The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

I didn't much care for this one.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a film that for many defines the term “midnight movie”. Based on the 1973 stage musical of the (almost) same name, this parody of science fiction and horror initially had a lackluster release, but quickly became a cult favorite by playing at movie theaters at midnight for basically forever. Co-written by one of its stars, Richard O’Brien, the film begins with its title sequence showing a pair of lips singing, or lip-syncing, to the song being played. Afterward, we meet our narrator, an unnamed criminologist (Charles Gray), who begins to tell us about recently engaged couple Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) and Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon), who celebrate their engagement to the song “Dammit, Janet”.

One night, the lovebirds are driving in the pouring rain when they get a flat tire. They find they’re near a castle and decide to walk there to ask for help. They’re greeted by Riff Raff (co-writer O’Brien), who invites them in and says this is a special night, because his master has a gathering planned. Brad and Janet become understandably spooked as Riff Raff and his sister Magenta (Patricia Quinn) break into the song “Time Warp”. The castle’s other guests follow suit, while in cutaways, the criminologist teaches us how the dance to this song. All of this causes Janet to faint.

Brad and Janet attempt to slip out quietly, but are startled by the arrival of the castle’s owner, Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry). After he sings “Sweet Transvetite”, the doctor unveils his new Frankenstein’s Monster-like creation: a guy named Rocky (Peter Hinwood). The festivities are interrupted by a delivery man named Eddie (Meat Loaf). He starts getting romantic with Frank’s servant Columbia (Nell Campbell), prompting Frank to kill him in a fit of jealously.

As Frank and Rocky presumably make out in their suite, Brad and Janet are shoved into separate bedrooms. Soon, Janet is visited by Brad, only to discover it’s Frank in disguise. But despite her despair, Janet agrees to have sex with Frank. He later does the same thing with Brad while disguised as Janet, but don’t ask me how Brad can be fooled by this. At the same time, Riff Raff and Magenta are indulging in a bit of incest as they torment Rocky. He manages to escape and prowls outside the castle. Janet shows how hypocritical she is when she’s wandering around the castle and cries when she sees a video monitor depicting Brad in bed with Frank. But she soon smiles again when she finds Rocky hidden in the lab. While singing “Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch-me”, Janet proceeds to sleep with him, while Magenta and Columbia laugh their asses off watching them. While Frank whips Riff Raff’s ass for letting Rocky escape, they learn that Dr. Scott (Jonathan Adams) has arrived at the castle. Frank then turns on Brad when the latter reveals that Scott is a former teacher of his and Janet’s. The wheelchair-bound Scott is brought down to join them at the lab, and he and Brad deny they have any schemes against Frank. Rather, Scott announces that he’s looking for his nephew Eddie. But Frank has another reason to be pissed when he finds Rocky and Janet sleeping together in the tank Rocky was born in.

Magenta announces dinner, and the unpleasant atmosphere is heightened when they learn that their meal is the remains of Eddie. Janet freaks out and runs into Rocky’s arms, causing Frank to torment her. Brad, Scott, and Columbia try to stop him before Frank uses one of his gadgets to turn them all into nude statues. He shares some further unpleasant words with Riff Raff and Magenta before everyone is moved to a stage floor in an empty auditorium. With the statue-fied principals dressed in cabaret costumes, Frank unfreezes them and they break out into another song and dance, with Frank center stage in front of the RKO Radio Pictures logo.

But the performance is interrupted by Riff Raff and Magenta, who voice their disgust at Frank for killing Eddie. They also reveal their desire to head back to their home planet of Transsexual. Frank sings “I’m Going Home” before Riff Raff says that Frank will be killed for his acts. To that end, he produces a laser gun which he quickly uses to kill the protesting Columbia before shooting Frank with it. An anguished Rocky takes Frank’s body and climbs on the RKO tower before Riff Raff manages to kill him with the ray gun as well.

Magenta and Riff Raff spare the lives of Janet, Brad, and Scott by encouraging them to leave the castle quickly. They do so just before the castle blasts off into space. The film ends with the trio on the hole that the castle has left behind, as the criminologist returns. Criminologist: And crawling on this planet’s face, some insects called the human race. Lost in time, and lost in space… and meaning. I somehow doubt Brad and Janet’s pending nuptials are going to be going smoothly now. To say this film is eyebrow raising would be an understatement. I must admit that I only saw this film once it became available on home video, but I have seen footage of the midnight screenings in which audience members reenact the film while it’s playing, and shoutinv at the screen at certain points. For instance, in the scene where Riff Raff and Magenta kill Frank: Riff Raff: Say goodbye to all of this… Audience: Goodbye to all of this! Riff Raff: …and hello to oblivion! Audience: Hello, Oblivion. How’s the wife and kids? The songs are catchy, with “Time Warp” being a favorite of mine. It’s also quite nice that the three main stars of the film would go on to have fine careers. Having said all that, I never thought the film was exactly funny, per se. There may be the occasional chuckle, such as a glimpse of Curry without his Frank makeup at the beginning of the film, but it never cracked me up as much as Clue, another film starring Curry that takes place on a dark and stormy night in a big house and has gone on to become a beloved midnight movie. Also, while there are certainly sex scenes, I can’t say that I found the movie particularly sexy. We may chuckle at the thought of Frank as a Dr. Frankenstein who proceeds to bone his creation just as it comes out of the box, but both Janet and Brad come across as annoying with their dim-wittedness. But the nods to previous horror and science fiction are certainly present. Fittingly, the film was shot at Bray Studios in England, where many of the classic Hammer movies where filmed, and some of the same props were used. Even the film’s poster with the lips from the title sequence has the tagline “A different set of jaws,” referencing how the Spielberg film of the same name was released just a few months earlier. Rocky Horror would actually get a sequel of sorts with Shock Treatment, released three years later. While that film was also written by O’Brien and had the same director, Jim Sharman, it wasn’t embraced like the previous film. The fact that Curry, Sarandon, and Bostwick weren’t in it probably contributed to that. As with Starship Troopers, I can certainly see why this film has such a big following. I’m just not among it.

Robocop 2 (1990)

A look at one of the worst sequels ever made!

Disappointing sequels to classic movies are certainly nothing new. Often, the knock against sequels is that they simply redo their predecessors without offering anything dramatically different. In the case of RoboCop 2, however, its crime isn’t that it simply goes through the motions. The original RoboCop was certainly gritty and violent, but it also had wit and was exciting to watch. RoboCop 2, on the other hand, simply amped up the violence quotient while (deliberately or not) tossing away the qualities that made the original so enjoyable. The film begins presumably not long after the end of the first film, with the Detroit Police Department still on strike and the city on the verge of bankruptcy. But RoboCop (Peter Weller) and his partner Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen) are still patrolling Detroit’s streets. They come upon a plant manufacturing a new drug called Nuke. The leader of this drug ring is Cain (Tom Noonan) and his annoying kid sidekick Hob (Gabriel Damon).

Both of them escape, with Hob proving how irritating he is by bragging that RoboCop can’t even kill a kid. Not long after, we see RoboCop has made it a habit of driving by the home he shared with his wife and son in his pre-Robo form as Alex Murphy. This understandably leads Mrs. Murphy to sue the company that turned her hubby into RoboCop, Omni Consumer Products, for harassment. Eventually, she confronts RoboCop, who flat out tells her that he’s simply something that was built to honor Murphy. OCP continues to show its cold-heartedness as its head (Dan O’Herlihy), still known as the Old Man, plans to improve on RoboCop by creating “RoboCop 2”. This is championed by his right hand Donald Johnson (Felton Perry), who if you’ll remember got quite the nice promotion at the end of the first film when the Old Man helped RoboCop get rid of Jones.

But their efforts for RoboCop 2 keep running into snags, such as how any police officers picked for the project end up killing themselves afterward. However, Dr. Juliette Faxx(Belinda Bauer) notes that Murphy’s strong sense of morality was key to the success of the original RoboCop—which is starting to sound like a fitting metaphor for this movie. She’s granted permission to take charge of the project, which not surprisingly is already costing in the hundreds of millions of dollars. With the help of corrupt policeman Duffy, Cain manages to lure RoboCop to his hideout. But Hob proves what a brat he is when he’s able to take off RoboCop’s arm with a machine gun that apparently has super-armor piercing bullets. Another doohickey that Hob and Cain pull out of their asses neutralizes RoboCop by sending out a beam that grabs his chest. This allows their minions to take RoboCop apart and then dump the pieces in front of the precinct.

Of course, in the tradition of stupid movie villains, they don’t take RoboCop’s head apart, which is why we know that it won’t be long before he’s back online. Naturally, Cain kills Duffy afterward. Faxx slightly alters RoboCop’s programming so OCP will end up giving her more leeway on the RoboCop 2 project. Eventually, RoboCop clears his mind of all that bullshit by shocking himself with a tranformer outside, which reboots his system and restores him to his normal self. With the help of Lewis and his sergeant Reed, RoboCop and the striking officers find Cain’s new hideout. This time, they manage to capture Cain, wounding him, although they sadly don’t kill Hob, who escapes again. As Hob takes over Cain’s empire (oh, Christ!), Faxx reveals how she plans to make RoboCop 2 succeed: by selecting Cain for the job. I must confess, I did get a kick out of how she lovingly caresses Cain’s head while he realizes he’s screwed. She disconnects his life support system and surgeons soon operate, removing his brain.

That brain is soon put into RoboCop 2, who’s quickly sent out for a test run. Hob contacts Detroit’s mayor for a meeting, demanding that Hob’s empire be allowed to have all the Nuke they want. RoboCop 2 bursts in and slaughters everyone at this meeting, except for the mayor. RoboCop arrives and finds a mortally wounded Hob. Damn, RoboCop 2 ripped Hob’s goons to pieces, but had to give that brat a quiet death by allowing him to tell RoboCop who killed them all before he croaks?

The Old Man and Johnson set up a presentation for RoboCop 2 and their plans for Delta City. Showing off a case of Nuke, the Old Man and his audience are startled when RoboCop 2 goes apeshit at the sight of the drug, which was his elixir before Faxx took his brain out. He starts killing everyone in the auditorium. RoboCop shows up and they begin a shootout, prompting the Old Man to shout, “Behave yourselves!” before the combatants take it out into the streets. Lewis distracts RoboCop 2 with the Nuke, giving RoboCop a chance to leap onto him, smash his head open, and yank Cain’s brain out. RoboCop quickly smashes the thing to pieces, killing him. To think, Cain would’ve saved himself a lot of trouble if he’d had the imagination to do the same thing to RoboCop.

As the city tries to recover, the Mayor tells the press that he plans to make OCP answer for all the chaos they caused. But the Old Man and Johnson clandestinely scheme to have Faxx take the fall for their fuckups. Lewis is pissed that the Old Man is getting away scot free, but RoboCop tells her to remain calm. RoboCop: We’re only human! Okay, I guess that’s meant to give us reassurance. Too bad it doesn’t make this movie any better. Weller would even state that the movie’s final act felt incomplete. One reason the original RoboCop was great was because its story was able to carry some dramatic weight to go along with RoboCop dispatching bad guys with his cool abilities. The fact that the villains of that film were the ones who took his family away from him gave it an emotional center. Said baddies were heartless, but Ronny Cox and Kurtwood Smith also made them engaging. There’s no such emotional center in RoboCop 2. Yes, RoboCop briefly reunites with his wife, but nothing happens to give audiences a reason to invest in the film like they did with the original. Weller and Allen do what they can, and the fact that we got to know their characters in the previous film allows us to root for them more than we may have otherwise, but Tom Noonan and Gabriel Damon don’t hold a candle to Cox and Smith, and are just so damn annoying too. Also, why do the Old Man and Johnson come across as heartless SOBs here? In the previous film, Johnson seemed like the kind you’d want to pal around with, which is why there’s a certain charm in the fact that RoboCop killing Jones gets him promoted. Likewise, the Old Man never struck me as the heartless corporate type, especially since that’s exactly the type O’Herlihy played in Halloween III: Season of the Witch. All this makes it somewhat sad that this film’s director is Irvin Kershner, who was lauded for directing character-driven dramas, but is probably most famous for The Empire Strikes Back. So strange that he went from that triumph to duds like this and Never Say Never Again. Like its title character, RoboCop 2 failed to achieve the success of its predecessor, although that didn’t stop us from getting another sequel, several TV series, and (yep!) a pointless remake. The original is still hailed as a classic science-fiction movie. Ironically, the most notable thing about the sequel is some claiming it predicted that the city of Detroit would file for bankruptcy, which it did in 2013.