While the term “cult movie” gets thrown around a lot, there are very few that have an actual cult spring up around it. But that’s exactly what happened with 1975’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Based on the UK musical stage show written by Richard O’Brien, the film version was shot in just five weeks with a reported budget of about $900,000 (or about $5.6 million in today’s dollars). And when it came out, it was…a flop.
Certainly, there was nothing like it onscreen at the time. It’s the tale of an innocent, All-American young couple who are trapped for the night in a castle in with a mad, cross-dressing bisexual doctor, his muscular monster creation, and a cast of weirdos, freaks, tap dancers, and incestuous servants.
And all explore their sexuality, power struggles, expand their fashion style, and try to make sense of the brutal hatchet murder of Meat Loaf.
But a funny thing happened in those ensuing years. Theaters started booking midnight screenings on Fridays and Saturdays. Rapt and rowdy audiences started talking back to the screen, bringing props, and arriving in costume. Soon, elaborate “shadow casts” of live actors would recreate the action onscreen, and word spread to where seeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show was a teenage rite of passage. A cult was born and learned to “Don’t dream it. Be it.”
“I think that the Rocky Horror cult is the only good cult in the world. I’ll leave it there!” laughs Nell Campbell, aka “Little Nell.” She played the tap-dancing, bobbed-red hair sporting, squeaky voiced servant Columbia in both the original stage production and the film. “We’re a fully blown cult! And everything about Rocky Horror is fabulous.”
Campell is Zooming in from Bowling Green, Kentucky, a stop on the current The Rocky Horror Picture Show “Spooktacular” tour. She will be on hand at Houston’s House of Blues on October 23 for a screening of the full film with a local shadow cast Spaced Out Texans performing, a Q&A with Campbell—who will also judge a costume contest, and a tribute to the recently-deceased Tim Curry, who played (or actually embodied) Dr. Frank-N-Furter.
“The most fun part for me is just meeting the fans. I adore it and they get to ask me questions and tell me how they discovered the film and what it means to them,” she says. “I just never tire of hearing the goodness about Rocky Horror. And this is a really fun night.”
In the spring of 1973, 19-year-old Campbell was working as a “waitress and soda jerk” in Small’s Café in Knightsbridge near central London. Bored one night, she jumped up on a table and worked up a tap-dancing bit inspired by the 1930s music she loved and was playing over the sound system. She already had the Ruby Keeler-like bobbed hair.
Rocky Horror writer O’Brien, director Jim Sharman, and musical director Richard Hartley happened to be there and instantly knew they’d found their Columbia. And Campbell was encouraged to create the character’s look, style, and voice. She also had a love interest in the doomed Eddie (memorably played by Meat Loaf in the film).
After about six rehearsals, Sharman decided that the three servants—Columbia, Magenta (Patricia Quinn), and Riff Raff (Richard O’Brien)—needed a song with a dance routine. Thus was born “The Time Warp,” the show’s signature tune. Campbell says that Sharman’s then-wife invented the dance that went with it, which included a tap dance break for her that was also in the movie.
“I was so nervous about that solo in the movie, I practiced and practiced a million times, especially jumping off that jukebox. It was a lot of pressure,” she says. “But I still don’t know why Jim Sharman made me fall over at the end of it. That wasn’t in the stage version!”
And though she left the original, successful production after about seven months (to go busk on the streets of France, for some reason), she and some of that original cast were brought back for the film version. Though producers insisted that American actors be cast as couple Brad and Janet—enter Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon.
Purportedly, established stars like David Bowie, Mick Jagger, and Lou Reed were all interested in the Dr. Frank-N-Furter role. But Sharman stuck to his guns for Curry.
Sexual themes, of course, permeate the film, and it is likely a lot of people’s first cinematic exposure to bisexuality, homosexuality, transvestites, and cross-dressing. Campbell has lost count of how many people have come up to her over the years and said watching the film made them not feel so alone in their own identities.
“1973 was only six years after homosexuality was legalized in the UK. Up until then any representation of it in film was very sad and tragic. Rocky Horror was a celebration of everything LGBTQ+. And how great was that in a 70-minute show?” she marvels.
“It was still a surprise for the cast and creative team. And to think 53 years later it still has the same effect. Though it’s disappointing that the world has not moved faster in [embracing] that people are born with their own identities and sexuality. You don’t choose it. The whole world needs to be way more accepting. And I love that Rocky Horror has helped so many people find their community.”
Campbell was also in for a surprise once the film was completed and she finally saw it. During the “Rose Tint My World” song section at the film’s climax, both of her breasts briefly pop out of her corset. Sharman kept it in the completed project.
“I don’t think I realized at the time that’s what had happened!” she says. Noting that when Disney recently purchased 20th Century Fox—whose assets included The Rocky Horror Picture Show—Sharman was contacted to edit a more “family friendly” version for TV and was asked specifically to remove the boob shots. Campbell says he declined.
So, did Campbell keep any souvenirs from her time on the set?
“If and only, Bob! I would have kept all my costumes!” she laughs.
Between the film’s 50th anniversary, the recent hugely successful Broadway revival (which Campbell recently attended, to thunderous audience applause), and the death of Tim Curry in August, The Rocky Horror Picture Show has been getting a lot of attention.
Curry had been paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair since his 2012 stroke but still participated in events surrounding the film’s 50th anniversary. So finally, we ask Campbell about the last time she and Curry had seen each other.
“We were supposed to do a show with him on this tour, and we were together this time last year. He was great when I saw him at this huge event the Academy of Motion Pictures had for the 50th anniversary. And he spoke so eloquently on stage,” she says.
“He was a remarkable man. Very charming and witty and private. He was great company and I have to say he is now at least released from that electric wheelchair. And dear readers, please don’t smoke or vape. Because that’s what got him there. He was a big smoker.”
The Rocky Horror Picture Show Spootakular is 7 p.m. on Friday, October 23, at the House of Blues, 1201 Caroline. For more information, call 713-652-5837 or visit HouseofBlues.com. $77 and up.
