It’s astounding, time is fleeting: 50 years ago, The Rocky Horror Picture Show — a sci-fi/horror/musical-comedy adapted from a stage play by Richard O’Brien that opened on London’s West End in 1973 — premiered on U.S. movie screens. At first, its box-office gross was flatter than Brad and Janet’s tire on that stormy night. But all flops should bounce back like this one: The Jim Sharman-directed film is still playing in limited theatrical showings around the United States, making it the longest big-screen run for a film in history. To toast a half-century of Horror, Billboard is doing the time warp, again. It’s just a jump to the left…
‘Show’ and Hell
Thanks to an investment from Ode Records president (and Carole King producer) Lou Adler, the Rocky Horror Show stage production jumped to the left coast to open at Adler’s Roxy in Los Angeles. The April 13, 1974, Billboard hailed its “outrageously decadent humor” and recognized Tim Curry as “a major talent discovery” for his campy portrayal of the gender-bending mad scientist: “How many male performers could go through an entire play costumed in a Marlene Dietrich chorus girl outfit and still come across with Mick Jagger macho?”
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‘Rocky’ Start
The following year, The Rocky Horror Picture Show — starring Curry and Susan Sarandon — made its big-screen bow, then fizzled, but beamed into the underground movie circuit. The June 3, 1978, Billboard predicted that the soundtrack, which had just made its Billboard 200 debut that April, “may well become the sleeper soundtrack of the year.” “It’s not a mass item,” one label executive told Billboard, “but it is a mass cult item.”
There’s a Light
By 1980, ticket buyers were doing the time warp, again, at call-and-response screenings. An Aug. 2 piece about how rock music could boost a movie’s endurance reported that “the frenzied Rock ‘n’ Roll High School [and the] laughably ghoulish Rocky Horror Picture Show” could still “pack in audiences with the best of them.” Slowly and steadily, it paid off. The film “quietly marked its 10th anniversary last month by topping $60 million,” according to the Nov. 9, 1985, Billboard. “But beyond the numbers, the most important cultural contribution made by Rocky Horror may have been establishing the phenomenon of midnight weekend screenings of cult films.”
Rent-a, Rent-a, Rent Me
“E.T., Rocky Horror Picture Show Top Some Lists,” according to a headline in the Aug. 22, 1987, issue, which described the video titles stores wanted most. Looking at “feedback on catalog releases from special request sheets in each store,” video merchants were eager to taste Curry’s Dr. Frank-N-Furter. By 1990, their desires were fulfilled. “The Rocky Horror Picture Show, one of the most eagerly awaited titles in industry history, will make its belated debut on video Nov. 8 at $89.98,” reported the Sept. 22 issue. By then, the film had grossed “$150 million at the domestic box office.” At the time, “it still plays midnight shows in at least 200 theaters.” It’s still showing.
This story appears in the Oct. 11, 2025, issue of Billboard.
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