The most cult of cult films: it's impossible not to fall in love with this delightful, irreverent, outrageous musical, packed with epic songs, improbable characters dressed in latex and suspenders, and equally ineffable characters from deep space. Its aura as a phenomenon, more than just a mere film, is intrinsically linked not so much to an immediate box-office triumph, but rather to its nocturnal resurrection in second-run cinemas, transforming into a collective ritual, a participatory performance in which the distance between screen and audience vanished, in an exhilaration of expressive freedom that prefigured the digital anarchy of our times. It is here that The Rocky Horror Picture Show transcends the definition of film to become a cathartic experience, a refuge for the outsider, and a celebration of the "different" in every nuance.

Tim Curry's performance is memorable: a transgender, cross-dressing, bisexual vampire, drunk on sex, who ensnares poor Brad and Janet, transforming them into pure pleasure machines. Curry, with his masterful fusion of theatrical charisma and unsettling seduction, does not merely play a role; he embodies Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the baroque and destabilizing linchpin of a universe where conventions are scourged with voluptuous elegance. His Frank-N-Furter is more than just a character: he is an ante litteram queer icon, a postmodern satyr who, with a 12-inch heel and a sardonic laugh, dismantles gender binarism and moral rigidity, rising as a living manifesto of sexual fluidity and existential exuberance. His stage presence is so magnetic that it absorbs every other figure, transforming the other eccentric inhabitants of Frankenstein's castle into satellites of his splendid, perverse gravity.

A hymn to physical pleasure, sexual freedom, and the joy of living. This vital urge is not only celebrated but imposed, almost like a profane baptism, upon two archetypes of the American bourgeoisie, Brad and Janet, who, in their forced journey from the unsettling periphery to the unbridled dissoluteness of the castle, discover the hidden labyrinths of their own desire. It is an exploration that frees them from the chains of bourgeois respectability, a descent into the Freudian unconscious that reveals the most primordial and denied urges.

Also interesting as a document of emancipation from bourgeois routine and its moralistic, narrow horizons. The film presents itself as a biting satire, a highly acidic critique of the hypocrisy of a society that condemns what it doesn't understand, but which, beneath the veneer of respectability, hides an insatiable appetite for the forbidden. The destruction of Brad and Janet's car at the beginning, a symbol of their normalcy and their provincial "American Dream," is the prelude to the total collapse of their preconceived identities, a vivid image of the liberation that awaits them. Rocky Horror's aesthetic is, in this sense, deeply connected to the concept of camp, theorized by Susan Sontag: a sensibility that celebrates excess, artificiality, irony, and the "splendor of falsehood," transforming bad taste into virtue and the grandiose into the ridiculous. It is an operation that manifests through exaggerated costumes, grotesque sets, and a constantly over-the-top tone, inheriting from 1970s glam rock (think David Bowie or Roxy Music) androgyne rebellion and the theatricalization of identity.

A fantastic and intoxicating film where everything seems permitted and where expressiveness finds free rein to soar and fly wildly. Its narrative structure is deliberately fragmented, a patchwork of musical numbers and sketches that irreverently pay homage to B-movies, from Universal monsters to drive-in horror musicals. The Narrator, who serves as a sort of academic and impassive guide, underlines the self-referential and parodic nature of the work, introducing each segment with a lucid and detached irony that amplifies the absurdity of the context.

Many are the songs that contributed to the success of this musical: Time Warp, Sweet Transvestite, Touch-A-Touch-A-Touch-A-Touch Me, Superheroes… And countless are the memorable scenes: the appearance of Dr. Frank-N-Furter with the shot lingering on his 12-inch heel tapping time as he descends in the elevator, only to manifest himself to the bewildered Brad and Janet, dragging them into the frenzy of the rhythm of Sweet Transvestite, a true programmatic manifesto of his transgressive and debauched identity. The birth of Rocky from the machine built for him and Frank-N-Furter's brazen advances towards his newborn creature underline a primordial and uninhibited eroticism, a hymn to creation and its immediate sexual enjoyment. The sexual triangle between Brad, Frank, and Janet realized through highly sensual shadow play is a moment of sublime visual refinement, an erotic ballet that evokes the most intimate nudity through suggestion, projecting the characters' innermost desires onto the castle wall. It is a play of light and shadow that reveals the protagonists' latent urges in an image of powerful allusion. And finally, the final scene in the pool, a cathartic bath to the poignant notes of I’m Coming Home… The "superheroes" of the song's title (Superheroes) are not conventional saviors, but rather the survivors, those returning from an orgy of meaning and senses, who emerge from the chaos transformed, perhaps no less confused, but certainly irrevocably changed. It is a melancholic and yet liberating conclusion, which leaves a bittersweet aftertaste of an experience that has unmasked hypocrisies and revealed a deeper, and perhaps unsettling, truth about human identity and desire. Rocky Horror is not just a film; it is a cultural affirmation, a cry for freedom that continues to resonate, inviting every new generation to dance the Time Warp with abandon and to discover their own, unique, wonderful strangeness.