A rocky road to liberation

A year after its release, ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ became a smash on the late-night cinema screening circuit – and at one Oregon cinema in particular

- Sab Astley

Picture this: you’re in a cinema, ready to watch a movie called The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Suddenly, the audience starts heckling the actors onscreen, calling them bastards and shits. Then rice and playing cards are thrown into the air around you. Before you know it, everyone’s on their feet dancing. Is there a gas leak in here? No. This is just another regular showing of the ultimate cult movie.

Best described as a musical valentine to pulpy sci-fi and horror movies of the Forties and Fifties, Rocky Horror began life on the London stage in 1973, its success fuelled by word-of-mouth and the sheer wildness of its premise: few bits of art begin with two upbeat suburbanites getting engaged at the beginning of the story, then winding up in an intergalactic bisexual pool orgy by its end.

Ask any Rocky Horror fan what the 1975 film adaptation is about and they'll give you a different answer: exploring one’s sexuality, the need to express who you truly are, the importance of second-guessing whether or not to enter an ancient-looking Transylvanian castle. The white-hot engine of Rocky Horror is Dr Frank-N-Furter, a mad scientist clad in fishnets, pearl necklaces and baby pink latex gloves, who woos two all-American naifs (Barry Bostwick’s Brad and Susan Sarandon’s Janet) with his oozing sex appeal and devilish charm. As played by Tim Curry in a career-defining performance, Dr Frank-N-Furter is a machiavellian incubus by way of David Bowie.

Fifty years after its initial release, Rocky Horror has amassed global adoration, particularly on the midnight movie circuit. And no cinema in the world is more steeped in Rocky Horror’s rituals and traditions than the Clinton Street Theater in Portland, Oregon, which has shown the film every week without fail since 1978. “We're certainly not a standard movie theatre,” co-owner Aaron Colter tells me.