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B**chin' in the Kitchen
Karen has unwittingly hit one of my sore points. She doesn't know it yet, but she will.
Shock Treatment is not a bad film. It may, in fact, be a very good film - for its genre. The thing is, it is not The Rocky Horror Picture Show - and thank god for that.
Now, I speak as a diehard Rocky Horror fan, one who went to that show every weekend for several years and still considers it a major influence upon my life. So when I say it, you know it is a considered and informed decision: The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a very bad movie. It is not even a good bad movie. Have you ever tried watching it without an audience?
Once upon a time there was a stage musical called The Rocky Horror Show. It was satire. It deliberately rolled together all the conventions of bad 50's fright movies along with a spin on glam-rock and poked fun at all of it. It was fast-paced and snappy, and very good at its modest goals. And it was a huge success in the London equivalent of Off-Broadway.
They made a movie out of it. This movie was like the play, but in slow motion. The pace dragged, the lead actor was thoroughly tired of a role that by then he had been playing for several years, and in general it was an ungodly mess.
People are inclined to give the film more credit than it deserves, because occasional flashes of the original brilliance do shine through, particularly in the musical numbers. When people talk about Rocky Horror in glowing terms, they generally mean the audience or the songs.
But it is a very bad film.
Now, the person who wrote the original play, Richard O'Brien (who plays Riff Raff in the movie), is an odd sort of genius. (His list of film and TV appearances is the most curious thing you've ever seen, but he does great work.) And he wrote another movie where he was composing directly for the screen, as it were, and where he could keep his sense of satire intact.
Shock Treatment is a comment on the excesses of the television attention span, and TV ad culture, long before anyone else was doing it. It is set entirely inside a television studio - the doors open to let people in at the beginning of the film, and they open to let our heroes escape at the end. Throughout the film, the distinction between "are the characters in a television show, or are they watching one?" is continually blurred, as the action proceeds while travelling through the sets and scripts of various shows, complete with announcer voiceovers and title cards - and sponsors.
In fact, the Sponsor is the primary villain and mystery of the piece - no one knows exactly what he's selling or what he wants, but it's clear that he's pulling the strings and his motives are sinister.
Okay, I'll be fair: The film has problems, mostly in the acting. O'Brien and Patricia Quinn are old hands and good at what they do, comedienne Ruby Wax has never been better since this film, and Barry Humphries (Dame Edna to you) goes over the top deliberately and well. But Charles Gray always was wooden, Jessica Harper is a better singer than actress, no one knows exactly what Nell Campbell can do well except self-promote, Rik Mayall is completely wasted, and Cliff De Young is so talentless that he shouldn't have been handed a single role, let alone a dual one.
The songs, though, are fantastic.
I have a videotape of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I do not watch it. I do not have a videotape of Shock Treatment - it's hard to find even for rentals. If I had one, I would take it out and watch it periodically. Every time I watch the film, I see something new. It took me the longest time to realize that some of the characters were speaking in metered couplets for a lot of their dialogue!
Do not dismiss this film lightly. The sun never sets on those who ride into it.
© Columbine
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The title is a song from Shock Treatment, in case you were thinking it had very little to do with the rant.
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