The Rocky Horror Picture Show

I've seen some weird movies in my life, but this is probably the weirdest. It's spoken about like it is a classic film, although of what genre I was never certain, nor am I really any closer to figuring out that detail. The title makes it sound like a scary movie, but it's not. Perhaps they are joking that it is scary, since it does begin with some cliché horror motifs, and it is a little freaky at points. However, it really isn't creepy and there aren't suspenseful or jumpy moments. It is, in fact, a musical, and I suppose one might say a comedy.

It is framed as a crime story, following the odd occurrence of a couple who got lost in the woods on a stormy night and ended up at a strange mansion. It is not clearly explained to begin with, but you discover throughout the movie that the inhabitants of the elaborate house are aliens, called Transvestites, from the planet Transxual in the galaxy of Transylvania.

Janice and Brad, newly engaged, go up to the house looking for help when their car breaks down, but are frightened by the bizarre people inside (how horror film-esque). Frank-N-Furter (who I have just discovered is a doctor apparently) is the master of the house, but there are many others who live with him and they seem to be both friends and servants to some degree. Frank-N-Furter is the only Transvestite of the group who is actually a transvestite, but they all dress and act a little strange, and extremely sexually. 

Frank (as he will now be called, for the sake of making typing easier) is happy to have his new guests, and shows off his new creation, a mute, dumb, but gorgeous and strong man, Rocky Horror. Finally, we understand where the name comes from! What's weird is that he never talks, but he sings.

Rocky is created with half the brain of Frank's ex-lover Eddy. Eddy briefly breaks free of his cryogenic freezer, only to be killed by Frank. It turns out that Eddy had betrayed him and fallen for one of the women in the house, whose name is Columbia.

The rest of the movie is about Frank turning the innocent young couple into some far-from-innocent lovers. Things get sexy, that's all I can say (but it's weird, not attractive, to watch). The aliens must also hide Eddy's body from his father who, coincidentally, the couple had been on their way to visit. It gets confusing.

In the end, Riff-Raff and his sister Magenta, Frank's closest assistants, decide that he can no longer keep acting this way and choose to go home and leave him to be punished for his behaviour. I didn't see that coming at all...the whole alien thing? And don't worry, I don't get it either.

I can't totally comprehend the plot, nor is it a movie I would want to sit down and watch in a serious way. It's completely nonsensical. But here's what I think it was made to be: it's a twist on those cult classics that comes with a political message (however obscured it may be behind odd characters, events, and songs). I think the references to horror film clichés using LGBT characters is meant to communicate the way that the world sees (or saw) any sexual deviance as scary and monstrous. I also think that, as nonsensical as it was, the fact that the inhabitants of the mansion turn out to be aliens implies that many perceive their behaviours as inhuman and alien. My sister didn't pick up on any of these metaphors, so perhaps I have just spent a little too much time in English classes, but if this movie was not made to convey messages about sexuality and gender, then I don't understand the reasoning behind it at all; unless the people who made it were on some crazy drugs the whole time.