Movie Review: STRANGE JOURNEY: THE STORY OF ROCKY HORROR

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: September 26th, 2025 / 01:39 AM

STRANGE JOURNEY: THE STORY OF ROCKY HORROR | ©2025 Margot Station/Kaleidoscope Film Distribution

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Richard O’Brien, Chrissie Shrimpton, Jim Sharman, Richard Hartley, Nell Campbell, Sue Blane, Tim Curry, Patricia Quinn, Belinda Sinclair, Karen Tongson, Lou Adler, Barry Bostwick, Joel Thurm, Susan Sarandon, John Goldstone, Jack Black, Peter Hinwood, Jeffrey Weinstock, Lillias Piro, Sal Piro, Sean Waters, Austin Fresh, Tristan Ratterman, Linus O’Brien
Writer: Avner Shiloah
Director: Linus O’Brien
Distributor: Margot Station/Kaleidoscope Film Distribution
Release Date: September 26, 2025 (theatrical)

STRANGE JOURNEY: THE STORY OF ROCKY HORROR is surprising in several ways. For starters, there’s the true story it tells.

For most people below, say, age eighty, midnight showings of ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, with shadow casts that sing and dance in costume in front of the screen, are just a fact of life, like freeways.

How this low-budget film, originally released in 1975, became the longest continuously running movie in history, with its very specific cult following, is the subject of STRANGE JOURNEY: THE STORY OF ROCKY HORROR.

The film begins by introducing us to New Zealand native Richard O’Brien, who wrote the musical and played the supporting role of Riff-Raff on stage and screen. While O’Brien was a young aspiring actor in England, he wrote some of the musical ROCKY HORROR SHOW. Director Jim Sharman listened to the songs, read the unfinished script, got a window for a three-week run in a small theatre, and then O’Brien had to hurry up and complete the piece so that it could be mounted in time.

Nobody involved had the slightest idea that it would become a stage hit in London, and then in Los Angeles, let alone get turned into a movie with many of the original principals still aboard, including O’Brien, Sharman and star Tim Curry.

Still less foreseeable, because nothing like it had happened before (or has happened since in the same organic way) was the cult fan response, with the same people going every weekend, dressing up, talking back to the screen and literally dancing in the aisles, way before the Internet existed to publicize such things.

Director Linus O’Brien – Richard O’Brien’s son – and writer Avner Shiloah take us mostly chronologically through the ROCKY HORROR history. They have assembled a vast collection of current and archival photos, footage and interviews of pretty much everyone involved, including Sharman, musical director Richard Hartley, producers Lou Adler and John Goldstone, costume designer Sue Blane (who shares her original costume sketches), members of both the English stage and film casts – among them Curry, Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon – and fans. We also get observations from couple of university professors and celebrities uninvolved in any of the productions, who have insights and revelations of how the movie significantly impacted their own lives.

We get everything from details of why there were so many ramps in the stage production to the shooting of those opening lips to how being part of the shadow cast kept a homeless teen physically safe for the night.

Then there’s O’Brien himself. Just when we start to wonder if the movie will delve into what inspired O’Brien to write this particular show, he opens up with great candor about not only his process, but about his larger sense of identity in the world.

O’Brien is of course witty, which we expect, but we also have some father/son banter as the older O’Brien provides a view of himself that the younger filmmaking O’Brien, conducting the interview, contradicts with enormous filial affection.

Besides his recollections, O’Brien has some intriguing observations about how the film and shadow cast combination is its own unique art form.

There are clips from stage productions and from the film, as well as O’Brien and Hawley in the present, sitting down with guitar and piano and performing slightly blues-infused renditions of excerpts from the score. O’Brien’s singing voice is commendably well-preserved. We also see various shadow casts, as well as costumed audience members brimming with joy just to be there.

STRANGE JOURNEY is impressively comprehensive, yet speeds along like a rocket, clocking in at a tight 92 minutes.

ROCKY HORROR SHOW and ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW are about self-expression, sexuality and spectacle made from what is at hand. These are all worthy topics.

Oddly, the stage show and the movie are not about love or friendship (sex, yes, human connection, not so much), yet the film especially has engendered lifelong passions and bonds. Whether or not one was personally moved by ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, it’s hard not to be genuinely touched by STRANGE JOURNEY: THE STORY OF ROCKY HORROR.

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