Writers: Richard O’Brien and Jim Sharman
Director: Jim Sharman
Can it really be 51 years ago that The Rocky Horror Picture Show first exploded onto the cultural landscape? This 50th Anniversary Spectacular celebrates 2025’s milestone with special screenings. There’s a Q&A with a handful of original cast members and a full shadow-cast version of the show on the stage while the film screens behind them. And tickets come with a goodie bag of props. The result is a chaotic carnival of Rocky Horror-themed nostalgia.
Cult classic doesn’t really begin to describe the all-singing, wildly-dancing, sexy, ridiculous, comedy-horror phenomenon that is The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The original hit musical, with music, lyrics and book by Richard O’Brien, opened at London’s Royal Court Upstairs in 1973 and the low-budget film followed two years later. Initially a flop outside LA, it relaunched as a midnight movie, and a new tradition was born.
At the start of the film, a huge singing pair of scarlet lips floats towards the screen to welcome the audience to the “science fiction, double feature”. The credits are dripping with blood. Soon, newlyweds Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) and Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon) are lost with a flat tyre in the middle of a raging storm outside a spooky castle. What unfolds at the party-loving home of transvestite scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry) is now the stuff of legend.
Bostwick, now 81 years old, joins Patricia Quinn (who also plays the castle maid, Magenta), Nell Campbell (Columbia) and (unusually) Peter Hinwood (Rocky) on stage for a pre-show Q&A. The disembodied lips belonged to Quinn and she describes filming the sequence in a bleakly empty studio with her head clamped in place and complains that the voice is actually Richard O’Brien’s.
All four performers share lively reminiscences. Campbell describes being talent-spotted by the show’s creators as she was tap-dancing on a table while working as a waitress in Chelsea. Hinwood says that after playing hunky creation Rocky, he left the acting world and went to work in an art gallery. He cheerfully admits that he was cast for his physique: “I was the only one that went to the gym in those days.” A recorded greeting from Richard O’Brien (who also plays alien butler Riff Raff) ends with an exhortation to: “Keep the rainbow banner flying”.
A few months into the film’s first 1975 run as a late-night show, rain-drenched Janet appeared on screen, holding a newspaper over her head, and an audience member shouted out: “Buy an umbrella, you cheap bitch”. A growing ritual of increasingly elaborate audience participation grew up around the film: call back lines, singalongs, lookalike fancy dress, things from home to throw at the screen including newspapers, toast, water, rice. Showings are riotous and messy occasions, and this one is no exception. This interactive screening has everyone on their feet and pelvic thrusting to the Time Warp before the film has even started. The coloured lights are sometimes turned on the audience to encourage them to participate.
This anniversary screening provides everyone in the audience with a bag of props: newspapers, party hats, rubber gloves, glowsticks. The sight of a huge theatre full of waving lights lends proceedings a festival glamour. The volume of the songs and Q&A is also turned up rock-concert levels. There’s a costume competition with dozens of audience members sporting the full basque-and-fishnets look for Frank-N-Furter or gold-sequinned top hat and tails for Columbia, or any of a dozen other characters.
The film’s aesthetic draws on classic 1950s vibes, mixing horror and sci fi motifs with a big dollop of comic subversion. Its cultural influence is hard to overestimate, affecting all kinds of areas from fashion (the punk vogue for dyed hair and ripped fishnets) to helping empower the LGBTQ+ movement. Rocky Horror has aged better than other aspects of 1970s culture. The film itself, with its mixture of fluid sexuality and existential perplexity, feels quite contemporary. As the criminologist-narrator (Charles Gray) observes at the end: “And crawling on the planet’s face, some insects called the human race. Lost in time and lost in space… and meaning.”
But the rigid codifying of audience participation feels slightly stale. What began as an act of improvisational liberation now has an air of enforced jollity. The tradition of shouting “slut” at Janet feels dated and the endless repetition of jokes that were funny first-time-round can get tiresome. There are still lots of laughs, although, as Frank-N-Furter observes: “It’s not easy having a good time! Even smiling makes my face ache!”
Die-hard superfans are in their element at this bonanza, with its committed shadow cast and mountains of merchandise. Anyone new to the Rocky Horror phenomenon might be thoroughly baffled. For audience members sitting somewhere in the middle, it’s an entertaining evening out with plenty to look at and a classic film to enjoy.
Reviewed on 19 April 2026 and continues to tour
