Rocky Horror Cast Feuds EXPOSED—Sarandon’s Meltdown, Meat Loaf’s Rage & O’Brien’s Betrayal

There are movies.

There are cult movies.

And then there’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the glitter-drenched, fishnet-fueled Frankenstein of cinema that refuses to crawl back into the coffin it crawled out of in 1975.

Nearly fifty years later, people are still donning corsets, shouting at screens, and throwing rice like they’re auditioning for a particularly unhinged episode of Chopped.

Hollywood has tried to kill it.

Parents have tried to ban it.

Priests have tried to exorcise it.

 

But like Dr. Frank N. Furter’s lipstick, it smears across generations whether you asked for it or not.

The film, directed by Jim Sharman and born from Richard O’Brien’s stage musical, was never supposed to live this long.

It was camp comedy, science fiction, horror, and rock ’n’ roll stitched together with the finesse of a drunk tailor.

Critics in 1975 dismissed it as “a B-movie parody that forgot to be funny. ”

But audiences disagreed.

Or maybe they just really liked yelling profanities in public.

Either way, the movie turned into a midnight-movie ritual where screaming “SLUT!” at Janet became a rite of passage for awkward teens, college burnouts, and suburban dads who swore they were just there “to support the arts. ”

Tim Curry’s performance as Dr.

Frank N.

Furter remains the crown jewel of chaos.

He minced, strutted, and seduced his way through the movie with enough charisma to make even the most devout churchgoer reconsider their Friday plans.

“It was a role so iconic that Curry never escaped it,” one fake Hollywood historian told us.

“He could have cured cancer, but people would still stop him in the grocery store to ask if he had any fishnets in aisle three. ”

The supporting cast?

A fever dream ensemble that included Susan Sarandon before she was America’s liberal aunt, Barry Bostwick in what can only be described as the most humiliating role any man has ever played in tighty-whities, Meat Loaf crashing in for one chaotic number, and O’Brien himself reminding us that no one writes themselves into a script like someone who knows the only way to get screen time is to steal it.

And let’s not forget the music.

Songs like “Time Warp” and “Sweet Transvestite” weren’t just catchy—they were battle cries for weirdos everywhere.

If you’ve ever been to a karaoke night at 2 a. m. and not heard someone belt “Let’s do the Time Warp again!” then congratulations, you live in a safer neighborhood than the rest of us.

But the true legacy of Rocky Horror isn’t the film itself—it’s the audience.

 

This wasn’t a movie people watched.

It was a movie people lived.

Dressing up in lingerie, tossing toast at the screen, and acting out scenes in shadow casts became less of a tradition and more of a religion.

“It was church for degenerates,” says Dr. Beverly Crandall, a made-up cultural psychologist.

“Instead of communion wafers, they had rice.

Instead of hymns, they had Meat Loaf.

Instead of God, they had Tim Curry in stilettos.

And honestly, for many people, that was an upgrade. ”

The persistence of this fever dream has baffled Hollywood for decades.

Studios have tried remakes, tributes, and sanitized versions, but they all flopped harder than Meat Loaf’s motorcycle crash scene.

The reason? You can’t mass-market chaos.

You can’t corporate-brand rebellion.

You can’t put a barcode on fishnets and call it “subversive. ”

Well, actually you can, but it usually ends up at Spencer’s Gifts.

Conservatives in the ’70s and ’80s tried to paint the film as a moral apocalypse.

“It’s turning our children into cross-dressing communists!” warned one senator who probably owned more lingerie than his wife.

 

Churches held protests.

Parents grounded their kids.

Yet the more they raged, the more teenagers lined up at midnight screenings, lipstick smeared, stockings ripped, ready to shout obscenities at Susan Sarandon like it was their patriotic duty.

And here’s the kicker: The Rocky Horror Picture Show is still running.

To this day, theaters across the globe screen it at midnight.

Generations who weren’t even alive in 1975 are still strapping on corsets and screaming “DAMN IT, JANET!” as if it were written into the Constitution.

It is the longest-running theatrical release in film history, outliving most marriages, most careers, and at least three Kardashians’ public relevance cycles.

But is this cultural cockroach actually good? Or is it just too weird to die? Critics remain split.

Some hail it as a revolutionary work of queer cinema that opened doors for expression and self-acceptance.

Others say it’s just camp trash wrapped in sequins.

Our expert panel, which included a drag queen, a history professor, and some guy we found outside a Hot Topic, unanimously agreed: “It’s both.

And that’s the point. ”

 

The real scandal is that no other film has managed to replicate this freakish staying power.

Hollywood churns out franchises, universes, and reboots, but none of them inspire people to throw toast at screens or scream callbacks with such feral devotion.

Marvel fans dress up, sure—but have they ever pelted Chris Evans with toilet paper while screaming “WHERE’S YOUR NECK, CAPTAIN AMERICA?” No.

Because Marvel is safe.

Rocky Horror is dangerous.

It’s messy.

It’s sweaty.

It’s that regrettable hookup you keep going back to because honestly, it’s still fun.

Susan Sarandon has openly admitted she had no idea what she was getting into when she signed on.

Barry Bostwick once revealed in an interview that he still has people shouting “ASSHOLE!” at him in public decades later.

And Tim Curry? He’s been gracious, but you can tell in his eyes that a part of him wonders whether he could have just become a banker instead.

“Sometimes I regret nothing,” Curry allegedly once said at a fan event.

“But then I see another guy in fishnets trying to ‘seduce’ me at Starbucks and I think—maybe I should’ve done Macbeth instead. ”

So what is the moral of this never-ending fever dream? Perhaps it’s that chaos, once unleashed, cannot be controlled.

Or maybe it’s that the world is secretly full of people desperate for an excuse to wear lingerie in public.

Either way, Rocky Horror proved that cinema doesn’t have to be polished, perfect, or even particularly coherent to leave a mark.

 

Sometimes it just has to be weird enough to make your grandma clutch her pearls and weird enough to make your weird cousin feel seen.

And so the film marches on, corsets laced tight, mascara smudged, refusing to apologize for anything.

“I refuse to make excuses for who I am,” says the spirit of Rocky Horror, echoing Shirley Manson’s sentiment decades later.

“I refuse to apologize for what I believe in.

And what I believe in is making Barry Bostwick wear underwear on film for eternity. ”

Nearly half a century later, Hollywood executives are still baffled, parents are still horrified, and teenagers are still sneaking out to screenings.

Rocky Horror isn’t just a movie—it’s a monster.

And like any good monster, it’s never really going to die.

It’s going to strut through eternity in stilettos, cackling, glitter flying, daring the world to try and look away.

Because let’s face it: you can reboot Batman every five years, but you can’t reboot a cultural revolution in fishnets.

And for that reason alone, Rocky Horror will keep warping time long after the rest of Hollywood has turned to dust.