The first time I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show, I had no idea what kind of movie I was in for. I knew the song Time Warp because it is played at nearly every Halloween party I've ever been to. My friends had set up a space in their dorm room and someone had their laptop up for us to say all the audience participation words, though we didn't have props.
It was a ton of fun.
It was also one of the most bizarre movies I had ever seen. I also didn't really understand it.
Okay I understood the symbolize and sex positive message. I also got that most of them were aliens. I didn't understand the progression of the plot. It's felt more like a series of events rather than a story.
I understand it better now, but I still think it is a weird movie. It's also one I love to watch around Halloween. It's a fun hour and a half.
There are a few books and movies that I feel similar about. There are the stories that I finish and then say "what the heck was that?" I remember saying that after the first time I read Uzumaki and MW (these are manga). Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its squeal Through the Looking Glass are also good examples of this*, not to mention the tunnel portion of the original Willy Wonka movie or everything in Labyrinth.
I wonder how these types of stories become cult classics. Its not that I think weird is bad, but sometimes the plot makes very little sense. Then there are the movies that are so bad they've become ironically good (The Room or Food Fight). I feel these movies are in a slightly different from the above mentioned. I want to watch Rocky Horror because it feels like going to a party ever time I hit play. I'd watch Food Fight because I'm mildly curious as to what kind of disaster the movie actually is, but I wouldn't watch it again.
I wonder if I could ever create something so fantastically weird and crazy. I don't think it's possible to start creating something like Rocky Horror with the intention of creating, well, Rocky Horror. Then it just feels like I'm trying to hard. The weird sequence of events feels natural for the universe created in the movie.
I think that's the challenge when creating something like that. It needs to feel natural in the environment that has been created. Stories like Charlie/Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland leave our reality behind and create new rules for the reality they are in. I mean who gets in an argument with time and is then stuck having tea time for four months.
Not everyone may like these kinds of stories. That's okay too. I don't like extremely gory horror movies and they seem to be everywhere this time of year.
I recommend checking out the new Rocky Horror if you haven't yet. Its fun, it's crazy, and I think they made some funny jokes that called back to the original. Then watch the original. Tim Curry singing is just too much fun.
If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.
Until next week.
*Contrary to popular belief, Alice in Wonderland has a lot of mathematical symbolism.Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, pseudonym Lewis Carroll, was a mathematician and didn't like some of the new mathematics theories that were being proposed at the time.
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