FrightFest review – Sane Inside Insanity: The Phenomenon of Rocky Horror … with bonus coverage of Strange Journey The Rocky Horror Story
There are two fiftieth-anniversary-of-Rocky-Horror documentaries out – unsurprisingly with major overlaps in terms of archive footage and interview subject, but both with different takes on the saga and the phenomenon.
Andreas Zerr’s Sane Inside Insanity was made a little earlier – one key interviewee, Sal Pirro, subsequently died and is acknowledged in the end credits of Strange Journey – and without the participation of Rocky creator Richard O’Brien, who naturally takes centre stage in his son Linus O’Brien’s Strange Journey. Sane Inside Insanity is slightly more willing to draw out some of the darker sides of the history – the financial shenanigans which mean that the key creatives of a lasting cult film which has made millions (and still does) for a big company and producer Lou Adler have never seen much beyond their initial (low) fees – while Strange Journey almost has a spine in the younger O’Brien getting through to his father about how much this thing he started off but which has evolved away from his original fringe theatre jape has affected people. There’s an emotional stretch as Richard O’Brien listens to his son reading testimonies from fans which prompt tears.
Both documentaries cover the original stage production in London and its migration to Los Angles (and as a flop in New York) then the making of Jim Sharman’s film The Rocky Horror Picture Show … which none of the participants (or even the fans) were as happy with as they’d hoped. Sane Inside Insanity uniquely interviews some of the ‘Transylvanians’ who function as a chorus in the film (including Gaye Brown and Christopher Biggins) while Strange Journey snags Tim Curry (ailing but heroically game) and Susan Sarandon along with shared voices Sharman, Patricia Quinn, Nell Campbell and Barry Bostwick. As the world knows, the throwaway film became a midnight movie cult – and escaped from its creators to become the centrepiece of a lasting unique sub-cultural phenomenon. Both films use a clip from Alan Parker’s Fame, in which high priest Sal Pirro plays himself, but only Sane Inside Insanity identifies it – and indeed has people talk about how this ten minute scene in another film opened up the cult to a wider group of participants, adding ethnic mix and even more sexual permutations to the mostly white college age crowd.
‘It’s a pretty shitty film’ one fan admits, but maybe that’s why it works with the impromptu (if regulated) performance theatre events that have built up around it. I first saw RHPS on a double bill with Brian DePalma’s Phantom of the Paradise in 1975, before the cult started and when both films were written off as underperforming horror-rock hybrids. Phantom is a much better film and it’d be excruciating to attend a screening of that where the film was obscured by a slapstick karaoke pantomime fancy dress party. RHPS can just about take it – and the tunes are still catchy.
Here’s the FrightFest listing.
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