“The Rocky Horror Image Present” was initially a musical parody of B motion pictures created for the stage by Richard O’Brien. O’Brien penned the unique stageplay together with all of the music, additionally starring in it as Riff Raff. He reprised his position within the movie, which Jim Sharman helped him adapt for the display by co-writing and directing. In the case of deciphering the which means behind “Rocky Horror,” the co-creators choose to go away issues open-ended.
“There’s type of an ambiguity in it,” Sharman advised The Los Angeles Occasions. “I do not assume anyone can utterly clarify it. I feel that is the fascinating story. I feel it have to be one thing within the DNA of the film.”
Nonetheless, the story behind the very starting of the movie does provide an alternate tackle the ending. The opening quantity “Science Fiction/Double Characteristic” was sung by a feminine usherette within the authentic stage manufacturing, mixing the truth of the theater and the world of the play, however Sharman had different concepts for the movie.
“I by no means forgot Richard [O’Brien]’s haunting, but barely androgynous, voice singing ‘Science Fiction’ the primary time I heard it, so I assumed he ought to sing it,” the director advised the New York Put up.
However O’Brien’s mouth did not fairly match Sharman’s imaginative and prescient for the floating set of lips that we see onscreen. As an alternative, these lips belong to Patricia Quinn, the actress who performs Magenta. This wasn’t a random selection, although — it additionally has some bearing on the plot. Sharman imagined that “Riff Raff and Magenta someway coalesced into one androgynous being” to carry out the quantity. If that is true, it is attainable that the very starting of the movie really takes place on the very finish, as Riff Raff and Magenta return to their residence planet of their true, mixed kind.