When Tim Curry made a surprise appearance at a 50th anniversary screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles last weekend, a fan in the crowd couldn't resist shouting to the actor best known as the deliciously devious Dr Frank-N-Furter: "We love you".
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Curry, now 79, who addressed the audience from the wheelchair he's used since a stroke in 2012, replied as he left the stage: "I love you more. I love you much more".
To which the crowd of devotees, of course, cried out: "More! More! More!"
Yes, half a century after beginning its strange journey to become our favourite obsession, The Rocky Horror Picture Show continues to toucha-toucha-toucha-touch audiences with its delirious kaleidoscope of out-and-proud kink, B-movie reverence and party-all-night soundtrack of rock'n roll bangers.
For the uninitiated, Rocky Horror stars Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick as newly engaged Brad Majors and Janet Weiss, prim and proper sweethearts forced by a flat tyre to seek shelter at the spooky castle of Dr Frank-N-Furter, a mad scientist clad in fishnet stockings, corset and stack heels.
A wild night of sexual awakenings awaits our Hansel and Gretel-esque innocents as Frank, the carnally omnivorous extraterrestrial from the planet Transsexual in the galaxy of Transylvania, invites them to "come up to the lab and see what's on the slab": namely, Rocky, the tanned, blond-haired beefcake monster he's created.
Creator Richard O'Brien's love letter to schlocky horror and sci-fi movies and sexual liberation is written in bright red lipstick with a subversive, punk edge of gleeful raunch.
Whether you're a seasoned Transylvanian who knows every line by heart or a curious "virgin" wondering what all the fuss is about, you can give yourself over to absolute pleasure when the genre-defying, gender-bending time-warping film - newly restored and remastered in 4K ultra-high-definition - struts back into cinemas for a limited season from October 16.
What began as a no-budget 1970s stage show and then a quick-and-dirty flop of a film has morphed into a glitter-dusted cult classic and the planet's favourite midnight movie - a pelvic-thrusting celebration of rebellion that has become a rallying cry for creatures of the night and transformed cinemas into glorious cathedrals of camp as costumed "shadow casts" interact with the screen.
Curry, so thrillingly charismatic as the notorious but "sweet transvestite", puts the movie's long legs down to one of its many quotable lines - the invitation (or dare) taken to heart by millions of fans over 50 years.
"The message of the film - don't dream it, be it - is very important," Curry explained last week in LA.
"One of the things that the movie does, I think, is give anyone permission to behave as badly as they really want, in whatever way and with whom. And I'm proud of that."
Here are 50 things to know about The Rocky Horror Picture Show, including winks to classic movies you might have missed.
The origins of a cult classic
1. Two documentaries released in 2025 explore the low-fi origins and enduring appeal of Rocky Horror: Strange Journey, by creator Richard O'Brien's son Linus, which features interviews with Curry and Sarandon; and German filmmaker Andreas Zerr's celebration of the fans, Sane Inside Insanity, which takes its title from a lyric in the song Eddie's Teddy.
2. Born in the UK but raised in New Zealand, O'Brien had appeared in Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar in the UK before he wrote his own rock musical, "They Came from Denton High", a sexually unabashed, glam-rock spin on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein that drew on his love of old sci-fi and horror films.
3. Australian Jim Sharman, who'd directed O'Brien in Jesus Christ Superstar, came on board as director, O'Brien got the role of hunchbacked "handyman" Riff Raff, and his musical got a new name: The Rocky Horror Show.
4. Other Aussie creatives involved in the original stage production and the film version that followed include set designer Brian Thomson, performer Nell Campbell (who played the tap-dancing, nip slip-prone Columbia), editor Graeme Clifford and casting director Hilary Linstead.
5. The roles of Columbia and Magenta were originally a single character intended for singer Marianne Faithfull.
6. Time Warp and its now indelible pelvic thrusts were not originally in the stage show. The number was added to make the 40-minute show longer.
7. The Time Warp dance was inspired by a Madison dancing sequence in 1964 crime drama Band of Outsiders by French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard. "The genius thing was the Time Warp told you how to do it," Patricia Quinn (who played flame-haired maid Magenta) has said. "The only other song to do that was the Hokey Pokey."
8. Tim Curry's Dr Frank-N-Furter originally had a German accent but Curry changed it to a posh English accent after deciding Frank should "sound like the queen".
9. The musical play opened on June 19, 1973, in the tiny, 63-seat studio upstairs at London's Royal Court Theatre. It was a hit and moved to a series of larger venues. The following year it was a hit at The Roxy nightclub on LA's Sunset Strip run by Lou Adler, where The Doors played and Cheech and Chong did comedy. After six weeks filming the movie in the UK, the stage show opened on Broadway in March 1975, but bombed, lasting only a month.
It's alive: a movie awakens
10. The Rocky Horror Picture Show - suitably retitled for picture theatres - opened in London in August 1975, in the US a month later and in Australia in December 1975.
11. The original movie poster riffed on 1975's hit movie, Jaws, using the tagline under a pair of giant red lips, "A different set of jaws".
12. Jim Sharman has said 20th Century Fox offered him "a reasonable budget" if he would cast "currently fashionable rock stars" in the film version but he lobbied instead to keep the original stage cast with the addition of US actors Barry Bostwick and future Oscar-winner Susan Sarandon.
13. Steve Martin auditioned for the role of Brad but Barry Bostwick - the first actor to play Danny Zuko in the Broadway version of Grease - got the part.
14. Mick Jagger wanted to play Frank in the film, but Curry got to make his screen debut.
15. The film's opening sequence features disembodied lips in a black void singing about classic horror and sci-fi movies. Patricia Quinn provided the lips. O'Brien sang the song, Science Fiction/Double Feature.
16. The lips were inspired by Man Ray's 1936 painting The Lovers.
17. The 11 classic movies referenced in Science Fiction/Double Feature: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), starring Michael Rennie; Flash Gordon (1936); Claude Rains in The Invisible Man (1933); Fay Wray in King Kong (1933); It Came From Outer Space (1953); Doctor X (1932); Curse Of The Demon (1957) starring Dana Andrews; Anne Francis in Forbidden Planet (1956); Tarantula (1955) starring Leo G. Carroll; Janette Scott in The Day of the Triffids (1962); and director George Pal's When Worlds Collide (1951).
The Frankenstein place: secrets from the set
18. During Dammit Janet, Riff Raff and Magenta are styled to resemble the farm couple in Grant Wood's 1930 oil painting American Gothic, which appears later in the film. The parody continues through to RiffRaff's pitchfork-shaped ray gun.
19. Jim Sharman and production designer Brian Thomson originally wanted the film's opening act to be in black and white, like The Wizard Oz, then switch to colour when Frank enters. The studio rejected the idea.
20. The "Frankenstein place" - Frank's spooky castle - is a real place: Oakley Court on the River Thames outside London. The Victorian Gothic mansion was built in 1895 and now operates as a luxury hotel.
21. Interior scenes were shot at nearby Bray Studios where Hammer Film Productions such as Peter Cushing's The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Christopher Lee's Dracula (1958) were made.
22. Richard Nixon's 1974 resignation speech ("I have never been a quitter") plays on the car radio as Brad and Janet drive in the rain before reaching the castle.
23. Janet is reading a copy of the real-life Cleveland newspaper, The Plain Dealer, as she and Brad drive. She then uses it to cover her head in the rain.
24. Peter Hinwood, who played the muscle man created in Frank's lab, could not sing. His big number, The Sword of Damocles, was dubbed by Aussie Trevor White who played the title role in the original 1972 Australian stage production of Jesus Christ Superstar.
25. Hinwood later became an antiques dealer and sold Rocky's gold hot pants at auction for nearly $1000.
26. Curry's makeup designer for the film, Pierre La Roche, also did David Bowie's glam Ziggy Stardust lightning bolt.
27. O'Brien borrowed the line, "don't dream it, be it", from the back of a magazine.
28. Meat Loaf, who had played Eddie in the 1974 LA stage production, doesn't speak but sings all of his dialogue after bursting out of a freezer on a motorcycle to belt out Hot Patootie, Bless My Soul.
29. When Riff Raff and Magenta launch the Frankenstein place back to Transylvania, a cardboard cutout of the house was used. Parts of the real house can be seen behind it.
30. Once in a While is the film's "lost song". Sung by Brad after Janet discovers him in bed with Frank, it was in the original musical but cut from the movie.
31. Jonathan Adams was The Rocky Horror Show's criminologist narrator before he was Dr Everett Von Scott in the movie.
32. Vincent Price, who'd seen the play in London and loved it, was offered the film role of the narrator but was unavailable. Alec Guinness declined, so Charles Gray - who'd been in two James Bond films - was hired and shot his scenes in a day.
A toast ... to science fiction! Hidden homage to movies
33. When Frank sings in Sweet Transvestite that "if you want something visual that's not too abysmal, we could take in an old Steve Reeves movie", he's referring to the muscle-man star of late-50s "sword and sandal" B-movies Hercules, Hercules Unchained and Goliath and the Barbarians.
34. The tank and dummy in Rocky's "creation" scene were used in Hammer's The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958).
35. Riff Raff scaring Rocky with a candelabra is a salute to the 1931's Frankenstein, in which the mad doctor's assistant taunts Boris Karloff's monster with a flaming torch.
36. Eddie's "love" and "hate" knuckle tatts are a nod to the tattoos sported by Robert Mitchum's villain in The Night of the Hunter (1955).
37. Rocky apes 1933's King Kong when he climbs a model RKO radio tower before falling to his death.
38. Magenta's striped beehive at the end of the film is the hairdo of The Bride of Frankenstein (1935).
Give yourself over to absolute pleasure: the fans
39. The film flopped in cinemas. Meat Loaf recalled attending an empty cinema in opening week. Sharman: "The film, which didn't have any names in it, kind of opened and shut like a door".
40. In true B-movie style, it rose from the grave in 1976 as a midnight movie at New York's Waverly Theatre, where fans got into the camp spirit by dressing up and interacting with the on-screen action.
41. Props often used by "shadow cast" fans and audience participation screenings include: rice (thrown during the opening wedding); water pistols (for rain); newspapers (to shield from the rain); flashlights (for the "there's a light" verse of Over at the Frankenstein Place); rubber gloves (snapped in sync with Frank in his lab); and toast (tossed when Frank proposes a toast at dinner).
42. The movie has been shown continually around the world since 1975, making it the longest-running cinema release ever. Munich's Museum Lichtspiele has screened it every week since 1977.
43. Tim Curry once tried to attend a dress-up midnight screening in New York only to be told he was an imposter: "You're the third Tim Curry this week".
44. In poorly received 1981 sequel Shock Treatment, starring O'Brien and Quinn, Cliff DeYoung and Jessica Harper play Brad and Janet. Barry Humphries also appears.
45. Curry says Princess Diana once told him with a "wicked smile" that Rocky Horror had "quite completed my education".
46. Many movies and TV shows have celebrated Rocky Horror over 50 years, beginning as early as 1980 in Fame. Sitcom The Drew Carey Show featured an elaborately staged dance-off between costumed Rocky Horror fans doing the Time Warp and rival midnight moviegoers in drag singing Groove Thing from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
47. When High School Musical director Kenny Ortega did a 2016 TV remake, titled Let's Do the Time Warp Again, critics slammed it as "sexless" and "like your mum threw you a Rocky-themed birthday party".
48. A life-size statue of Riff Raff was erected in 2017 in Hamilton, New Zealand, at the site of the former cinema where a young Richard O'Brien attended late-night movie screenings. He returned to live in NZ in 2009.
49. The Walt Disney Co has controlled Rocky Horror since its 2019 acquisition of 20th Century Fox, leading fans to joke that Dr Frank-N-Furter is now a Disney princess.
50. No one is in drag in Rocky Horror. That's just how you dress when you're from Transexual, Transylvania.
- Sources: grindhousedatabase.com, rockyhorror.com, nfsa.gov.au, denofgeek.com, rockymusic.org
James Joyce
James Joyce is executive editor of ACM, the publisher of this masthead. Based in Canberra, he is a former editor of ACM's The Canberra Times and began his journalism career as a cadet reporter for his hometown paper, ACM's Newcastle Herald, where he spent two decades moonlighting as the masthead’s movie and TV critic while working his way up to the position of deputy editor.
