--- title: "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" year: 1975 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-rocky-horror-picture-show" fi1m_id: "the-rocky-horror-picture-show" imdb_id: "tt0073629" tmdb_id: 36685 wikidata_id: "Q751921" fi1m_score: 72 critics_score: 75 critics_reviews: 11 published: "2026-09-23T14:26:52.909084+00:00" updated: "2026-09-23T14:26:53.412800+00:00" region: "CH" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) Directed by Jim Sharman · 1h 40m · CH 12 · Comedy, Science Fiction, Horror ## Identity The Rocky Horror Picture Show - **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/the-rocky-horror-picture-show - **Type:** Film - **Fi1m ID:** the-rocky-horror-picture-show - **IMDb ID:** tt0073629 - **TMDB ID:** 36685 - **Wikidata ID:** Q751921 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073629/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/36685, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q751921 **Fi1m score: 72** · Critics 75 from 11 reviews *In a sentence:* A drag Frankenstein in pearls, a handful of songs you will hum for a week, and a plot that leaves the building before the cast does > Tim Curry steps out of a lift in a corset and the film is his from then on. Richard O’Brien’s songs have survived decades of midnight singalongs; the story runs out long before they do, and the last act is a mess we mostly forgave. ## Synopsis Denton. Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) and Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon) leave the wedding of Ralph Hapschatt (Jeremy Newson) and Betty Munroe (Hilary Labow) newly engaged. Driving out to visit their old science teacher Dr. Everett V. Scott (Jonathan Adams), they get a flat tyre in the rain and walk to a castle for help. The door is opened by Riff Raff (Richard O’Brien), a hunched butler, who leads them into a ballroom where his sister Magenta (Patricia Quinn), a tap-dancing girl in a gold top hat called Columbia (Nell Campbell) and a crowd of guests in dinner jackets are dancing the Time Warp. Then the lift comes down and Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry) steps out in a corset and pearls to announce that tonight he will unveil the man he has built. A criminologist (Charles Gray) narrates from behind a desk. ## Review Most of what has been written about *The Rocky Horror Picture Show* is about the audience: the rice, the water pistols, the shouting at midnight. That is real and it is not the film. Watched on a sofa, with nobody throwing toast, this is a 100-minute rock musical adapted by Jim Sharman and Richard O’Brien from O’Brien’s stage show. It is good, the songs are better than good, Tim Curry is something else again, and the last half hour does not know what it is doing. Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon play Brad and Janet as if cut off the back of a cereal box, which is the joke, and they hold it. Then Curry comes down in the lift in a corset, a lab coat and a string of pearls and sings *Sweet Transvestite* to two people dripping on the doormat, and we grinned like idiots. He moves like a man who expects the furniture to get out of his way, and he never once asks the camera to find him funny. Frank is a spoilt genius and also, plainly, a menace, and the film is better whenever it remembers the second part. O’Brien wrote the songs, and Richard Hartley’s arrangements give them a proper band, with a piano that sounds as if it has been up all night. *Science Fiction/Double Feature*, sung over a pair of red lips on a black screen, lists the B-pictures the film is about to raid. *Time Warp*, with Charles Gray’s Criminologist rising from his desk to demonstrate the steps from a diagram, is a dance-craze record from a decade that had stopped having them, and it is why the film has never gone away. Graeme Clifford cuts back to Gray’s book-lined study often enough that the whole thing plays as a lecture with songs, which suits it. Brian Thomson’s castle is a Hammer house on a budget that would not have paid for Hammer’s cobwebs, and Peter Suschitzky lights it that way, rain on the windows and not much else. The laboratory is a change of key, pink tiles and a tank and a surgeon’s gallery for the guests. Sue Blane’s costumes have outlasted everyone’s memory of the plot: Frank’s corset, Columbia’s sequinned tailcoat and gold top hat, Riff Raff’s coat gone shiny at the elbows, and gold shorts for Peter Hinwood’s Rocky that do a great deal of the acting. The problem is Sharman. He directed the stage show and films this one from the back of the stalls: the camera sits square to the set, the cast walk on and off, and when a number wants to build he cuts wider. After the dinner scene, which we will not describe, the script stops being a story about Brad and Janet and becomes a series of things that happen to them, and then things that simply happen. There is a stretch near the end, on a stage with a swimming pool in front of it, where we lost track of who wanted what and nobody on screen seemed to know either. We were bored, twenty minutes from the end of a film that had held us by the lapels for an hour. O’Brien gives himself a butler with a hunch and a grievance and plays him dead straight, which is funnier than any line. Patricia Quinn’s Magenta owns the lips in the opening and a laugh like a drain. Meat Loaf arrives on a motorcycle out of a freezer for one song, the loudest three minutes in the film. Sarandon is the surprise: her Janet goes from prim to willing inside *Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me*, and she plays it as a joke and a confession at once. Most critics put it a little higher than we do, and most of them are half reviewing the party. The film underneath it is a good hour, a puzzled last reel, a handful of songs that have outlived their story, and a lead performance nobody since has got near. Watch it at home first, so that the next time someone hands you a newspaper and a water pistol you know what you are shouting at. *Fi1m score 72, published 23 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics like it, and almost all of them say the same two things: Tim Curry’s Frank N. Furter is the reason to watch, and Richard O’Brien’s songs have outlived the film that holds them. The praise for Curry is close to unanimous, with one review arguing the performance cannot be replicated. The consensus also treats the film as inseparable from its midnight screenings, with the costumes and heckling counted as part of the pleasure rather than a distraction from it. The reservations cluster around what is left when the audience goes home. Time Out finds the film itself an enthusiastic shambles that falls apart in the last reel, and Roger Ebert calls it cheerful, silly and forgettable once the sideshow is removed. The spread is otherwise narrow, with the positive notices landing close together. The one negative review, from The New York Times, is really about the Fox remake, and praises the original by comparison. ## Straight answers **Is The Rocky Horror Picture Show worth watching?** *The Rocky Horror Picture Show* is worth watching for anyone who likes a rock musical and can forgive a story that loses its way, and we scored it 72. Tim Curry's Frank-N-Furter and Richard O'Brien's songs carry the first hour; the last half hour is a muddle. Watch it at home first, before you join the midnight crowd. **How long is The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and what is it rated?** *The Rocky Horror Picture Show* runs 1h 40m and is rated 12 by the CH in Switzerland. It is a comedy and science fiction film. **Where can I watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show in Switzerland?** *The Rocky Horror Picture Show* is streaming on Disney+ in Switzerland. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service. **How violent or frightening is The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and is it suitable for children?** *The Rocky Horror Picture Show* is a 12A in the UK and an R in the US, and the gap tells you where it sits: little violence, a lot of sex played as comedy. Frank is a spoilt genius in a corset who is also, plainly, a menace, and the film's jokes are about seduction. It suits teenagers more than children, and it frightens nobody. **How does The Rocky Horror Picture Show compare to Bride of Frankenstein?** *The Rocky Horror Picture Show* is a parody of the film [*Bride of Frankenstein*](https://film.one/film/bride-of-frankenstein) is, and the older picture is the better made of the two. James Whale finds laughs without making the creature a joke, and his film is tender where Sharman's is only camp. Choose Whale for a horror film that moves you; choose Rocky Horror for the songs and Tim Curry. **What should I watch after The Rocky Horror Picture Show?** After *The Rocky Horror Picture Show*, try [*Bride of Frankenstein*](https://film.one/film/bride-of-frankenstein) (1935, Fi1m 89): The film Frank is dressing up as; camp, tender and still the best of its kind. Then [*The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert*](https://film.one/film/the-adventures-of-priscilla-queen-of-the-desert) (1994, Fi1m 81): Australian drag on the road, with frocks that owe Sue Blane a debt. ### Reviews we read (11) - **Empire**, Adam Smith (87/100, inferred): It is the grandaddy of cult films that became an interactive event rather than a standalone movie. The tunes remain loopily catchy, Sharman's direction is zippy, and the film looks bigger than its budget, with Tim Curry's Frank N. Furter as the powerhouse performance. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/rocky-horror-picture-show-review/) - **Los Angeles Times**, Kevin Thomas (86/100, inferred): This outrageous camp musical is too exuberant and funny to be seriously decadent, with an underlying tenderness and innocence in its loving send-up of horror and sci-fi flicks and celebration of post-graduate sexuality. It moves fast, looks slick, and features amusing performances, especially Tim Curry's. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/herocomplex/la-et-hc-rocky-horror-a-sci-fi-spoof-20150925-story.html) - **Radio Times**, Alan Jones (4/5): It praises the film as the witty, naughty queen of cult movies—a campy, vampy musical send-up of horror clichés—and highlights Tim Curry's landmark performance as Frank N Furter along with the famous score. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-sqx7ld/the-rocky-horror-picture-show/) - **Sight and Sound** (70/100, inferred): The piece explores how the film's initial critical disappointment gave way to a spontaneous audience-driven cult through midnight screenings, where viewers appropriated the movie with costumes, props, and participatory rituals that turned it into a communal experience. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/midnight-madness-rocky-horror-picture-cult) - **Time Out**, TJ (64/100, inferred): The review notes the film's knowing pastiche of horror and sci-fi tropes and its hedonistic sensibility that appealed amid 1970s musicals, but suggests the participatory cult rituals developed partly to compensate for a film that feels like an enthusiastic shambles that collapses in the final reel. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-rocky-horror-picture-show) - **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (60/100, inferred): The film is more a long-running social phenomenon than a standalone movie, which was initially ignored before becoming a midnight cult hit with audience participation. Viewed without the sideshow, it is cheerful, silly, kind of sweet, and forgettable. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-rocky-horror-picture-show-1975) - **The New York Times**, Neil Genzlinger (38/100, inferred): The Fox remake strips away the subversive magic of the original 1975 cult film, making clear why a remake was unnecessary and doomed to fail in capturing what made the original special. Certain performances, especially Tim Curry's as Frank-N-Furter, simply cannot be replicated. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/arts/television/review-rocky-horror-remake-fox.html) - **Eye for Film**, Gabriella Trybalska (90/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as a difficult-to-categorize mix of gothic horror, rock musical, kinky transvestitism, sci-fi and humour, calling it possibly the best musical ever written. They single out Tim Curry's larger-than-life performance as Frank-N-Furter, especially his singing, as utterly brilliant, along with the fantastic songs by Richard O'Brien that have taken on a life outside the film. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/the-rocky-horror-picture-show-film-review-by-gabriella-trybalska) - **Den of Geek**, Tony Sokol (88/100, inferred): The film went from a cult happening to a cultural phenomenon that helped shape acceptance of same-sex and transgender identities. It singles out the participatory midnight screening experience and the film's enduring fun as what made it a lasting classic. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-rocky-horror-picture-show-and-its-lasting-legacy/) - **Digital Spy**, Joshua Winning (87/100, inferred): The 1975 musical remains a cult phenomenon that has stood the test of time remarkably well as a celebration of diversity and acceptance. The critic singles out Tim Curry's scene-stealing performance as Dr. Frank N. Furter and the catchy songs, especially 'The Time Warp,' for praise. [Read](https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/re-viewed/a662848/re-viewed-the-rocky-horror-picture-show-remains-a-classic-40-years-later/) - **Paste**, Kenneth Lowe (86/100, inferred): The critic views the film as a proudly ridiculous cult classic whose camp and transgression have become beloved communal tradition, especially as a Halloween touchstone. They single out Tim Curry's menacing, gleeful performance as Dr. Frank-N-Furter and the participatory heckling tradition for praise. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/autumn-classics-the-rocky-horror-picture-show-1975) ## Details - **Director:** Jim Sharman - **Director:** Jim Sharman - **Screenplay:** Richard O'Brien, Jim Sharman - **Cinematography:** Peter Suschitzky - **Editor:** Graeme Clifford - **Music:** Richard Hartley - **Production design:** Brian Thomson - **Costume design:** Sue Blane - **Producer:** Michael White - **Cast:** Tim Curry as Dr. Frank-N-Furter; Susan Sarandon as Janet Weiss; Barry Bostwick as Brad Majors; Richard O'Brien as Riff Raff; Patricia Quinn as Magenta; Nell Campbell as Columbia; Jonathan Adams as Dr. Everett V. Scott; Peter Hinwood as Rocky Horror - **Runtime:** 1h 40m - **Certificate (CH):** 12 - **Release (Switzerland):** 18 July 2021 - **Genres:** Comedy, Science Fiction, Horror - **Budget:** $1 million - **Box office:** $171 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4plqh6obZW4 ## Where to watch in Switzerland - Disney+: streaming, hd *Checked 2026-09-23.* Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, IE, IS, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TR. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Phantom of the Paradise* (1974): De Palma’s glam-rock horror musical, made the year before, madder and meaner than this one. - *Bride of Frankenstein* (1935), Fi1m 89: The film Frank is dressing up as; camp, tender and still the best of its kind. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/bride-of-frankenstein.md) - *Hedwig and the Angry Inch* (2001): A stage rock musical filmed with more heart and a director who moves the camera. - *The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert* (1994), Fi1m 81: Australian drag on the road, with frocks that owe Sue Blane a debt. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-adventures-of-priscilla-queen-of-the-desert.md) - *Little Shop of Horrors* (1986): Another B-picture send-up with songs, cleaner in its plotting and just as loud. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. 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