“It started out as an affectionate homage to late-night movies, and ended being an affectionately embraced late-night movie,” director Jim Sharman would say of that thing called Rocky Horror. A decade ago, The Rocky Horror Show — later to be filmed as The Rocky Horror Picture Show — was little more than a perverse gleam in the eye of one “Ritz” O'Brien, it could be said that the phenomenon virtually began with something that had already become a cliche and a commonplace: the late-night picture show. Ever since theater exhibitors got the idea of putting on special programs at midnight — mainly diverse kinds of marginal exploitation fare, ideal for Halloween spook-a-thons or rowdy New Year's Eve bacchanals, but also suitable for certain minority tastes on ordinary weekend and weekday nights — a distinctive strain of subterranean moviegoing had developed, after hours and under wraps.
“It started out as an affectionate homage to late-night movies, and ended being an affectionately embraced late-night movie,” director Jim Sharman would say of that thing called Rocky Horror. A decade ago, The Rocky Horror Show — later to be filmed as The Rocky Horror Picture Show — was little more than a perverse gleam in the eye of one “Ritz” O'Brien, it could be said that the phenomenon virtually began with something that had already become a cliche and a commonplace: the late-night picture show. Ever since theater exhibitors got the idea of putting on special programs at midnight — mainly diverse kinds of marginal exploitation fare, ideal for Halloween spook-a-thons or rowdy New Year's Eve bacchanals, but also suitable for certain minority tastes on ordinary weekend and weekday nights — a distinctive strain of subterranean moviegoing had developed, after hours and under wraps.