Richard O’Brien (left), Jessica Harper, Barry Humphries (aka Dame Edna) and Patricia Quinn star in ‘Shock Treatment,’ a long-forgotten ’80s camp musical. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox.
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By GREG MARZULLO
Monday, September 25, 2006
Many a toast-throwing, lipstick-besmirched, Dr. Frank-N-Furter look-alike already knows this, but for the rest of the uninitiated movie-going public, it might come as a surprise: "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" has a sequel.
The film, "Shock Treatment," was originally released in 1981, six years after "Rocky Horror," to dismal reviews and disappointed groupies, but die-hard fans and the morbidly curious now have a second chance with "Shock Treatment’s" DVD release.
The film’s director and co-writer Jim Sharman was also at the helm of "Rocky Horror," and after the panned sequel, he still hasn’t made another movie. Given how relevant this campy, quirky musical is to today’s reality-television obsessed public, he might want to rethink his failed career.
Years after the twisted incidents of "Rocky Horror," our heroes Brad (played by Cliff de Young, not Barry Bostwick of the first film) and Janet (Jessica Harper in for Susan Sarandon) are living out their boring lives in the town of Denton. Their vanilla relationship has sunk into the doldrums of holy matrimony, and they hope to spice things up by being part of a television viewing audience.
The entire movie is set in the TV studios of DTV, the town’s local station. Each scene of the film, whether it’s set in an insane asylum or a mom’s living room, becomes a television game show. Everyone’s life is up for broadcast, including Janet’s, whose transformation from mousy housewife to celebrity chanteuse is the most recent exploit of DTV.
Janet’s life turns around when the network’s head, Farley (also played by de Young), decides he wants the picture-perfect image of purity for a new media campaign. He hornswoggles the middle-America couple onto a marriage game show whose blind, German host, Bert, is played by none other than Barry Humphries, the creator of drag sensation Dame Edna.
Through Bert’s machinations, Brad ends up in the mental hospital of the incestuous brother-sister team of Dr. Cosmo McKinley (played by the film’s co-writer Richard O’Brien, the original Riff Raff) and Dr. Nation McKinley (Patricia Quinn, who also played Magenta). During Brad’s imprisonment, the TV squad shows Janet the glamorous life.
Maybe "Shock Treatment" flopped so unceremoniously because it was missing Tim Curry and Sarandon from the first film, and the horror hokum of the B-movie parody is nowhere to be seen in this portrait of Americana.
Perhaps the bomb lay in the sequel’s complicated plot and thematic implausibility for the ’80s audience. When the film was released, America’s reality television craze was far off, so the story’s intense focus on the commodification of people’s travails might have landed with a resounding thud.
With today’s television cameras recording the exploits of the reckless and webcams chronicling the masturbatory practices of frat boys the world over, "Shock Treatment" seems less out-of-touch and more uncannily prescient.
Plus, the camp factor is fantastic.
The film opens with a musical tribute to the town, a home with "happy hearts, smiling faces and tolerance for the ethnic races," as demonstrated by the Ayatollah Khomeini sitting in the television viewing audience.
The musical numbers—nothing to write home about but perfectly fitted to the style—raise the film up from social critique to deliciously evil satire. It’s hard to miss the sarcasm when vapid TV personalities are getting ready for their next program while singing, "Look what I did to my id."
With the gin-soaked voice of a boozy drag queen, Harper is a standout. She delivers a performance sometimes worthy of Marlene Dietrich and other times reminiscent of a disaffected singer in an ’80s British band.
As Janet, her husband and other Denton renegades open the studio doors at the film’s end, you know they’re heading into the great beyond, out from under the boob-tube’s eye. It’s easy to imagine they’ll be happy there, but not without more disco-lit production numbers.
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