Rocky Horror - more than silly songs in suspenders

Dad mentioned he was recording Natural Born Killers yesterday, and added very directly "and I'll be watching it first!" As if...I know sometimes it may seem like it, but I really don't mind waiting to see unsuitable stuff. And I wasn't desperate to see it in any case, until he began watching it in the other room. Comment was:

"It's bizzare. Script by Tarantino, directed by Oliver Stone and banned all over the place"

Including my home town, as I found out in Film Studies last week. The local comittee banned it on the strength of its reputation alone. Anyway, the "bizzare" bit got me interested...that and the fact my sister had requisitioned the TV to watch I'm a Celebrity earlier in the evening, so I couldn't watch Signs as I'd intended to.


Signs is officially my third favourite movie. I haven't seen it for years, but if you asked for my top three, I'd say "BCSK, Zulu and Signs," just because it is and always has been. I need to see it again, because the Empire site is doing its top 100 film poll and I need to know if it's as good as I remember it.

Here's the task: one list of 20 favourite films ranked in order.

It really shouldn't be that hard. Problems:

1) My top seven is causing me grief, as I like them all pretty much equally, depending on my mood. I can't even do them in order of how good they are - when it comes down to it, Signs and The Godfather have almost nothing in common. Reservoir Dogs - is it better than Fellowship of the Ring? Heck no - they can't be compared. One's 90 minutes, one's three hours to start with - the acting, editing, directing, scripting is all suitable for the style of film being made (you may, at this moment, imagine FOTR as directed by QT or vice versa. But I wouldn't suggest it.)

2) So's my bottom 4. I can't think of 20. I can think of 16 films I love, and then about 10 which I like a lot. So working which of them deserves my last four spots is pretty tricky, as there's not much between them.

3) Strategic voting. What's the point of putting R+G as, say, my third favourite movie, even if it is? It's a complete waste of a vote - no one else, at least, not a significant number of people, will give it enough to put it on the list.

4) I always get annoyed if Rififi isn't on a top 100 list, which is pretty hypocritical as I'm not going to vote for it. Though I feel perhaps I should. And I feel a duty to vote for Serenity, as a Firefly fan, even though I thought the film was pretty disappointing compared to the series. And even though I didn't like any of the LOTR films as much as Fellowship, perhaps I should to try and beat Star Wars.


Finally...we're studying Dracula in English. Made extra fantastic by the fact our teacher has promised we can watch the Coppola-Oldma-Belluci film once we've finished (I think it's Monica Belluci's first film...she's the vampire bride in the middle). Because we're grown up now, we can handle the fact that vampirism isn't just about blood sucking...it's about "exchange of bodily fluids" and hence a metaphor for lots of dreadfully naughty things the Victorians didn't like to admit to. While most of the time I think our teacher's reading too much into things, I do get where she's coming from in this instance. Lost Boys, for example - I've always had an inkling there's something very gay going on with David and Michael. But the biggie is the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which is a pastiche of horror B-movies. In Dracula, a variety of dull, chaste people get "attacked", and it subtly alters their opinion of their husband/wife/fiancee. But in the RHPS, they're nowhere near as coy as Bram Stoker - they just become very very horny. Brad and Janet are just like Johnthan and Mina. I keep getting Rose Tint my World in my head during lessons..."What's come over me?!". It's an OTT version of Bram's hints that what Dracula does is encourage peeps to "give yourself over to sins of the fle-esh, erotic nightmares beyond any measure, and sensual daydreams to treasure for eeeever..."

The more I look at the RHPS, the cleverer it gets. For example, near the end Frank says he was always envious of Faye Wray (sp?), most famous for the original King Kong. And then later Rocky picks him up, and carries him up the RKO tower just like Kong does with the Empire State building.