The source material came from Richard O’Brien, a one-time jobbing actor, who wrote a script and score that led to The Rocky Horror Show, first produced in 1973 at the Theatre Upstairs at London’s Royal Court. Directed by Jim Sharman and starring a then unknown Tim Curry, the stage show was a deliriously absurd pastiche of ’50s rock, ’70s glam, horror and sci-fi movies, and Old Hollywood fever dreams (the actress Fay Wray is a particular obsession). It became a megahit, running in London for seven years.
The movie version, which arrived in 1975, was, however, a box office flop and seemed destined for the ash heap of history, until resourceful programmers at the famed Waverly Theater in Manhattan’s West Village began running it at midnight. More theaters followed, and a cult was born.
The plot of both, such as it is, follows a wholesome young couple, Brad and Janet, whose car gets a flat in a rainstorm, leading them to wander into the castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, an intoxicatingly charismatic and seductive pansexual alien scientist who, in a Frankensteinian flourish, creates a blond muscleman (Rocky Horror), wreaks havoc on polite society, and is ultimately destroyed by fellow aliens named Magenta and Riff Raff. Along the way, we encounter Eddie (a rock and roller who meets a grisly end), Dr. Scott (a baffled authority figure and Eddie’s uncle), Columbia (a heartbroken human who loves both Frank and Eddie), and an uptight Narrator, who, with varying degrees of success, attempts to manage the chaos.