The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Classic Film Pick)

Like the hugely successful B-Movie that inspired it, Harry Novak's 1965 sexploitation classic "Kiss Me Quick!" "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" is an exploitation film that draws on a grab-bag of social identifiers to expand on conventional hypocrisies with more than just a nudge and a wink. Writer/composer/actor Richard O'Brien's 1973 British stage play became a hit and the play's director Jim Sharman wisely insisted on using the original cast, with the exception of American newcomers Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick, when time came to direct the film version in 1975. Famous as more of a social phenomenon than as a great piece of cinema, I would argue that The Rocky Horror Picture Show is both thanks to an inspired musical score, and unforgettable camp performances. As part of the '70s midnight movie craze that coincided with the advent of punk music, the film attracted a playful young audience more than prepared to interact with it's innuendo-riddled dialogue around a fetish-based story about an alien transvestite from the galaxy of Transylvania called Dr. Frank N. Furter (played with Mick Jagger charm by Tim Curry) who seduces two stranded newlywed visitors to his castle where he creates life in the form of a chiseled male named Rocky Horror. This is a movie you have to see with an audience.

(A-) (Four Stars)