The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) is a comedy horror musical. A straitlaced couple, Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) and Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon) end up with a flat tire and stop at a castle in the woods to use the phone. In the castle, Dr. Frank N. Furter, (Tim Curry) a gender-bending scientist from another planet, is giving a party to celebrate the creation of Rocky Horror, a new strongman playmate. Singer Meat Loaf also makes brief appearance. The film was based on a long-running stage production The Rocky Horror Show.
A cult following developed as the film began playing at midnight, first at the Waverly Theater in New York City. People began shouting responses to the characters' statements on the screen (including abuse of the characters or actors, vulgar sex jokes, puns, or pop culture references). Casts of fans dress up as the characters and act out the movie in front of the screen. Other audience participation includes dancing the Time Warp, throwing buttered toast, water, toilet paper, and rice at the appropriate points in the movie. What were originally ad lib responses from the audience are now, in some locales, as tightly scripted as any screenplay, with audience members who provide "incorrect" responses angrily shouted down just as if they were being disruptive in a normal movie.
The script of the original musical as well as the screenplay of the film were written by Richard O'Brien, who also composed the songs and played Riff Raff in the film. A "sequel" (a few of the characters are in the movie, but played by different actors) to the film, called Shock Treatment, was made, but despite its appeal to cult audiences and campy nature has not caught on as much as the original.
One theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and another theater in Portland, Oregon have both played the movie weekly since 1978. A cinema in Munich, Germany has been playing the movie every single night since about 1990.
