It is a name that has been circulating in the cult film community for decades. But the enduring popularity of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is not a phenomenon that sprang up overnight. 

Rocky Horror originally started as a British stage musical with music and lyrics by Richard O’Brien. It premiered in London in June of 1973 and debuted in the United States in Los Angeles in 1974, where it ran for nine months. 

Filming for the movie version of the musical began in October of 1974 in England. It was released in the U.S. on September 29, 1975. Though it is celebrated now, Rocky Horror was not particularly favored by critics. While not all reviews were scathing, the opinions of the reviewers certainly varied and were generally not on the positive side. Chicago-Sun Times critic Roger Ebert wrote in 1976, “[The film] would be more fun, I suspect, if it weren’t a picture show.” Similarly, in 1978, American magazine Newsweek called it “tasteless, plotless and pointless.”  

However, all hope was not lost for “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” The movie found a cult following not too long after its release, when it began being shown as a “midnight movie” in various theatres across the United States. 

Midnight movies were distinctly non-mainstream films that were shown at later hours on television or in theaters, a trend which began in the 1960s and was popularized with midnight screenings of the Alejandro Jodorowsky-directed film “El Topo”. The midnight movie phenomenon also gave life to flicks by Kenneth Anger, John Waters and David Lynch. 

Over the years, fans of the movie began incorporating their own rituals into these late-night screenings. They would shout out responses to characters’ lines, throw things at the screen and dress up as their favorite characters. These traditions have carried on in the years since Rocky Horror’s midnight movie heyday, with audiences adding new lines to local repertoires and some theatres even providing props for their showings. 

Rocky Horror has also gained a particular following among the LGBTQ+ community because of its main theme of liberation and the prominently featured androgynous mad scientist Dr. Frank N. Furter, played by Tim Curry. The LGBTQ+ community had very little representation on screen in the 1970s, and even less of that representation was positive. Depicting Frank N. Furter’s influence over the main couple, Brad and Janet, as more positive than negative was radical for its time. 

But is the experience of seeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show in theatres all that it’s cracked up to be? If you can indulge in the debauchery of a half-drunken crowd of strangers yelling obscenities at the screen for an hour and forty minutes, then it is very well worth it. 

Rocky Horror is, generally speaking, not for the faint of heart, the particularly reserved or the exceptionally sober. If you can get past the sheer intensity that is a large group of people hooting, hollering and yelling vulgar insults at the characters onscreen every few minutes, then it really can be a rather enjoyable experience. 

There is something rather charming about a theatre full of people calling out responses to lines that have been a prominent part of the Rocky Horror repertoire since its early days as a cult film. But these antiquated lines aren’t the only things attendees yell out. At this year’s Halloween screening at the Warehouse Cinema,I heard jokes about Helen Keller, Steve Irwin, Stevie Wonder, getting furloughed, the marines and a plethora of other, racier statements which  need not be repeated here. 

Questionable jokes are far from the only fun Rocky Horror has to offer. People dance, dress up, scream, cheer and talk through the previews and opening credits. And, despite some theatres’ best efforts to dissuade it, they still throw things at the screen. 

Whether Rocky Horror’s longevity will continue to hold up in a world in which films are decried for depicting difficult, controversial and politically incorrect subject matter remains unseen. But it would be a insurmountable task to remove it from the cultural zeitgeist so far down the road. As long as people allow themselves to unashamedly enjoy something so camp, kitsch and ridiculous, I don’t see it going anywhere anytime soon.

“What do they say in the movie?” fellow theatre patron Claire Comley said when asked why she finds herself returning to Rocky Horror. “The thrill!”