“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is a 1975 movie that was meant as a parody of the 1940s horror and science fiction movies. The film is an adaptation of the British musical stage play known as “The Rocky Horror Show”. This movie is a story about love, creation, hate, sex, and adventure. The story is set in Ohio where a recently engaged couple consisting of Janet Weiss and Brad Majors is on a road trip.
The couple’s car develops mechanical problems in the middle of a rain storm. They are then forced to seek refuge in Doctor Frank-N-Futer’s castle. Doctor Frank refers to himself as an alien from the Transsexual planet of Transylvania galaxy. In the castle, they meet several other characters.
The others in the castle include Magenta, Riff Raff, and Columbia. Their arrival coincides with the birth of Rocky Horror, a personal creation of Doctor Frank. At night, Doctor Frank seduces both Janet and Brad. The next morning a doctor by the name Scott shows up in the castle only to discover a dead body in the freezer.
In the ensuing commotion, Frank turns Brad, Janet, and Scott into stones after suspecting they were all working against him. This event is interrupted by Riff Raff and magenta’s revolt. During the revolt Frank, Rocky, and Columbia all end up dead. Janet, Brad, and Scott’s all survive the encounter. After this, the narrator concludes the movie.
“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” gained audience at a slow pace until it eventually attained a cult status. This film has also remained in cinemas from 1975 to date. Comparatively, the film is of lower quality than the original stage show. The reason for this seems to be the fact that the film makers decided to include a lot of in-jokes for the fans of this genre. Even the music used in the film is mostly meant for the genre’s fans.
The two main characters Brad and Janet are refreshingly boring and they are completely overshadowed by other characters like Doctor Frank and his hunch-back assistant Riff Raff. The costumes used in this movie also turned out to be quite significant. When the movie started showing on midnight cinemas, fans would turn out dressed as characters from the film.
The costumes used in this film are very similar to those in most Hammer Horror films. They resemble most of the costumes that were used in Frankenstein films. The costumes and the make-up for the original stage play were usually conceptualized by the actors.
However, the makers of the film specifically designed the costumes and the make-up for all the characters. The set of the film is also designed to resemble that of most Frankenstein movies in the 1950s.
A lot of the graphics used in the movie are in black and white as well as color red to signify blood. Most of the scenes interchange from black and white to color.
This is due to the fact that the film was meant as a parody of both science fiction and horror films. Most science fiction films were in black and white while red was the dominant color in most horror films. Commercially, the movie was a huge success. The film has managed to gross over one hundred and thirty million dollars from an original budget of around 1.2 million dollars.