With Halloween approaching, the Shattered Lens presents to you a recording of the 2015 West End production of The Rocky Horror Show, featuring Richard O’Brien, Emma Bunton, Stephen Fry, Anthony Head, Ben Forster, Haley Flaherty, and David Bedella.
The film is so popular that I think some people tend to overlook Rocky Horror‘s theatrical origins. Personally, I prefer this energetic stage version to the film.
It feels strange to actually watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show without an audience.
I say this because the film is actually far better known for its fans than anything else. First released in 1975 to middling reviews and, at first, anemic box office returns, The Rocky Horror Picture Show went on to become the first great cult film. It’s literally been playing in theaters for 25 years, which has to be some sort of record. When one sees Rocky Horror Picture Show in a theater, one does not merely sit back and watch in a state of suspended animation. Instead, most of the audience becomes a part of the show. They yell, they dance, and many of them return night-after-night. I have been to two midnight showings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show and I have to admit that it was actually pretty intimidating both times. The people in the audience — the veterans who knew every line and knew exactly what to do — were, more or less, friendly. I’ve read some online horror stories about people who felt like they weren’t welcome the first time they attended a showing. I had the opposite experience. No one was rude, no one glared. It was definitely a cliquey group but I felt as if they had earned the right to be in their clique. No one seemed to be bothered by the fact that I was mostly there just to observe. (I should also mention that neither showing that I attended demanded that the first-time watchers stand up or go to the front of the theater or anything like that. Apparently, there’s quite a few people online who got upset over being singled-out as “virgins” and never got over it.) But it was intimidating in much the same way as meeting a friend of a friend is intimidating or exploring a new town is intimidating. I was surrounded by people who had a deep connection with each other, one that had been forged by sharing the same experience for years. It was a communal experience that was actually touching to see, even if I never stopped feeling like an outsider.
It’s interesting to compare the midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show to the midnight showings of The Room. I attended several midnight showings of The Room and I have to admit that I eventually soured on them as it became clear that many people were showing up to taunt the film as opposed to enjoying it for the odd, communal experience that it was. The last few The Room showings that I attended were filled with a hostility that left me feeling a bit uncomfortable. Whereas The Room’s cult has often felt a bit mean-spirited (as if everyone had gathered together to laugh at Tommy Wiseau for thinking he could make a movie), The Rocky Horror Picture Show‘s cult is based on a genuine love for the film.
As for the film itself, I watched it last month without an audience and I judged it solely as a film. The pacing is a bit off and, without the group experience, it’s a lot easier to notice that the film’s storyline doesn’t make a bit of sense, though that was undoubtedly deliberate on the part of the filmmakers. That said, Tim Curry’s performance still gives the film a jolt of energy, recapturing your attention and holding it until the film comes to a close. (The genius of Curry’s performance as that, as flamboyant as it is, he still plays Dr. Frank-n-Furter as being an actual characters with feelings and emotions. He doesn’t just coast on attitude. One need only compare him to Laverne Cox in the 2016 TV production to see how strong Curry’s performance is.) Susan Sarandon brings some depth to her performance as Janet and, if Barry Bostwick is a little on the dull side of Brad …. well, the heroes who appeared in the film that Rocky Horror sends up were rarely that exciting. I enjoyed the snarky humor of Richard O’Brien’s performance and the energy that Meat Loaf brought to the production. Charles Gray, in the role of the Criminologist, really doesn’t get enough credit for holding the film’s disparate parts together.
In the end, when viewed as a film as opposed to a communal experience, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is undoubtedly flawed but it’s still energetic enough to work. The love for the old sic-fi films comes through and Tim Curry’s uninhibited performance works with or without an audience. The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a film that brings people together and I hope it continues to do so.
1985’s Revolution opens on July 4th, 1776. The Declaration of Independence has just been published. The streets are full of people celebrating. A statue of King George is pulled down. In her carriage, the wealthy Mrs. McConnahay (Joan Plowright) turns up her nose to the enthusiastic rebels, including the fanatical Liberty Woman (Annie Lennox). Mrs. McConnahay’s daughter, Daisy (Nastassja Kinski) is intrigued by this idea of freedom and equality.
Fur trader Tom Dobbs sails his boat into Hudson Harbor. Tom is Scottish, illiterate, and very much a man of the 18th Century. However, he’s played by Al Pacino, who was none of those things. After Revolution was released to desultory reviews, Pacino took four years off from the movies and watching this film, one can see why. Pacino is miscast as Dobbs and, as a result, he gives the type of truly bad performance that can only be given by a great actor. Unable to disguise the fact that he had the accent of a modern-day New Yorker, Pacino resorts to mumbling the majority of his lines. Tasked with playing a character who has no idea how to deal with the history-making events in which he finds himself, Pacino alternates between a blank look and with bulging his eyes like a madman, proving that it’s far more difficult to play an uneducated character than an educated one. Why cast Pacino, who can be one of our most exciting actors, as a character who can barely speak and who has neither the intensity of Michael Corleone or the subversive wit of Tony Montana? Due to Pacino and Kinski having zero chemistry, the scenes where Tom falls in love with Daisy are almost painful to watch.
The film follows Tom as he and his son, Ned (Simon Owen when the film begins, Dexter Fletcher by the time the action moves to Valley Forge), as they find themselves conscripted into the Revolutionary Army. Eventually, Ned is abducted into the British army and serves as a drummer boy under the sadistic watch of Sgt. Major Peasy (Donald Sutherland). The idea behind the film isn’t a bad one. It attempts to portray the American Revolution through the eyes of the average citizen. Instead of focusing on the Founding Fathers, Revolution tries to tell the story of the everyday people who found themselves in the middle of the war. Tom loses his boat and (temporarily) he loses his son. Fortunately, this is one of those films where people are constantly running into each other by chance, regardless of whether it makes any sense or not. Daisy goes from seeing Tom in New York to randomly coming across him in a field to eventually finding him in Valley Forge. It’s not because she’s specifically looking for him. Instead, he just happens to be there.
Why does Revolution fail? A lot of it comes down to Pacino’s performance, though Pacino certainly isn’t the only talented actor to give a not-quite good performance in Revolution. (Donald Sutherland has never been more wasted in a film.) The script is full of dialogue like, “My mouth belongs where I place it.” (Pacino gets stuck with that one.) Hugh Hudson directs in a leaden manner. Towards the end of the film, there is one brilliant sequence where Tom wanders through the streets of New York and, for a few minutes, the film comes to like with a spontaneity that was previously lacking. Unfortunately, it’s just one sequence in a very long movie,
To be honest, we could use some good films about the American Revolution and I’m not talking about elitist nonsense like Hamilton. No taxation without representation. It’s still a good message for us all.
Previous Icarus Files:
Life on the planet Mongo is not easy. Aided by Darth Vader wannabe Klytus (Peter Wyngarde) and the sadistic General Kala (Mariangela Melato), the evil Emperor Ming (Max Von Sydow) rules with an iron fist. All of the citizens are heavily taxed and kept in a state of perpetual war in order to keep them from joining together and rebelling. Those who attempt to defy Ming are executed.
There are many different races living on both Mongo and its moons. The Arborians, also known as the tree people, live in a jungle and are ruled by Prince Barin (Timothy Dalton). Until Ming overthrew his father, Barin was the rightful heir to the throne of Mongo. Barin is also one of the many lovers of Aura (Ornella Muti), Ming’s rebellious daughter.
Barin distrusts the Hawkmen, a group of winged barbarians. Led by the boisterous Prince Vultan (the one and only Brian Blessed), the Hawkmen live in a palace that floats above Mongo. Both Vultan and Barin share a desire to overthrow Ming but neither one of them can set aside their own dislike and distrust of each other.
Ming grows bored easily but Klytus has found him a new play thing, an obscure planet in the S-K system. “The inhabitants,” Klytus says, “refer to it as the planet Earth.”
It all leads to this:
You may have been too busy listening to Queen’s theme song to notice (and I don’t blame you if you were) but I have always found it strange that, even though Ming had never heard of Earth before Klytus brought it to his attention, he still had a button labeled “Earthquake.” Whenever I watch Flash Gordon, I wonder if I am the only one who has noticed this.
With Ming plaguing Earth with tornadoes, hurriances, and “hot hail,” it is up to three Earthlings to travel to Mongo and defeat him. Dr. Zarkov (Topol) is an eccentric scientist who was forced out of NASA because of his belief in Mongo. Dale Arden (Melody Anderson) is a reporter. And, finally, Flash Gordon (Sam J. Jones) is a professional athlete. Because this movie is a fantasy, Flash Gordon is a superstar quarterback for the New York Jets.
The character of Flash Gordon was first introduced in a 1934 comic strip and was played by Buster Crabbe in several classic serials. Among Flash’s many young fans was a future filmmaker named George Lucas, who would later cite Flash’s adventures as being a major inspiration for the Star Wars saga. After the unprecedented success of Star Wars: A New Hope, it only made sense that someone would try to make a Flash Gordon film.
That someone was producer Dino De Laurentiis. (Before writing the script for Star Wars, Lucas attempted to buy the rights for Flash Gordon from De Laurentiis.) To write the script that would bring Flash into the 80s, De Laurentiis hired Lorenzo Semple, Jr. Semple was best known for helping to create the 1960s version of Batman and he brought a similarly campy perspective to the character and story of Flash Gordon. As a result, the film ended up with scenes like this one, where Flash interrupts one of Ming’s ceremonies with an impromptu football scrimmage:
It also led to Brian Blessed’s entire performance as Prince Vultan, which is especially famous for the way that Blessed delivered one line:
(That also makes for a great ringtone.)
Sam J. Jones and Melody Anderson often seem to be stranded by Semple’s script but Max Von Sydow, Topol, Brian Blessed, Peter Wyngarde, and Ornella Muti all get into the swing of things. Seen today, Flash Gordon is entertaining but too intentionally campy for its own good. On the positive side, the images still pop off the screen and the soundtrack sounds as great as ever. When you listen to Queen’s theme song, you have no doubt that “he’ll save every one of us.”
As Flash Gordon himself put it after he saved the universe: “YEAAAAH!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFSDR1iJrZ4
I suppose if I asked most people what music they identified with horror, John Carpenter’s “Halloween Theme” and Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” (The Exorcist) would come up first. After that, you’d get a lot of Rob Zombie and Glenn Danzig. So right off the bat, you’re looking at an enormous variety of sounds and styles connected mainly by association. While John Carpenter’s work was intentionally composed for the film in which it appeared, “Tubular Bells” was originally a 50 minute progressive rock opus that was anything but sinister or foreboding in its full form. Misfits was a goth punk band that happened to favor horror themes. White Zombie’s horror imagery was more a matter of crudeness and vulgarity in the spirit of GWAR; their sound was a frontrunner in the emergence of industrial groove metal, and the greatest “horror” associated with Rob was the countless terrible nu metal spinoffs. A couple of “top ten horror songs” lists I stumbled upon even list Bobby Boris Pickett’s “Monster Mash” and Richard O’Brien’s “Time Warp”. I mean, “Monster Mash” is a fun Halloween song, sure, but horror? Really? And the Rocky Horror Picture Show does make me want to vomit, but we have to draw the line somewhere.
Suffice to say, “horror” music is not a genre at all. Simply associating a song with a scene or theme is enough to relate them; Huey Lewis and the News will probably make me smile and think of Christian Bale chopping people to bits in his apartment for the rest of my life. But there are definitely certain musical attributes that conjure in us a less glitzy feeling of dread than Hellbilly Deluxe. That skittering cockroach beat in the background of Halloween is completely unnerving; Carnival music is way creepier than Stephen King’s It; Black Sabbath’s appreciation for diabolus in musica virtually invented heavy metal; and it took a firm dose of the blues in 1988 for Danzig to capture a sense of the sinister that Misfits could never convey.
I don’t believe that any particular musical formula is the coalescence of evil. The music we find most haunting is derived from association too, but it connects in more subtle ways than say, the fact that a particular song appears in a horror film or mentions witches in the chorus. The real deal distorts what comforts us, denies our sense of order, and pries upon our innocence. Through a musical medium as through any other, horror focuses on shattering the lens through which we perceive reality as an ordered, logical construct. It reminds us of the real nightmares in life while nullifying our means to counteract them. It takes us to the world of the child, where emotional extremes enhance our senses of comfort and terror alike.
The carnival tune and music box are prime targets, conjuring in our minds a time when fear was more potent. The brief piano loop, the simple hum, the monotone drone–these bring us to solitude and isolation through minimalism. Effective horror themes offer no comforting symphony or rock ensemble to encase us in a nuanced world. They surround us with something singular and far from warm, or with nothing at all. The wind chimes warn of a storm; when none is coming, the darkness is all the more unnatural. The cathedral bell, a sign of fellowship on a Sunday morning, also tolls for death. A twitch, a buzz, a repeated knocking, a bit of static–things that would otherwise annoy us–exploit the close connection between discomfort and tension.
Or else we can completely overwhelm the senses with noise that strips away the familiarity which typically diminishes extreme music’s effect, leaving us a nervous wreck. When Blut Aus Nord chose to employ programmed, industrial blast beats in their 777 trilogy, they effectively eliminated the one element of the music that would have sounded too familiar to disturb. Instead, the epileptic guitar finds companionship in a persistent, unnatural clatter designed to place us permanently on edge.
Other bands have found other means to the same end. Peste Noire’s unique “black ‘n’ roll” sound enlivens a standard formula for “evil” music with a pep and a grin, giving the brutalizer a human face in the spirit of medieval sadism. Sunn O))) are inclined to drone on for ages, developing a false sense of comfort before infusing their deep buzz with a caterwaul of shrill pitches and clattering chimes. (I actually had a guy start freaking out on me at work one day when “Cry For The Weeper”, which he didn’t even notice playing, hit the 3:55 mark.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTsj5Bz2hPY
And lastly, we can’t forget the power of lyrics to render a song gruesome. The stereotypical lines of a black metal song–nonsense about necromoonyetis and an appeal to Satanism far less disturbing than the average Christian commentator on Fox News–are pure cheese, and they entertain us in a manner similar to your typical zombie flick. But when you first heard Smashing Pumpkin’s “x.y.u.”, you probably got a feeling more akin to Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.
Horror in lyrics is something a bit the opposite of horror in sound; it strikes us most deeply when we can be convinced that there is absolutely nothing supernatural about it. There are certainly a few exceptions–Townes Van Zandt’s tall tale in “Our Mother the Mountain” chills me to the bone–but generally speaking, the real atrocities committed throughout human history far exceed the limits of our imaginations. Vlad Tepes was worse than any vampire, and from Elizabeth Bathory and Ariel Castro to Hernando Cortes and Adolf Hitler, we are flooded by examples of direct personal cruelty and dehumanized mass slaughter. When a song manages to make us think of these individuals and events beyond the safety blanket of historical narrative, an authentic feeling or horror is hard to deny.
Through the Shattered Lens 