Chapter Two: Shock Treatment
By Brett Beach
November 11, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The above line, courtesy of Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson, has not much of anything to do with this week’s column and yet I could hear it running - or more accurately, briskly jogging - through my mind as I contemplated a certain truth. Some Chapter Twos are welcomed like the prodigal son returned; some are regarded as the runt of the litter who nevertheless inspires great affection; and some, such as this week’s selection, are shunned as the bastard child, disowned and driven away to live off twigs and mushrooms in the forest. If the entire world can collectively agree to let it remain “out of sight, out of mind,” so much the better.
I came across an on-line essay this last week that, in response to the efforts of the recent documentary Best Worst Movie to anoint Troll 2 as the worst sequel of all time, counter-offered with Exorcist II: The Heretic to fill that dubious position. This is not a new candidate, and has been kicked around as such since shortly after its 1977 release but the criticisms leveled against it were bilious and set to full mock. I have seen the latter film exactly once, and, as I confessed in one of my earliest columns, I have realized that it behooves me to revisit all the films I set out to write about. I have no doubt I will get it to in the coming year (Troll 2 is another matter). Perhaps I can even make it an early New Year’s resolution?
The belabored point I wish to make is that accepting anybody else’s notion of the “worst” or “best” [fill in the blank] is always a dubious proposition. Should there have been a sequel to The Exorcist? A second sequel? Competing versions of the same prequel? I leave such notions to the bean counters and Renny Harlin’s and Paul Schrader’s respective consciences. It has always been my intention to avoid excessive hyperbole and simply articulate my reactions to the films I choose, adding some context, highlighting a key moment or moments as part of the larger picture. “It’s so easy to laugh, it’s so easy to hate,” as the asexual vegan sage once said. “It takes practice to articulate an even-handed cinematic view,” he might have added.
I live 20 blocks down the street from the Clinton Street Theater, a charming hole in the wall whose grandest claim to fame has been presenting The Rocky Horror Picture Show every Saturday at midnight for the last 1,664 weeks, give or take a week here or there for weather, illness, and the like. This means that fans have been doing The Time Warp and unraveling untold numbers of Scott toilet paper rolls continuously at The Clinton since April 1978, a mere three years after the parody/homage to 1950s science fiction movies, itself spun off from a London stage musical, failed as a first run feature and slowly became reborn as an experience and way of life unto itself.
As a child of six and seven in New Jersey, I remember seeing the poster for Rocky Horror out in the featured display window at the mall multiplex. This confused me to no end (“it’s always here, but only on the weekends at midnight?”) and as I recall, frightened me a little. The black and white poster with the movie title rendered in mock Gothic font and drenched in blood red hues seemed part of something not only adult but alien as well. To this day, I am not sure if I ever really allowed myself to gaze too long or closely at the poster as I hustled on in to see Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn, Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (in 3D!) or some other 1983 post-apocalyptic vision of the moment, or if I refrained, for fear that doing so would be akin to taking a bite of the Biblical apple.
I watched the film for the first time in 1990 upon its 15th anniversary/official VHS debut edition. I finally summoned up the oh-so-considerable cajones 15 years after that, just shy of my 30th birthday, to cast off my virgin shackles at last. I wore a good and slutty outfit (ripped black SLAVE shirt from the local leather and accessories shop), Nair’ed all my chest hair off and remarkably, didn’t get all that abused as we virgins were paraded on stage. It was a proud moment, although I do understand, since it has been five years out from that singular moment, that my virgin status has been reactivated.
I don’t have much in the way to say about Rocky Horror that hasn’t been said already. It’s been around just slightly longer than I have, so I have never known a world without Tim Curry’s naughty wink and sexy, sexy strut. The one thing that I noticed early on in viewing the film and that stays true for me today is how melancholic and sad it actually is. Beginning with the wistful, nostalgic Science Fiction/Double Feature (which, I must note, I have karaoked to great reception) pushing on through to the introspective rocker Rose Tint My World and Frank N’ Furter’s torch ballad I’m Going Home, and ending with Brad, Janet, and Dr. Scott liberated but abandoned, crooning Super Heroes as they blindly crawl through the dirt and muck, it’s easy to see a much darker film on display than the surface satire of B-movie clichés and goody-goody archetypes.
“From the creators of The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is how Shock Treatment was advertised when it was released in the fall of 1981. The onscreen credits identify it as a “Lou Adler/Michael White Production of a new musical by Richard O’Brien.” Both statements serve the usual purpose of such marketing maxims: to attest to a level of quality that will carry over from a previous known quantity and to invoke a past success in an almost totemic attempt to summon forth lightning to strike twice.
Shock Treatment isn’t explicitly a sequel but features much of the supporting cast of Rocky Horror in new roles (with one exception), the returning characters of Brad and Janet (played by different actors), the same small-town setting (Denton, U.S.A, although for reasons discussed below, all filming took place on a soundstage) and a returning writing/producing/directing/composing team. A pointedly satirical viewpoint is once again articulated. Brad and Janet are married so it makes sense that Shock Treatment must take place after Rocky Horror but no mention of that film’s events is ever broached.
From my first and only other viewing of Shock Treatment (on VHS in 2005, not long before my devirginizing and before the sequel’s 25th anniversary DVD debut in 2006), I remembered being pleasantly surprised at how enjoyably eclectic the music was and how engaging the satire of an all-invasive media was. Dear reader, I wish I could share with you that that feeling carried over to this past weekend. Whether it was the giddiness of seeing a cult classic for the first time or a momentary leave-taking from my better judgment, I know not, but my revisit with Shock Treatment resulted in not a little disappointment, boredom, and I will admit, confusion.
It isn’t as if Shock Treatment fails in an attempt to simply replicate Rocky Horror. That would be understandable, from a commercial standpoint, though disappointing. Instead, it aims to be a completely different experience. This is apparent even in the poster, which stands as one of the most unappealing of its era. Against a hideous bright red backdrop is situated the bald and bespectacled visage of O’Brien and beneath his face the tagline, “Trust me, I’m a doctor.” Apparently, the film being from the makers of Rocky Horror is positioned as the real draw for Shock Treatment. The film’s release pattern was a bold, though misguided attempt to play up this inherent cult status, bypassing first-run theaters and debuting strictly as a midnight movie.
Even with many of the same names involved on both sides of the camera, the film is, first and foremost, considerably tamer with its material and received a PG vs. Rocky Horror’s restricted rating. (Though to be fair, the latter feels tame enough in this day and age that it could probably secure a PG-13 if produced today as is.) If Rocky Horror, musically speaking, is a mashup of conventional ‘50s greaser rock n roll with ‘70s gender-bending glam rock, then Shock Treatment has its heart solidly beating to the New Wave of the early ‘80s. Tunes like Bitchin’ in the Kitchen and the title song are catchy and hummable (though all too brief) and feel like they could have been long-misplaced Devo or Missing Persons B-sides. Unfortunately, most of the other featured numbers trade on verbosity instead of riffs and wind up nowhere near as memorable.
However, it isn’t just the songs, taken as a whole, that underwhelm. Curry’s high-wattage charisma and lip-smacking enjoyment of Rocky Horror’s hedonistic proceedings has no equal in Shock Treatment. As the new incarnation of Brad and Janet, Cliff DeYoung and Jessica Harper seem all-too-apparently miscast. DeYoung’s Brad is too wussified and milquetoast to inspire any kind of affection (in an ironic twist, DeYoung was the original choice to play Brad in 1975 as well) and Harper is so glammed-up but dead-eyed, she feels more like an extra from a Duran Duran video circa 1982-1983.
Due to a Screen Actors Guild strike in 1979, the initial decision to shoot on location in the United States was replaced with the idea to film entirely on a sound stage in England and make that artificiality the focus of the film. Shock Treatment prefigures the rise of 24-hour cable channels and all-access webcams with a tale about Denton’s most popular television channel, DTV. An audience of locals gathers in the risers to watch their fellow townspeople become instant celebrities by starring in real-life hospital shows, soap operas and variety hours. The head of the channel, mogul/magnate Farley Flavors (also played by DeYoung) has plans to snatch Janet away from Brad and begin marketing “mental hygiene” to the masses.
While that brief synopsis seems relatively straightforward, Shock Treatment never makes it clear if there is any more to Denton than the populace glimpsed here. If everyone from the town has become part of the spectacle (as in the finale, where they all happily line up to commit themselves to DTV’s “insane asylum”), then to what end is Flavors pursuing his plans? Have Brad and Janet dodged a bullet again, surviving another “mad scientist’s” attempts at enslavement, or are they like the lame boy unable to follow The Pied Piper, left behind from the fun and games. I am willing to wager there is a far angrier version of Shock Treatment than the one released, one that exists perhaps on the cutting room floor or in deleted scenes. Shock Treatment flirts with the larger ideas of a world enthralled to the media apparatus, but settles for an old-fashioned tale of “separated at birth” twins to drag the film along towards a lackluster conclusion.
Director Jim Sharman pushes the claustrophobia of the confined setting for all it’s worth. Instead of long tracking shots to suggest an infinity of hallways and corridors, rooms are rendered as cages, shots are steered through apartment blinds or steel bars and surveillance cameras/television monitors filter much of the action through their harsh lens. In the right hands, this could have led to a tightening of paranoia, bound up in a catchy satirical shell. Instead, it underwhelms and reminds me of nothing so much as the cover of REO Speedwagon’s album from the same year, Hi Infidelity.
In the first scene of Rocky Horror, as Brad launches into Dammit Janet following their mutual friends’ wedding, a giant billboard can be glimpsed behind them in the churchyard. It reads Denton: The Home of Happiness and bears a valentine heart smack dab in the middle. Even though most of that film takes place in Frank’s castle, the idea has been planted about the outside world that Brad and Janet come from, that there might be more tales to tell from the “happy” homes in Denton. After seeing Shock Treatment, I find myself still waiting for those stories.
Next time - I have never seen Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. I will be remedying that oversight forthwith.