(I know I can’t help myself, an I’m just a little too in love with Richard O’Brien in this part of the film… swoon!)Īmazingly, this scene was only added in rehearsals as it was felt they needed a dance number to pad out the original 40 min script, you wouldn’t have thought it as it’s now probably the most famous selection of the film. ‘It’s just a jump to the left… just follow the instructions, like everyone else, it drives you ‘quite insssssaaaaaane, let’s do the Timewarp again’. The clock chimes (actually this coffin clock contained a real skeleton and was auctioned off by Sotherby’s in March 2002 for £35,000) and the audience is introduced to the party by way of ‘The Timewarp’.

I love the next few scenes! Castle, lightning and our first view of Riff Raff at the window, all reminiscent of Hammer Horror’s antisippppppppation before something vile and evil begins!īrad and Janet enter the haunted house and realise there is some sort of party going on. This feels very ‘Scoobie Doo’ cartoonish, with the ‘Enter at your own risk’ sign and the ‘kids’ walking up to the castle where they can see a light (lighter, candle or phone torch at the ready). With claps of thunder and torrential rain the heroes find themselves with a tyre blow out and using the immortal words ‘Didn’t we pass a castle back down the road a few miles…’ (Get your newspapers ready!), leave the car in search of a telephone. Dressed in the typically British detective attire of velvet suit and cravat, and looking particularly ‘Penguinesque’ (Batman’s Burgess Meredith springs to mind), he, along with his files and diagrams, is here to help us through the intricate details of the show from his equally Victorian office.

Our next meeting is with an eminent criminologist (Charles Gray) who becomes our narrator throughout the film. The film has been voted No.1 Cult Classic of all time and has a huge following famous for its audience participation, based on dramatic pauses and verbal call backs – in fact you can even print off a whole script of come backs, particularly useful for parties in front of the DVD at home!! I originally saw it at one of its midnight showings at a local London cinema in 1983, and if today you manage to find one of these still frequent midnight extravaganzas best dress appropriately (as a gothic party goer preferably wearing stockings and suspenders) and take your props!

At the time of filming it was in a state of disrepair, but it has since been renovated and is now a luxury hotel and conference centre on the A308 between Maidenhead and Winsor.Ĭlassified as a musical comedy, I have never really found it funny in any way. Frank N Furter’s castle, the beautiful Victorian gothic folly also features in Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein and Plague of the Zombies. The film was shot in six weeks at Bray Studios and Oakley Court in Berkshire, and its style echoes that of the Hammer Productions which were also filmed there.ĭr. Originally just a fringe theatre production, 20th Century Fox bought into it with their only constraint being that two American actors, Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick (apparently an item at the time), played lead roles.

Spooky roki