This warts-and-all history of Richard O\u2019Brien\u2019s beloved cult classic opens with a card briefly explaining the origins of it all, and a short quote familiar to the many fans of the musical: \u201cIt was great when it all began.\u201d And wasn\u2019t it just? Sane Inside Insanity goes deep into the early days of Rocky, upstairs at the Royal Court theatre, and goes on to detail the evolution of the cult, and how the film came to be, including various pieces of sharp practice and incompetent dealing on the parts of a few different people.<\/p>\n
Constructed from recordings of stage shows, old photographs, archival footage and talking heads, this unofficial documentary is competing with an official version produced by O\u2019Brien\u2019s son (Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror), with both being released to celebrate the film adaptation\u2019s 50th anniversary<\/a>. As well as cast members like Little Nell and Barry Bostwick, the talking heads here include original-stage-version actors, fans, and producers, one of whom really nails why Rocky is such a delight: \u201cRocky was an accident. You can\u2019t try to have an accident.\u201d This gets to the heart of why this particular phenomenon is special and why so many imitators and projects conceived with the intention of being \u201ccult entertainment\u201d are doomed to fail \u2013 including the 2016 reboot\/remake<\/a> for US TV, which is dissected with all the disdain it deserves.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n This is a scrappy, entertaining and detailed look at a piece of work whose success seems inexplicable to anyone who hasn\u2019t fallen under its spell. To its credit, this doc gets into that, too \u2013 the way that Rocky shouldn\u2019t work, really, with one talking head even conceding, of the film: \u201cIt\u2019s a shitty fucking movie.\u201d But for all its clear-eyed analysis, Andreas Zerr\u2019s film is ultimately a celebration of the mind flips, no-good kids and pelvic thrusts that really drive you insane, made for fans, by a fan.<\/p>\n Sane Inside Insanity: The Phenomenon of Rocky Horror is on digital platforms from 25 September<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This warts-and-all history of Richard O\u2019Brien\u2019s beloved cult classic opens with a card briefly explaining the origins of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-159362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}