LOS ANGELES, Oct. 6 (UPI) — Barry Bostwick, Nell Campbell and Patricia Quinn recently took a break from their month-long Rocky Horror Picture Show 55-city 50th anniversary tour to reflect on the film. The cult classic, released in 4K UHD and digitally on Tuesday and returning to theaters throughout October, has not stopped playing in theaters at midnight since its debut in 1975.
Bostwick and Susan Sarandon play Brad Majors and Janet Weiss, a young couple who end up at the castle of the mad scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry) on a dark and rainy night. The lovebirds experience sexual awakenings through the film’s flamboyant musical numbers.
Stripped of their preppy clothes, Bostwick and Sarandon appear on camera in their underwear. In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Bostwick, now 80, said he insisted on Fruit of the Loom briefs.
“I was a little nervous because they wanted to put me in underwear that they had gotten from Marks & Spencer’s,” Bostwick said. “I said it’s not American.”
In his personal life, however, Bostwick said he wears Marks & Spencer, which he called “the best in the world.”
From left, Patricia Quinn, Tim Curry and Nell Campbell starred in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” on 4K Tuesday. Photo courtesy of Disney
‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ costumes
Frank-N-Furter and his house staff ultimately dress Brad and Janet in leather corsets. Campbell, 72, who plays the groupie Columbia, said the film’s budget was so low that they did not use real leather for any of the costumes.
From left, Nell Campbell, Patricia Quinn, Tim Curry and Richard O’Brien star in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” on 4K Tuesday. Photo courtesy of Disney
Quinn, 81, who portrays the maid Magenta in the film, said her costume was made with the sole piece of chiffon costume designer Sue Blane could afford.
“It had to be cut on the cross, cut on the diagonal and that’s not easy to do if you’re cutting,” Quinn said. “They had no money to buy another piece of chiffon.”
Brad (Barry Bostwick) and Janet (Susan Sarandon) look for help in the rain in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” on 4K Tuesday. Photo courtesy of Disney
Many Rocky Horror fans make their own costumes to wear to screenings and events. Bostwick, Campbell and Quinn have been visiting different cities since September and are surprised at the new fans coming to meet them.
“A lot of them are very young, 6-year-olds dressed as Magenta and Columbia together,” Campbell said. “That’s very charming.”
The ensemble does the Time Warp in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” on 4K Tuesday. Photo courtesy of Disney
Young fans of ‘Rocky Horror’
Although the film is rated R, Campbell feels the material would be considered mild in 2025. Frank-N-Furter sings “Sweet Transvestite” and Janet sings “Touch-a, Touch-a, Toucha-a Touch Me,” and some bare breasts are visible, but Campbell finds the film appropriate for ages “11 or 12 months.”
“Then it’s just color and movement,” Campbell said. “Anything they don’t understand goes over their heads and that’s one of the key reasons I think the film is so adored because it’s not very risque really.”
The more risque aspect is the live show audiences have performed at midnight screenings since 1975. Attendees strip off their clothes and shout back to the screen.
“It’s what goes on in the theater, the live theater, that you might not want your young child to be part of,” Bostwick said.
Campbell concurred and lamented that some of the audience participation has become too vulgar.
“When the callbacks first began, they were witty, charming and fun,” Campbell said. “There’s way too many of them. They need to pull it back because it’s much more fun if you can hear the characters and then they call out the occasional comment.”
Quinn recalled how her son, Quinn, forbade her 11-year-old grandson from attending a screening where she was presenting. She called out her son’s hypocrisy.
“I said to Quinn, ‘What are you talking about? You were on the set when you were 5,'” Quinn said.
Bostwick suggested that the audience participation screenings should be one’s second viewing of the film. Though the events have helped keep the film relevant, Bostwick hopes people will celebrate the movie itself with the latest 4K edition.
“You have to see it without all that first so you get the film,” he said. “Then you go see it in the theater and then you get the whole community, you get the whole interaction, you get the event that it is now. And it’s an event now. It is an alternative to movie watching. The movie theater becomes a theater.”
‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ legacy
Midnight screenings of Rocky Horror began as early as 1976, the trio recalled. Bostwick joked that fans found his home after discovering the film.
“They were knocking on my door,” Bostwick said. “There was a lot of fishnets out front.”
Campbell remembered her first Rocky Horror fan convention in 1978.
“That’s the first time I had ever seen everyone, Magentas by the dozen, Columbias cheaper by the dozen,” Campbell said. “It was just fantastic.”
She credits John Mandracchia, then 16 years old, for putting on Rocky Horror events and inviting the cast to attend.
“I thought it was like a 50-year-old entrepreneur,” Campbell said.
Bostwick also remembered the first master of ceremonies for the audience participation. At early screenings at the Waverly Theater in New York City, Sal Piro coordinated the audience.
“Sal Piro stood up, who was just a member of the audience, but the audience was starting to interact and yell things at the screen,” Bostwick said. “Then he was working for Fox. He actually worked for Fox and he did all of the initial fan pages.”
Rocky Horror began as The Rocky Horror Show, a black box theater production in London in 1973. Richard O’Brien wrote the musical and Jim Sharman directed the initial production, and later the film.
Campbell played Columbia in the show and film, and Quinn played Magenta in both, as well as an Usherette, a character cut from the film adaptation. Quinn said it was the sets for the film that convinced her to reprise her role.
“We had no set on stage,” Quinn said. “We had no stage. We were in a room with 60 wooden seats so there was a difference.”
Before Rocky Horror came to the stage, Bostwick was a Tony-nominated actor who played Danny Zuko in Grease. He also sang in The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus’ band The Klowns and performed on stage in the shows Salvation and Soon.
“That’s how I got this job, I think, without having to audition because I had a history of musical theater,” Bostwick said.
The Rocky Horror film also invented a new element in the opening song, “Science Fiction/Double Feature.” A pair of lips sing the song against a black screen.
Those are Quinn’s lips, but she is lip-syncing to O’Brien’s voice, although Rhe Ruggiero’s lips are in the below trailer. Quinn said she struggled to keep her lips in frame until a lighting grip made a suggestion.
“The lighting cameraman said, ‘Take that arclamp down, unclamp it from the clamps, take it out and clamp her head in the clamps,'” Quinn said. “So they clamped me and they got the mouth.”
The film’s soundtrack is also being released on vinyl Friday and there will be another screening at the GRAMMY Museum in Los Angeles on Oct. 15.
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