| Article: 4038
From: [email protected] (VERNON SCOTT, UPI Hollywood Reporter)
Newsgroups: clari.news.movies,clari.news.features,clari.news.interest.people
Subject: The ONLY cult film
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 93 19:08:05 PDT
_U_P_I _A_r_t_s _&
_E_n_t_e_r_t_a_i_n_m_e_n_t --
_S_c_o_t_t_'_s _W_o_r_l_d
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) -- There is only one genuine, certified, authentic
cult movie in the known universe and it is ``The Rocky Horror Picture Show.''
Other claimants cannot compare with this outrageous, off-the-wall
musical romp from 1975 involving sex, transvestism, madness and kinky horror.
Most so-called cult films are seen by a million or two people over a
limited time span, but ``The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' is still going
strong after 18 years of midnight screenings around the world.
More than just a motion picture, the production is a happening.
Cultists attend midnight screenings dressed in wardrobe copied from
the film. They don grotesque makeup and shout the dialogue in unison
along with the cast. In many theaters the audience prances on stage,
singing and dancing with the images on the screen.
The movie ``Fame'' included a scene in which the New York Performing
Arts High School student body participated in a typical ``Rocky Horror
Picture Show'' ritual.
Unlike any other cult picture, this one has been a major box-office
smash.
It makes its world TV premiere on the Fox network Oct. 25 -- for the
first time on TV, according to Fox.
The man most responsible for this landmark movie is Lou Adler, who
produced the Los Angeles stage version at the Roxy Theater in 1973 after
seeing the original production in London.
Adler, one of Hollywood's wealthiest men, formed the Dunhill and Ode
Records companies and was Herb Alpert's partner in A&M Records. All
three were sold for enormous profits.
He has produced the movies ``Brewster McCloud,'' ``Cheech and Chong's
Up in Smoke'' and ``Shock Treatment,'' yet Adler's major claim to fame
may be his association with ``The Rocky Horror Picture Show.''
When it was first sneak-previewed in Santa Barbara, a mostly
conservative enclave north of Los Angeles dominated by retired folk, the
packed theater emptied of all but 13 people, before the third reel.
Adler, holding his head, said, ``I'll never forget that night. We sat
on the curb and listened to people shouting angrily at the theater manager.
``Wherever we opened the picture around the country it closed the
next day. Everybody hated our film. It was a total bomb.
``A few theaters were willing to try it at midnight on weekends. One
was in Austin, Texas. I phoned every week and was told 50 or 60 people a
weekend paid to see it.
``After five or six weeks I asked the manager what the mix of the
audience was and he said, 'Oh, it's the same people every week!' That's
when I thought we might have something, so we kicked off in other
theaters and audience participation followed.
``At one time we were playing more than 300 theaters with midnight
showings. Eight years ago Fox tried to distribute it widely and it
bombed again. You can't surprise people with this film. It frightens
them. They don't know what to think. But the younger generation adopted
it as their own.''
In 1975 the cast was unknown: Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry
Bostwick, Richard O'Brien, Meatloaf, Jonathan Adams, and Little Nell Campbell.
The story was simplicity itself. Sarandon and Bostwick play a
straight young couple with car trouble who enter a weird old mansion on
a stormy night only to encounter a coven of freaks from Transylvania.
The couple soon get into the swing of rock music and the bizarre
goings-on, gyrating to such songs as ``Time Warp,'' ``Dammit Janet'' and
``Wild and Untamed Thing.''
Nothing like it had ever been seen before.
``Now other movies have a hard time defining cult films if they put
them up against our picture,'' said Adler. ``It's just incredible.
``It cost $900,000. Who thought it would still be playing 18 years
later. A couple of days ago we figured out it's taken in about $175
million, which is outstanding when you average the ticket price at about $4.
``If you multiply the number of people who have seen it by the same
price they paid to see 'Jurassic Park,' we'd probably be up around $350
million or something.
``The film's popularity is worldwide. Three years ago we finally got
into Brazil, Mexico and Spain where it had been banned. It's big in
Japan and we're going for China and Russia next.
``We are taking a crack at interactive TV with our debut by cutting
away from the film to show audience participation in theaters.
``'Rocky Horror Picture Show' has run longest in the NuArt Theater
here in Los Angeles. Fourteen years of Friday and Saturday midnight
showings. It's a combined stage show as audiences get up and perform
along with the film.
``The demographics shows kids 15 or 16 go to see it over three or
four years, and then take their younger siblings. Then the parents want
to see what the kids are watching, so they go along too.
``I never thought I'd live to see the day when 'The Rocky Horror
Picture Show' was a family entertainment.''
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