no way to review The Rocky Horror Picture Show as just a movie without also reviewing the phenomenon. A campy spoof of horror, sci-fi, comic books, musicals, relationships, and a dozen other topics, RHPS is a rambling, awkward mess that changes tone about a dozen times and in the end doesn't make any sense. Which, as its fans would say, is the whole point. Yet it's very hard to watch this film in the comfort of one's home, with no one screaming at the characters, no one throwing rice and hot dogs or acting out the dance numbers, without wondering what all the fuss is about. It's too funny and self-conscious to be truly bad, and too crappy to be truly good. So the lingering question is, 'Why did this movie, above all others, become the insane cult monster that it is?' In the end, after screening this heavily supplemented two-disc DVD collector's edition, I'm not much closer to an answer than before. At the very least I have a greater appreciation for the movie and its die-hard fans, but I'm still scratching my head in a bit of confusion, convinced I missed something in the translation from group-experience to private screening. Nevertheless, I would bet my fishnet stockings that the die-hards will love this very comprehensive DVD set.
Starring Barry Bostwick as nerdy Brad and Susan Sarandon as uptight Janet, RHPS follows the intrepid couple as they end up in the castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry) after their tire blows. The doctor, it turns out, is a cross-dressing, bisexual inventor whose latest creation is a muscle-bound boy-toy named Rocky (Peter Hinwood). The plot is just an excuse to stage a bunch of wacky musical numbers that include Frank-N-Furter's grumpy servants Magenta (Patricia Quinn) and Riff-Raff (Richard O'Brien), a groupie named Columbia (Little Nell), a fat biker named Eddie (Meat Loaf), and several dozen Transylvanians. By the end of the film, everyone - male and female - is wearing fishnet stockings, high heels, and makeup, and Brad and Janet have both been physically and emotionally deflowered.
The first disc contains both the US and UK versions of the film, available in mono or Dolby 5.1. The only difference I could gather between the two versions is one short musical number at the very end of the British version. The song, 'Superheroes,' adds to the notion that Brad and Janet have changed dramatically since the beginning. On the technical side, the soundtrack at times suffers from sonic overkill - sometimes it's impossible to understand the lyrics, which are either overwhelmed by the volume of the music and singing, or simply fly by too fast to hear. As for visuals, it's a very well-photographed film, and the transfer does justice to the interesting mix of colors and surreal look.
The audio track by Richard O'Brien (who created the original play, wrote the music, and starred as Riff-Raff) and Patricia Quinn (Magenta), is alternately hysterical and annoying. Their commentary is mostly anecdotal, with on-set stories, gossip, and so on, but at times they get a bit self-indulgent and go off on completely random tangents, taking forever to get back on track. In fact, they both sound a bit drunk, which - like any drunken storyteller - is funny at first then gets increasingly boring (note to lawyers: I say they 'sound' drunk, which doesn't mean they actually were drunk). Not a bad commentary by any means, just a little too rambling to hold my attention for the full hour-and-forty.
Three other extras supplement disc one, all related to audience participation. 'Multi-View Theater Experience' prompts you with a pair of lips to hit the Enter button on your remote. You are then taken to a clip of audience members acting out the scene you were just watching. It's amusing to a certain degree, but probably more so for the fans who are featured in the clips. Lord knows how many clips there are, since navigation is confusing: the lips appear only on subtitle track 3, which isn't clearly labeled and can't be played in tandem with the 'Participation Prompter' on subtitle track 4. The prompter tells you what action to take at key points in the film, such as 'Throw your RICE!' and so forth. These are, however, few and far between, which you'll discover when you activate the 'Audience Participation' feature. This is an audio-only track of an RHPS audience interacting with the movie. The audience is so loud, and they are saying so much so fast, that it's mostly impossible to understand what they're saying if you don't already know. The best of all possible worlds would have a thorough subtitle track that directly follows the audience participation audio. That would make it possible for the non-fanatic to know what's going on, and the fanatic to prep for the next midnight screening. It would also help if the audience clips were compiled on a single menu so we could screen them all at once.
The menus on disc one are easy to understand but a bit frustrating to navigate. As stated, the extra subtitle tracks aren't clearly labeled; switching between menus forces you to cycle through the same animations dozens of times; and activating the special features isn't intuitive. On the upside, they've done a nice job with the animations of lips and legs, though they try to be funnier than they actually are.
The second disc contains a wealth of supplementary materials. These menus are very easy to navigate and are a lot more clever than the lips-and-legs of the first disc. There are two deleted musical numbers: 'Once In a While' and 'Superheroes.' The first is a wistful ballad Brad sings after both he and Janet have been deflowered. It's a decent song, and it does improve on Brad's otherwise whiny personality, which leads me to wonder why they cut it. Same goes for 'Superheroes,' which only lasts about two minutes and adds some nice melancholy to the bizarre ending.
There's a 'Rocky on VH1' section which allows you to view edited interviews from VH1's Where Are They Now? and Behind the Music. It's a little heavy on Richard O'Brien (with two long, rather creepy interviews), and Meat Loaf does like to hear the sound of his own voice, but overall the discussion, which also include Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, and Patricia Quinn, is very worthwhile. The most obvious omissions in this section are Tim Curry and Little Nell (though I can only imagine Curry must be a little sick of the whole thing by now). You can also watch a 'Pop-Up Video' of 'Hot Patootie!' - which in my opinion was the most entertaining extra in the whole set.
A half-hour featurette, 'Rocky Horror Double Feature Video Show,' nicely edits some clips and interviews to explain the making of the film, and the development of the cult following around it. While some of the cast members repeat stories from the VH1 section, overall they are very good. But the best interviews are from the set designer and the director, who describe how they came about the look and feel of the film, and its influences. A mercifully short, top-notch featurette.
Other extras are less top-notch. For instance, the outtakes are just alternate takes, completely pointless, and probably only interesting to Sal Piro, president of the RHPS fan club. The 'Alternate Credit Ending' appears no different from the actual ending credits. Similarly, the 'Misprint Ending' is just a screw-up at the film lab that caused the last scene of the film to go seriously out of sync. The photo gallery features a grand total of about ten photos.
The second disc also includes two very weird theatrical trailers, a 'Sing-Along' section with karaoke versions of 'Toucha Toucha Touch Me' and 'Sweet Transvestite,' and additional DVD-ROM features.
All told, the RHPS collector's edition is a lot of fun with only a few design flaws that could be fixed for the 30-year anniversary edition. It can't possibly take the place of a live screening with actual humans, but it goes a long way to replicate the experience. Definitely a must for fans. But then, you already knew that.
THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. DVD released October 2000 by 20th Century Fox. Theatrical release September 1975 by 20th Century Fox. Directed by Jim Sharman. Written by Jim Sharman and Richard O'Brien. Produced by Lou Adler. Music by Richard O'Brien and Richard Hartley. Rated R. 100 mins. Starring: Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Richard O'Brien, Patricia Quinn, Little Nell, Meat Loaf, Charles Gray.
| Original US Version in Mono or Dolby 5.1 | ||
| UK Version with an additional musical number | ||
| Audio Commentary by Richard O'Brien and Patricia Quinn | ||
| Audience Participation Audio Track | ||
| Audience Participation Subtitle Prompter | ||
| 'Multi-View Theater Experience' showing audience members acting out key scenes | ||
| Deleted Musical Scenes: 'Once in a While' and 'Superheroes' | ||
| Outtakes | ||
| 'Rocky on VH1' with several cast interviews and a 'Pop-Up Video' of 'Hot Patootie!' | ||
| Featurette: 'Rocky Horror Double Feature Video Show' | ||
| Alternate Credit Ending | ||
| Misprint Ending | ||
| Trailers | ||
| Sing-Along | ||
