WHILE NOT an LGBT event, the Provincetown International Film Festival (PIFF) always offers plenty of grist for this magazine’s mill. My annual dash around P’town turned up several films that I found worthy of consideration for review. Here’s the first of five.
STRANGE JOURNEY: The Story of Rocky Horror
Directed by Linus O’Brien
Margot Station
It’s a story that had three lives: first as the stage musical that opened in London in 1973; next as the film version in 1975, which came and went without much fanfare; and finally as the reinvention of that same film as a midnight sensation that would become a legend and remains a permanent fixture in theaters to this day (or night).
Director Linus O’Brien—son of Richard O’Brien, who wrote, directed, and acted in the original musical—takes us from his father’s inspiration for the show to its rousing reception on the London stage and in L.A. (but not so much in New York) through its adaptation as a movie. That’s when the decision was made, unusual for the time, to keep most of the stars from the stage production, notably Tim Curry in the role of Frank-N-Furter. That did not guarantee success, and the film remained a sleeper until college kids began to discover it and someone got the brilliant idea to play it in college towns at midnight. People came in droves, wearing costumes, re-enacting scenes, dancing in the aisles—weekend after weekend, until it became the longest continuous release of any film in history.
Fans came from all genders and sexual orientations, but the film had a special resonance for LGBT people who were coming out in various ways at the height of the Gay Liberation era. That the undisputed ringleader of Rocky’s motley crew was a self-described “sweet transvestite” challenged the whole hierarchy of straight male authority. Linus O’Brien makes the point that drag became a source of power and charisma when combined with Frank’s complete self-confidence—in contrast to Brad’s wimpy normality. More broadly, the whole production was a manifesto telling viewers to reject conventional roles and be weird in ways that even the waning Counterculture had never fully explored.
Strange Journey arrives in time for Rocky’s fiftieth anniversary, a cause for celebration coming at a time when the film’s exuberance seems a distant memory. Rocky’s durability, and that of its cult following, attests to its role as a refuge for people who like to dress up and stay out past midnight.
