You cannot have this movie without a castle, and you can’t have a gigantic flamboyance of a musical to this extreme without singing its introduction. It’s as classic a horror trope as monsters and yawning to “protect” your date from the really spooky ones at the theater. Performer(s): Brad, Janet, Riff Raff, and chorusĮvery evil scientist - even those from alien territories coincidentally named after a Halloween-y place in Europe - has a creepy castle and/or lair. And Brad sure must feel like a badass dropping all of those d-bombs. Moment of Absolute Pleasure: The giddiness the couple shares as Brad proposes demonstrates just how invested they are in the old small-town dream of growing up for the sole purpose of settling down. Instead, Brad and Janet end up on reality television. It makes you wonder if Frank didn’t actually do them a favor by altering their course. Now, all that’s left to do is settle down, get a house with a white picket fence, pop out a few kids, and die. O’Brien’s musical marriage proposal captures two young people - in all their simple, light-headed innocence - at the precise moment their entire lives have been building toward. Damn it, this is Denton, The Home of Happiness, and nothing truly bad can ever happen, right? And what could be more wholesome than a wedding in a quaint, small-town church? Never mind the way Tim Curry’s clergyman creepily hovers over a girl, the “she got hers now he’ll get his” message toilet papered on the newlyweds’ car, or the fact that the American Gothic caretakers are already setting up for a child’s funeral. The babes in the wood plot requires things to start out as innocently and unthreatening as possible. Performer(s): Brad, Janet, and caretakers It’s the asshole at his most vulnerable, and you find yourself both wanting to believe him and rooting for a happy ending for those two crazy kids from Denton. Moment of Absolute Pleasure: Brad sitting on his bed with a cigarette and singing. At the same time, while Brad repents, Janet, guilt-ridden about her own romp with Frank and hurt by Brad’s, succumbs to desire again with Rocky… Yeah, we have one of those classic fiancé-fiancée-alien-Frankenstein love rectangles that you read about. I’ll say this, though: If you were living in this castle and not getting any loving, it was your own damn fault. Having just surrendered to temptation a short while ago (not to mention Frank asleep in the bed), the song may ring insincere. It’s a somewhat memorable song live, especially if Janet joins Brad on the choruses, but it’s troubling too. The song itself finds Brad - fresh off being seduced by Frank - remorseful and repledging his devotion to Janet. Barry Bostwick recorded a version, but it failed to make the final theatrical cut. “Once in a While” holds the distinction of being the only Rocky song not to survive the transition from stage to screen. And if this list doesn’t make you give yourself over to absolute pleasure, let us know where we stand (on our feet!) in the comments section. So come up to our lab, and see what’s on the slab. It was an anniversary ranking they were going to remember for a very long time. It’s true that Rocky Horror was released in theaters 40 years ago this weekend. It’s true also that their fishnets were badly in need of some repair. But they being normal music journalists, and desperate for a byline, well, they were not going to let a little run in their hosiery stop them from doing an anniversary ranking. It seemed a fairly ordinary assignment when Matt Melis (asshole!) and his colleague David Buchanan (slut!), two youngish, ordinary, healthy music journalists, were asked that late September evening to rank The Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack, a favorite of both of them. We would like, if we may, to take you on a strange journey. Today, in honor of Fox’s new reboot starring Laverne Cox, we rank the songs of The Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack from worst to best. It’s a testament to the fact that classic album or not, there are still some tracks we root for more than others to pop up in our shuffles. Ranking the Album is a feature in which we take an iconic or beloved record and dare to play favorites. This feature was originally published in September 2015 in honor of the film’s 40th anniversary.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |