So how did this movie go over when it came out? I just read the synopsis and I'm surprised it was made when it was made, as it seems today in these more liberated times people still have problems with trans people and cross dressers. Were any of you around when it came out, and what was the press and the response like?
shareActually, I see it more as the story of the 'death' of a liberal time than the creation of one.
Right throughout the full extent of the 1960s, there had been 'freakish' films. For instance, Circus of Horrors (1960), Peeping Tom (160).
The only difference in the second half of the 1960s is that a psychedelic aesthetic entered films, even mainstream ones.
In 1971 we'd had The Devils.
In 1971/1972 we'd had A Clockwork Orange.
In 1972/1973 we'd had David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust.
In terms of cross dressing for plot / historical purposes, it had been in Shakespeare, pantomime, Viktor und Viktoria in the 1920s, Some Like It Hot (1959) and others before and inbetween.
In terms of tranvestism, The Kremlin Letter (1969, featuring Orson Welles)
Whilst London, New York and perhaps San Fransisco and Los Angeles, may have been comfortable with Rocky Horror from the word go, because of both a British and LA tradition of surrealism, San Fransisco tradition of the carnival, and New York tradition of the urban, shockingly gritty and new (or postmodenrist in the case of Andy Warhol), the main reason that British people outside of cosmopolitan London might not have blushed too much is the tradition of pantomime (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantomime) in the UK - plus David Bowie's recent success. Basically,not only teenagers but infants are brought up from a very young age to see a man dressing up as a woman or vice versa is an intrinsic part of our theatrical tradition. This fluidity perhaps seems at odds with the British 'No Sex Please We're British' (a British farce - a kind of close adult relation to the pantomime- of 1971) but the undercurrents of British kitchen sink drama in the 1960s, screaming girls fans for 60s pop/rock group and, in general, a whole sea shift change during the 1960s to how Britain saw itself, embrancing pop culture, postmodernism/brutalism in architecture, expanding university education, meant that tastes could be broadened (not that they always were- and any broadening of tastes often results in one taste contradicting the 'values' of another).
And the setting, an essentially 'haunted house' type place in an old English mansion, is like pure Hammer Horror stuff. It had already been part of filmgoers DNAs- indeed, you only have to drive for 30 minutes maximum anywhere in most of England and there will surely be somewhere that could pass for the Rocky Horror mansion, if not quite as grand. Even our centuries old public and grammar schools have long imbued a gothic imagination in some of us. It is certainly not something that has infiltrated everyone's mind. But there are enough schisms in the UK between town and country/ musical and non-musical (more important than is often acknowledged by the British- if you can play the guitar or the piano here you're a genius)/ trend setting and supposedly 'common sense' that a sense of what is different to us being a constant part of our landscape is universal.
So the movers and shakers in England and the US were already used to this stuff.
1975 was, in fact, the beginning of the end for cultural liberalism being respected by the upper middle / upper classes as Margaret Thatcher became Education Secretary. Her quote 'There is no such thing as society' was probably not the Nietzschian type of proclamation that theose who had won their new liberal rights wanted to hear. But, after an uneasy time in the late 70s, divided between 'To the manor born' traditionalists and comic book punks, in the 1980s British cinema was rejuvenated, albeit in a slightly more mainstream way, with Handmade Films.
So, in short, 1975 was the end of a decadently innovative era rather than the beginning of one. It's epitomised by Frank n Furter's death. And the release of such artistic black holes as Jaws and Star Wars.
"... as it seems today in these more liberated times ..."
With all the awful PC (political correctness) today, I would argue that the '70s were a more liberated time.
The movie was made a few years after Woodstock (and the '60s flower generation) where experimentation with sex and "substances" was the thing to do.
Today, if someone poops on your floor, you have to be careful not to call him names in case you hurt his poor little feelings. Today is a disgusting era as we collectively have less and less freedoms.
I'm glad I came of age in the '70s and not today.
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Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself. - George Carlin