How Genres Work and Why The Horror Musical | Page 6

“The Rocky Horror Picture
Show” is one of the best examples
of a mixed genre film out there. It
has a colourful hard candy exterior
with a delightfully creepy center.

This film is, at it’s core, a
musical first and foremost. It is
packed with eighteen hilarious and
diabolical original pieces all written by Richard O’Brian, who also
wrote the screenplay and is depicted as Riff-Raff the gaunt balding
butler. The first stage show of this
production was unveiled in 1973.
With the film released two years
later, audiences found themselves
seeing the film right at the end of
the glam rock era, influenced by
the likes of David Bowie. This al-

lows the film to serve as a homage
to not only the genres of music that
drive this picture, but also the classic horror and sci-fi films that this
movie’s very groovy audience was
used to seeing.

One would expect, that
with “horror” in the title, this film
would deliver the usual scare tactics
of other films, who lend themselves
to the horror genre. However the
creepiness is far more subtle and
one could argue that this makes
it even creepier. Tim Curry, who
plays our lead transvestite FrankN-Furter, stated that even though
“Rocky Horror” is a parody, he
found himself playing his character as though he were very real and