The following is the second of my two entries in The April Showers Blogathon, being hosted at this blog from March 31 to April 2, 2017. Click on the above banner, and read bloggers’ tributes to rainy scenes in cinema!
The initial appeal of The Rocky Horror Picture Show is not something easily explained; it helps if you were there at, or near, the beginning. I first saw the movie at age 16, by which time it had already been established as a midnight-movie favorite for two years. For me, at least, it was a place where the social misfits could have a weekend party of their own. I saw the movie 50-plus times throughout my high school and early college years.
It’s a terrific rock-and-roll horror movie mash-up. The main part of the story occurs after the setting shifts to a Gothic mansion, where an out-there scientist, Dr. Frank-n-Furter (Tim Curry in a bravura performance), is bringing his carefully chiseled creation, the muscular Rocky, to life. But how do we get to the mansion in the first place?
With the help of the newly engaged and deeply naive Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) and Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon), that’s how. They’re on their way to visit a former teacher and tell him about their engagement. But in the midst of their rain-soaked journey, a tire on Brad’s car blows out. When Brad contemplates going out for help, Janet asks, “Where will you go in the middle of nowhere?” And as the knowing movie audience yells out, “What’s white and sells hamburgers?”, Brad strokes his chin and recalls, “Didn’t we pass a castle back down the road?”
The couple seems to get ample warning from the gods against following this plan…
But they do it anyway, while singing a cheery song about how the light from the castle sprung up from the darkness to save them. If they only knew what was on the other side of that castle fence…
“Close-up, please? Thank you!”
So rain is a definite trigger of portent to come in this movie. (It also briefly figures later in the movie, when a frightened Rocky breaks out of the castle and tries to escape.) Indeed, wetness abounds in this film, in other ways that I won’t tastelessly disclose here.
The musical number is embedded below. (If you liked this blogathon entry, click here to read my first one.)
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A really odd movie, and of course, me being odd myself, one I like. My review of this movie also includes a reminiscence of choosing between this and Pink Floyd’s The Wall for an outing (and the regret I still have that we chose the latter…) I still haven’t seen it in a theater, but hope to before I die.
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I love this film so much. My birthday is on Halloween, and it is a tradition for me to watch this as well as Beetlejuice on that day. If it wasn’t for the rain and “getting caught with a flat”, we would not have met all of those wonderfully weird characters!
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