I watched my favorite musical, Rocky Horror, last night, and realized it maybe my all time favorite movie. I'm thinnking about watching it again today, and already have the soundtrack playing. As a kid this must have been the first R rated movie I ever saw, although I had never really thought of it as R rated before last night. favorite movie of all time. My mom is an ex-ballarina and show choir performer so I saw this at a relatively young age, but you see I wasn't allowed to (and didn't)watch R rated movie until I was about 16, and my mother had shown this to me a few times and I think we even watched it when I was 13 in my Freshman theatre class. I was never I.D.'d the time I saw it in theaters and was like 15, so it really wasn't until last night that it hit me that this was a R rated movie. Even Hot Patootie has such a fun happy, almost early 80s light pop/rock, vibe, yet it ends in murder and then they eventually eat Eddie...




The thing that I find interesting is that almost everyone seems to love this movie, yet it really is a Trash Epic! I mean everyone loves this movie, my mom, my director at the time, most all my friends (hell even my Marine of a father loves this movie), yet after thinking about it Rocky Horror really worked for it's R rating: Nudity, Gore, Cannibalism, Rape, Drug Use, Incest and Racism (7 point movie), but yet it's in just the right ammount and combined with so much fun that most audiences look right past it. In a way it's almost as the audience is who is really getting put under the persuation of Dr. Frankenfurter. Like Brad and Jannet, so many of the people I know who love this movie are very innocent. You know godly, wholesome working and business people, ignorant to 95% of the movies most us of know, and would probably not ever want to know of them anyway. However, when this movie comes on, those same people are completely unphased and seem to want to get dirty.



The flip side of that is that a lot of people I know who love horror movies and the more, let's say interesting, side of media don't like musicals at all. I can't even get @Box to go see Book of Mormon with me, let alone watch Fair Lady or Singing in the Rain. However, again most everyone I know like that just looks right past it. Hell I think @Box can quote the entire movie, and can at least recite the soundtrack. I've even seen friends of mine who listened to nothing but doom metal and watch very obscure movies, they were part of our techinal crew, lighting, sounds, video, etc..., and even they would step onto the dance floor at cast parties to dance to Time Warp.




That it what is so magical about this movie. It takes everyone out of their comfort zones at first by combining two things that aren't really in the same general ballpark. I even alot of homophobes I know will sing along with Sweet Transvestite. This movie makes everyones thinking scrambled. Think about it, think of someone you know that likes musicals, if you said "Hey let's go see a musical, it's a horror musical with cannibalism and trannies!", they most likely wouldn't go see it with you, neither would someone who hates musicals, yet both of these group are simply entranced by the movie.

I'm not really sure where else this rant is going, I was planning on reviewing the movie, but it turned more into a thought piece, so thoughts? Why do you love Rocky Horror? Have you ever shown it to someone who doesn't like it? Do you not like it, and why? This and any other feelings you have are welcome!