You
and I and all those people out there with a vocal love of film have
ruined it for everyone, pimping movies up, falling in love with
mediocre films and championing them to near-legendary status. We’ve
embraced turkeys, legitimized borderline movies, and elevated modest
films in our favorite franchises above and beyond realistic standards.
We’ve even embraced the films everyone likes, somehow adding a
credibility to them that transcends the mainstream. Sacred cows, little
flicks, and everything in between. It’s time we took a look inward and
came clean with 25 movies we think need to be taken down a peg or two.
These are our four categories for this list:
These guys have had it too easy. Far too easy. Don’t believe the insane hype.
OVERBLOWN
Good flicks that have gotten too damn big for their britches.
MISUNDERSTOOD
Asshole, you love this film for all the wrong reasons.
WHAT THE FUCK
Something went horribly wrong here and it’s carried over the the fans, who are blinded by shizer.
CHUD’s Logline: A newly-engaged couple’s car breaks down on an old road in the middle of nowhere, forcing them to take shelter in a nearby castle. Tim Curry’s Dr. Frank-N-Furter runs the place where he dresses up in women’s clothing and dances with his servants when not trying to create a studly sex monster. Oh, and there’s some aliens, and singing. Lots of singing.
Its Legacy: The longest running theatrical run in film history. Tim Curry becoming a transvestite icon. Dozens of worn down vhs tapes from kids’ constant rewinding to see Susan Sarandon in a bra. Tons of douchebags playing dressup every weekend. Thousands of fan clubs and websites.
Why It’s Here: I could go on and on about the problems with this film- its nonsensical plot, crappy effects, the songs that are incredibly hit or miss. But of course, it’s stupid to fault the film for these reasons. Rocky Horror is a campy bit of fun, with some truly classic songs and some really enjoyable moments. It deserves to be seen with some drinks in you so you can have a laugh at it (at it, not with it) on a Friday night. What is doesn’t deserve to be is a cultural fucking phenomenon.
If you live in a city of any kind, chances are high that the movie is still playing every weekend at a midnight screening. Chances are equal that people are dressing up and bringing props to the theater. And chances are very, very good that those people are repeat customers, have made their own costumes, and need to get a new hobby.
It never ceased to amaze me how this film keeps going. Sure, the audience participation thing might be fun with a rowdy group, but I wonder if any of those people pop it on at home? Doesn’t exactly work well, does it? Any movie can be fun when you’re dressing up in stupid outfits and throwing shit at the screen. Any single one. Let’s start up a new phenomenon around say, Pink Flamingos. People can dress up in diapers and chomp on turds at the appropriate time. Instant fun!
There really are dozens of movies more deserving of its cult status, but week in and week out the cult of Rocky Horror continues to thrive and frighten the norms. Who knows what the fans could do if they just moved beyond their obsession? Any movie that requires a list of rules like this to enjoy can’t be all that entertaining by itself.
And actually, for a midnight movie, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is almost obscenely tame. What else would you expect from a studio film with such a big budget, though? While the movie’s rated R, if it were released today there’s no reason that it couldn’t get a PG-13. There’s barely any blood, nudity or swearing- it’s apparently just all those scary homosexuals that made the MPAA afraid of it in 1975.
A Moment of Piss: Almost everything after Meatloaf exits screen via ice-pick. The movie takes a serious turn, gets bogged down in its stupid plot and doesn’t recover.
These Ain’t Chopped Liver Alternatives: Little Shop of Horrors, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Clue, and for the sexiest midnight movie experience around- Necromantik.
Andre Dellamorte Agrees: I grew up in Portland, Oregon, and the Clinton Street Theater has seemingly been playing that film on the weekends at midnight as long as I’ve been alive. When I was in high school, I hung with the drama kids so being wrapped in toilet paper and acting as a living tampon was a fait accompli. And I had a great time – it definitely put me in good with the lady I was with – but I had the experience and that was that. When the special edition DVD came out I sat down with the film, and (as should be no surprise) had to sort through the good and bad. The film is – sans audience – mostly tolerable. The experience of seeing it in a theater is powerful, but its following falls into the category of a lot of similar movies to which its fans aren’t usually movie people. Seeing any movie with an engaged crowd – be it two or a thousand – can make a film into something shared, but the experience of Rocky Horror Picture Show is almost tangential to the thing itself. And instead of Rocky Horror being symbolic of the power of the audience experience (or acting as a gateway drug), instead it’s a relic and rite of passage, something you go to at midnight when you’ve got no use for laser-lights, SNL is re-runs, don’t want to go to a bar or are too young to buy booze, or for the people so commited to it that they play dress-up. There’s little organic about it now since people have been doing it for three decades, and -sady – as the last vestige of the midnight movie, from its fields no seeds have found purchase. I’m happy that people can still have that experience, but like Alex I can’t help but wish that this led to more midnight shows in general, as the films that get labeled as such rarely get a chance to play then. Theaters have to work to court a midnight crowd, and it’s worth cultivating even in our digital age. Personally, I would love to see a film like Visitor Q become the next audience participation film, because I like to dream big. But, I guess, there’s no replacing Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Jeremy Smith Disagrees: If The Rocky Horror Picture Show always seemed like a good time, it’s because I watched Fame far too often in my youth. Pretty much anything the kids did in that movie looked like the coolest thing ever to an impressionable eight-year-old (hence my lifelong fascination with stand-up comedy, synthesizers and screwing rich white chicks), and Maureen Teefy’s backlit liberation to “The Time Warp” was no exception. But that pesky R-rating kept me from having my Teefy moment until I was in high school, by which point the film had become a risible novelty thanks to its home video release (apparently, the fact that The Rocky Horror Picture Show is an incomprehensible mess of a movie was a major revelation back in the early 1990s). After a solitary viewing, I concurred with this assessment; then I watched it with an audience (sitting next to a girl I was trying to get with), and I had an absolute fucking blast. Some of this had to do with the veteran Rocky Horror crowd, but the real appeal was feeling like you were at Tim Curry’s freaky happening; Frank N. Furter is less a character than a twisted, transsexual party host. Is the ritual flinging of toast and toilet paper and whatever else mildly annoying? I suppose. But it’s a unique experience (at least it was until the sing-a-long Sound of Music shtick got popular) and a great way to encounter chicks with a certain… morally casual attitude. “Overblown”? Impossible.
45 comments
I can't see a lot of people jumping up to defend this one. Oh, and Visitor Q is honestly one of the most disturbing movies I've ever watched. The audience participation for that flick would be everyone solemnly filing through a shower afterwards. Somewhere around the point that the Dad starts fucking his dead daughter and the corpse shits herself I realized I was a bad person.
Finally someone said it… I always hated TRHPS. I once went to one o' them midnight screenings where folk dress up and sing along… Maybe I'm repressed or just a stick in the mud, but I found it to be an awkward experience. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
Great idea for a column!
I´m waiting for American History X, Saving Private Ryan and Dr Strangelove.
keep up the good work!
I watched this around the ripe age of 12 thinking it was some kind of offbeat horror film. You could imagine my surprise when Tim Curry made shadow puppets by puting another dude's cock in his mouth.
This entry was reaching. It's about the experience. Really, that simple. There is an idealistic undercurrent to the whole idea (an "everyone is accepted if you accept us" sort of thing), portrayed fairly nicely in "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" (I'm sure there is some snarky commentator waiting in the wings to attack that book, but just save your breath). That this movie isn't as crude or grotesque as a true 'midnight' show is besides the point. If you sat and watched this movie by yourself and said, "What's all the fuss about?" then you missed the point, also. This movie doesn't need to be defended, because the love for it isn't about the movie, it's about the experience.
Rocky Horror sucks. Always has, always will. Oh, and FUCK the experience. Yeah, surrounding yourself with snooty douchebag "drama" majors as they throw fucking toast at a screen is a VERY thrilling experience.
Basing your criticism on whether something "deserves" its cult success is a bad idea. I don't think anyone would argue that Rocky Horror found its fanbase through anything other than old-fashioned organic word of mouth, so therefore whatever cult success it has, it's earned. You may dislike that fanbase, and I wouldn't blame you, but the movie itself is still a charmingly ramshackle stew of B-movie influences and genuinely great songs. It therefore seems weird to say that they've "got it wrong". If the argument is that Rocky Horror fans are annoyingly flamboyant, then that's worryingly close to criticising the movie for being "all gay and shit". It's a subversive little oddity, and the only thing it doesn't deserve is a place in this column.
I'm no defender of RHPS, but is anyone else growing tired of CHUD's cult of personality? It's enough already. I could sit through the endless praise for Broken Lizard awhile back and deal with the relentless saga that was Meg, but you guys need to lose the rock star act. You're better than it. If I want overblown personalities, i'll go back to AICN
While I tend to agree with this assesment, this film is harmless.
When you include Titanic on this list, then I will be impressed.
As someone who literally just took part in the whole "Rocky Horror" experience last weekend, I can say that for ONCE A YEAR, watching geeks throw shit and yell lines (some funny, some too geeky for their own good) at the screen isn't an entirely bad experience. Of course, seeing fat, angry 15-year old girls fake orgasms and pretend-make out with their equally hideous "bff" is another story.
I think this is a ridiculous entry, as it seems to be saying that this movie isn't any fun if you don't see it in the theater. I've seen this many more times at home with friends, and it's still a blast with the right people. Of course it's a terrible movie, but I'm glad it's a cult classic.
fuck this movie. that is all.
I'm getting really tired of this incredibly well-conceived concept for a feature continuously devolving into puerile rants against specific (and wholly innocuous) groups of film lovers. God forbid people go out and actually have fun at the movies.
After engaging in some really astute conversation about Silence of the Lambs and Scarface, this entire exercise has turned into a polemic about how 1) Punch Drunk Love fans are all crazy and socially maladjusted, 2) Goonies fans are all sentimental losers and now 3) Rocky Horror fans are all just stupid drama assholes.
That's really good film criticism.
Let me get this right:
If you are a person whose hobby is watching fun movies with friends, then you are a giant, culturally illiterate moron.
If, however, your hobby is sitting in your room, ripping on harmless movie fans on a website FOR MOVIE FANS and placing it under the guise of an in-depth cultural critique, then you're an intellectually adept and objective arbiter of quality.
Can I also just add that NO ONE THINKS GOONIES OR ROCKY HORROR ARE GREAT FILMS. People enjoy them because they can be entertaining and fun to watch. It's one thing to fairly examine a movie based on its actual filmic value as perceived by critics and mass culture (as you guys did really well last week). It's another thing entirely to slag a movie just because it's popular and God-forbid CHUD.com lose it reputation for being edgy and contrary. Maybe you should focus your energy on gaining a reputation for being pointed, well-spoken and intelligent.
If I wanted another Aint It Cool, I'd kill my mom, set her body on fire and call it a review of the Made of Honor pre-sreening wedding party at the Alamo Drafthouse.
Come on. You guys are better than this.
This movie sucks. Finally a movie that deserves to be trashed. Let's not do the time warp ever again.
And you FAIL epically at your own definition. OVERBLOWN? No, not by YOUR definition "Good flicks that have gotten too damn big for their britches".
It's not a good film, it's a TERRIBLE film, but that is part of the appeal, and you are obviously too young to understand the understated greatness of sharing the experiance when it was fresh and not three decades old. And, despite your histronics, it never was "big" either.
All about the CHUD FAILBOAT.
Kill this bit, you guys have been off the rails on this pathetic idea from day one.
How old are you that you're using terms like "FAILBOAT"?
I agree with beaks here. I saw Rocky Horror about a dozen times with an audience and it was all about the experience. When it was on television at some point – hosted by Meat Loaf on Fox with a bizarre cutaway to a costumed audience – I finally realized what the movie was about as, with an audience, everybody's just yelling stuff out and the plot just flies by as the big laughs you remember come from what people said, not the film itself. When people say the sequel – Shock Treatment – is nowhere near as good as the original, I tell them to watch the original without an audience.
That said, what other movie can claim to have inspired such a cult? It is singular in that achievement as it just rolls along. Try to "Rocky Horror" something like Plan 9 and you just fall asleep.
"Somewhere around the point that the Dad starts fucking his dead daughter and the corpse shits herself I realized I was a bad person." Everything you need to know about life is contained in the prior quoted sentence. Remember that well.
Taking a unique approach to this: I play Brad in Columbus, Ohio's monthly performance. I can't say I disagree with the assessment. The experience really isn't worth coming out more than once a year, both cast and audience is essentially drama central, and the movie just isn't good at all. After Meatloaf dies all the air and fun goes out of it until a brief resurgence with the floor show. Somewhat mercifully, it seems to be coming to an end. While during Halloween the place is packed, most of the rest of the time we struggle for an audience, and most of the cast really would rather be elsewhere. It's amazing it's lasted some 30 years, but what once was seen as a celebration of freedom and letting go is now just something for teenagers to get drunk at.
It's no "Rock & Rule" I'll give you that.
Great series. I'm looking forward to what other 'gems' will be coming down the pipe for discussion.
My first TRHPS experience occured in the early 1980s while on a summer camping/hiking trip (of all things) to Alberta's Waterton National Park. As my friend and I were to discover, this little summer village's theatre ran it at midnight every July long weekend and it attracted people from as far away as Lethbrige (about a 90 minute drive away). So, on a whim, we decided to go and were shocked to discover that that the place was packed! Later that morning, we dissected the movie over a few campsite beers and basically concurred that, as a film, TRHPS was basically an amateurish piece of shit…with a few decent musical numbers. BUT – as an audience experience, however – it was somehow elevated to something completely different. BTW: Once was enough – I've never had the urge to see it again as I didn't want to spoil the purity of that first experience. Stiil, I've always thought that DePalma's Phantom of the Paradise (a fillm with a better script, production design, acting, direction, choreography, story and, of course, Paul Williams' music!) would have been a much better candidate for such cult adoration. I was too bad that never caught on!
Never got this film. It's an insult to soft-core porn (itself an insult) and to music. I guess seeing the play which is always running in the UK is an excuse to dress up etc. but the film was dreadful.
I was once blackmailed by my girlfriend into going and instead I moved to Germany to get out of it.
Back in high school, me and some friends would hang near a theater showing a midnight Rocky Horror, and after the movie would let out, we'd beat the crap out of the dressed up faggots leaving the theater. Good times…
Thank you! This is a HORRIBLE movie – and without the audience participation is almost unwatchable. I enjoy it, probably like most other people, because I remember the live experience of seeing this at a midnight show. There are very few experiences that can match that. But as a piece of cinema – it's really, really, poor. And if you have any doubt, watch the sequel "shock treatment." which has a horrible reputation because, in my opinion, it never made the cult/midnight show status of the former – not that's any worse of a movie.
Come on CHUD! Please reengage here with more finely tuned scope. As a fan sight, the writers should be the first to understand that part of the joy of film-going is the experience and/or visceral reactions people have to a given presentation. (Titanic anyone?) This site's adulation of anything Broken lizard, Jack Black, Robert Downy Jr, Judd Apatow, Asian Film and mindless-hot actresses being case in point. There's little perfection in art and I accept that someone might point out the elephant in the room; it's fun. But to “hate” on the pieces in a way that infers that the imperfect presentation should not invoke something extraordinary in others, is contrary to the purpose for all of our “fandom.” (As is true with much art) During his day, critics and many patrons hated Picasso yet based on reaction to his work and even its place in the evolution of art, he's rarely criticized today; although really…how good is some of his stuff? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Picasso-Necklace.jpg
PS: $10.00 admission, matinees only before 2 PM and $9.00 refreshments is mean.
(cont….Picasso point) During his day, critics and many patrons hated Picasso's work; yet, based on reaction to his work and even its place in the evolution of art, he's rarely criticized today; although really…how good is some of his stuff? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Picasso-Necklace.jpg
Never-the-less the power of what his work evokes in people and his place of importance in historical, artistic context can not be denied.
PS: $10.00 admission, matinees only before 2 PM and $9.00 refreshments is mean.
I have no attachment to this movie, I've seen it maybe once in my entire life. All I want to say is Susan Sarandon used to be one of the hottest chicks ever, and her daughter Eva Amurri is now one of the hottest chicks ever, and needs to challenge her mother in nude scenes per movie. Thank you.
Me and my faggot friends would dress up for this movie, when it let out we'd get sexed by the "straight" guys who pretended they were waiting to beat us up. PS We always lifted their wallets too. Good times.
I'm enjoying the debate. As a hetero. Gen- X male from the sticks, I obviously never had the same experience with the movie as Alex, Dre, and Jer. Giving it a go at home with a generally conservative group of high school friends wasn't ideal. In fact just by renting it, I risked a tragic Brokeback Mountain/Boys Don't Cry end. (Ironicly, following the show, to prove my straight bonafides, I put in Tango & Cash. No homosexual over-tones there!)Memories blur, I remember Tim Curry flamingly over-the-top, and Susan sarandon's breasts being hot. I concur wholeheartedly the obvious alternatives are Fame & Hedwig. Also a extra special Swayze shout out for To Wong Foo! (If CHUD was a gay-themed movie website, rolling out this list series, the big fuck you would be for Rock Horror instead of Star Wars. 'Eat it, queerboys' fey Devin would say as he tore Mommie Dearest a new one)
hate it. thank you.
Keep this column going. Good read. And I dislike RHPS, so yes, gotta agree with the overblown tag.
I must post a retraction to an earlier comment – everyone but Jeremy is coming off as douchebag in this list. But the reason why this list sucks is because it's completely redundant and unsurprising. Anyone who reads the sire regularly knows that Devin hates the Goonies and thinks Fight Club is misunderstood or what Jeremy thinks about Scarface or American Beauty and that Nick has turned unfunny and bitter. Anyone else notice that Nick has agreed with almost every negative comment on the list? Chud Essential, Guilty Pleasures, and Biggest Disappointments had more surprises, fresher talking points, and were generally more thought out.
This feature is dividing an awful lot of people, which I'm sure makes its authors feel good–and it should. I think it succeeds if it gets a rise out of you.
All the films they've covered so far are cult films to a certain degree. Even if we don't usually think of Scarface as a midnight movie, it definitely has a dedicated following that views it a certain way, a way that lets them see something that may not necessarily be there.
The angry diatribes against the fans raise relevant points, even if they do tend to be overly cynical. The defenses balance the perspective, even if they sometimes verge on the sentimental.
Balanced, emotional writing? I can't think of asking more from a feature. So far, so good, guys.
TRHPS=Getting your tranny fix before the Internets made smut as easy to get as tap water
For the record, it wasn't his daughter. It was a reporter. Though she did shit herself post-mortem while he sexed her up in a greenhouse. The reporter, not the daughter. Good times…
Anybody who sits down and watches RHPS at home alone, especially in a critical frame of mind, has to be ten times sadder than someone who dresses up to go watch it in a cinema and chuck shit at the screen. The only alternative musical I can think of for this sort of cultdom is that Planet of the Apes one from the Simpsons. That would be an awesome crowd to see pouring out of a cinema. Everyone loves a Chimp.
Lovin the lists! Great mention of Phantom of the Paradise, whoever. I demand to see Commando. Those B action boys need to be taken down a peg or two! Darest anyone tackle the BTTF trilogy? Tombstone & Unforgiven?
I too watched Rocky Horror because of a female. Obviously we were in a college drama class. And while the film succeeds in getting people together, it's paradoxically a boring movie – since nothing really happens, there's plenty of time to imitate what's being viewed.
But I understand why most of my classmates loved it; they were ravenously horny. And confused. (er, about what makes a good movie).
As Dellamorte said, this is one of those films picked up by people who don't watch many movies.
It's a terrible ass movie. There's no point to it at all. However it's so bad that it's fun to watch. Well….with the right audience.
Thanks for wasting a day with this bullshit, Captain Obvious. The film is overblown? No shit. Thanks for nothing.
god i hate this column
@gwai lo: he never fucked his dead daughter, she didnt die in the movie, he fucked the news lady he murdered, I laughed my ass off when he was fucking her and thought she was getting wet and it was the the dead body evacuating its bowels, when the dad started shouting at the dead body for shitting on him. one of the funniest moments ever. anywho, thanks chud for being the fun police, i guess your to busy organizing your Star Wars dolls to put together a decent riff Raff costume.
Wake me up when the "Godfather" appears on this list.
Oh my mother fucking god this list is retarded. Rocky Horror Picture Show is overblown? PEOPLE DO NOT LIKE THIS MOVIE BECAUSE THEY THINK IT'S REALLY GOOD YOU SHITFACE COCKMASTERS. Also I hate the movie. But still!
I'll have to agree with CHUD here. I like RH a bit, but I think it's semi-sequel, Shock Treatment, is much better.
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