Cinema News: At 50, ‘Rocky Horror’ gets some respect

September 26, 2025 | View in browser

A man in heavy makeup smiles at the lens.

By Mark Olsen

Staff Writer

Hello! I'm Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

The 13th edition of Beyond Fest has already begun but lasts until Oct. 8, so there is still plenty of excitement on the way.

Japanese icon Meiko Kaji will make a series of appearances during her first time visiting the U.S. A double-bill of 1973's "Lady Snowblood" and 1974's "Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance" will feature a Q&A with the actor moderated by Jen Yamato, while another Q&A will be moderated by "Anora" Oscar winner Sean Baker.

Other upcoming screenings include "The Testament of Ann Lee" in 70mm, "The Secret Agent" with filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho, "It Was Just an Accident" with filmmaker Jafar Panahi, a Guillermo del Toro retrospective, Mike Nichols' 1973 sci-fi thriller "The Day of the Dolphin" in 4K and a 10th anniversary screening of "The Invitation" with filmmaker Karyn Kusama, screenwriters Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi and actor Logan Marshall-Green.

Saturday will see screenings of "Manhunter" and "To Live and Die in L.A." with star William Petersen in attendance. I spoke to Petersen this week about going from being a Chicago theater actor to starring in two now-classic '80s crime thrillers in the span of one year.

"It was never my intention to make any movies, it wasn't like I was seeking them out," Petersen said. "They kind of just came and found me."

I also spoke to some of the team behind the festival about how they manage to harness the energy of L.A's rep-house scene and point it toward an eclectic mix of new and old titles that increasingly includes legitimate prestige titles, including awards winners from the international festival circuit.

"It's not just all about the films — it's about the theatrical experience, seeing it all together," said Grant Moninger, co-founder of Beyond Fest and artistic director of the American Cinematheque. "This does not happen online. You're not watching a screener with a watermark at your house. You're all together, you're just celebrating cinema and going through all the emotions together. We put on a show every year at all these theaters because we're thankful that everyone's coming together and we're going to try to give them as much as we can give them."

'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' at 50

Tonight the 50th anniversary of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" will be celebrated at the Academy Museum with a screening of new 4K restoration and an appearance by star Tim Curry. The screening will include "a full-blown audience participation and shadow cast experience," capturing some the feeling of the riotous fan-fueled midnight shows that made the film a sensation over decades. There will be additional screenings of the film Oct. 4 at Hollywood Forever Cemetery and Oct. 15 at the Grammy Museum.

Directed by Jim Sharman, who also mounted the original stage show, from a story and songs by Richard O'Brien (who also plays Riff-Raff), the film is said to have the longest theatrical release in cinema history, thanks to its ongoing life as a cult object.

Steve Appleford interviewed the film's star, Tim Curry at the Roxy, where the original stage show was first performed in L.A. In the film, Curry's character, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, is a singing scientist in fishnets and high heels who introduces a young couple (Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick) to a world of new experiences.

"It was part of the sexual revolution, really," said Curry. "Experiment was in the air and it was palpable. I gave them permission to be who they discovered they wanted to be. I'm proud of that."

The Times identified the "Rocky Horror" phenomenon from the very start. Gregg Kilday interviewed Curry for an article published in March 1974 as the stage show transferred from London to L.A. The feature follows Curry, then only 27, from the Roxy to Musso & Frank and on to the Chateau Marmont, a pretty enviable tour of the city.

Curry described the character at the time by saying, "He says he's a transvestite transexual, whatever that means. I don't play him as a transexual. But he's a fairly complex guy. He just takes anything he can get. He's not fussy, really. Though I think he's something of a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am."

In his original review of the film from Sept. 26, 1975, critic Kevin Thomas (of course, it was reviewed by Kevin Thomas) said, "All of this plays less depraved than it sounds. … This Richard O'Brien musical is simply too exuberant and too funny to be seriously decadent. Indeed, there's an underlying quality of tenderness and even innocence in this loving send-up of horror and sci-fi flicks and celebration of post-graduate sexuality."

The format wars of 'One Battle After Another'

The new film from Paul Thomas Anderson, "One Battle After Another," features another of the filmmaker's impressive ensembles, one that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall, Alana Haim, Sean Penn, newcomer Chase Infiniti and Benicio del Toro.

The film is playing in a variety of film formats, and Los Angeles is lucky to be one of only four cities in the world to be screening the movie in VistaVision. (Appropriately enough, it will be at the Vista.) The film is also in Imax 70mm at the Universal Citywalk and in Imax at multiple locations including the TCL Chinese and in 70mm at the CGV by Regency in Buena Park. (Plus, it'll be in more conventional digital formats at many other theaters.)

A politically minded action-comedy based loosely on Thomas Pynchon's novel "Vineland," the film stars DiCaprio as a former bomb-making revolutionary who has gone underground to protect his daughter (Infiniti). When a power-mad military man (Penn) comes after them, Bob must spring into action in ways he is not ready for.

In her review, Amy Nicholson wrote, "Paul Thomas Anderson's fun and fizzy adaptation views its Molotov cocktail as half-full. Yes, it says, the struggle for liberation continues: ideologues versus toadies, radicals versus conservatives, loyalists versus rats. But isn't it inspiring that there are still people willing to fight?"

Glenn Whipp spoke to Anderson in his first solo interview for the film. Despite the fact that the movie opens with a raid on a government immigration detention center, Anderson was reluctant to directly connect it to the current political moment.

"The biggest mistake I could make in a story like this is to put politics up in the front," Anderson said. "That has a short shelf life. To sustain a story over two hours and 40 minutes, you have to care about the characters and take those big swings in terms of the emotional arcs of people and their pursuits and why you love that person and why you hate this person. That's not a thing that ever goes out of fashion. But neither does fascism and neither does people doing bad s— to other people. Unfortunately, that doesn't go out of style, either. That's just how we humans are."

Points of interest

'A Scanner Darkly' in 35mm

On Friday night, Brain Dead Studios will host a 35mm screening of Richard Linklater's 2006 animated adaptation of Philip K. Dick's "A Scanner Darkly." A comic, deeply paranoid tale of identity, the rotoscoped film features a cast that includes Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr.

Reviewing the film, Carino Chocano wrote, "As the saying goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that everybody isn't out to get you. In the dismal near-future of the film, when large-scale government spying has taken the next logical step into thought-surveillance, questioning the effect of shadowy forces no longer requires an overactive imagination. It doesn't even require a drug habit (though, of course, it helps to have one). The dropouts and burnouts of 'Scanner' don't have to wonder if they're being watched; they are in every sense part of the program. … The brilliance of 'A Scanner Darkly' is how it suggests, without bombast or fanfare, the ways in which the real world has come to resemble the dark world of comic books."

Much as Linklater has recently made "Blue Moon" and "Nouvelle Vague" in short order, in 2006 he had both "A Scanner Darkly" and "Fast Food Nation," a fictional adaptation of Eric Schlosser's nonfiction book.

"I make the joke that I'm like that British bus," Linklater said at the time. "You wait forever and then two show up at the same time."

Terence Stamp x2

The Eastwood Performing Arts Center will feature a program of two films starring Terence Stamp on Friday and Saturday, with "Teorema" and "Toby Dammit."

Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, "Teorema" captures Stamp's otherworldly beauty as a mysterious stranger who seduces all the members of a wealthy family in Milan (played by Massimo Girotti, Silvana Mangano, Laura Betti and Anne Wiazemsky) and then disappears from their lives as suddenly as he appeared, leaving them all in spiritual crisis.

"Toby Dammit," directed by Federico Fellini, was one section of the anthology film "Spirits of the Dead," with the other sections directed by Roger Vadim and Louis Malle. Stamp plays a fading alcoholic actor who makes a deal to shoot a film in Rome in exchange for a new Ferrari. He begins to suffer from terrifying visions.

Writing about the anthology in 1969, Kevin Thomas noted the film's "swirling, shimmering worlds of fantasy populated by decadent Roman society," adding that they only paled in comparison to Fellini's previous triumphs "La Docle Vita," "8½" and "Juliet of the Spirits."

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In other news

Henry Jaglom dead at 87

An insistently independent filmmaker, Henry Jaglom died this week at age 87. His deep love of actors led him to a loose, improvisatory style that gave freedom to his performers. Often drawing story ideas from his own life (and casts from his wide circle of friends), his films included 1976's "Tracks," 1985's "Always," 1994's "Babyfever" and 2007's "Hollywood Dreams." A new restoration of Jaglom's 1983 film "Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?" is premiering this weekend as part of the New York Film Festival.

I visited with Jaglom once at the offices he long kept on Sunset Boulevard, a warren of rooms stuffed with the accumulated memorabilia of a life dedicated to movies. In a corner was an editing machine he said belonged to John Cassavetes.

Jaglom well understood his own privilege in life and equally understood that there were those who would not respond to his work.

"I enjoy, even if I'm being attacked, knowing I've had an impact," Jaglom told me. "People are looking at it, talking about it, thinking about it. And that some people are moved, feel better. It's reaching out and trying to touch people. It's what film can do. I wouldn't have it any other way."