‘Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror’ Review: An Affectionate, Personal Look at the Cult Movie Phenomenon

In our age of instant nostalgia, a big question for any documentarian or oral historian is how soon to take a look back at a beloved property.

Do it too soon and you’ll have more participants available, but with so little distance or reflection that you might as well be making a promotional EPK.

Do it too late and none of your first-hand sources will be available, so you might as well be making a shoebox diorama.

Watching Linus O’Brien’s Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror, a new documentary launching out of SXSW, my most frequently thought was that — actual quality of the film notwithstanding — it’s an absolute blessing to be getting this examination of the Rocky Horror phenomenon at this particular moment in time.

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Released tied to the 50th anniversary of the Rocky Horror Picture Show film, Strange Journey benefits to no small degree from the presence of O’Brien, son of The Rocky Horror Show creator Richard O’Brien — which means access to archives and memories and presumably easier facilitation of conversations with an astonishing assortment of people associated with the property at every level.

Richard O’Brien is 82; director Jim Sharman is 79; star Tim Curry is 78; Lou Adler, who brought the stage show from London to Los Angeles and then produced the movie, is 91. All are present in the documentary, as are musical director Richard Hartley, costumer Sue Blane, and stars including Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Patricia Quinn and even Peter Hinwood, who played Rocky and hasn’t acted since the ’70s. The time to get all of these people together, on camera, to discuss all things Rocky and share their stories is not infinite and, as a result, fans will find plenty to cherish in Strange Journey.

The opportunity here is so unique and perhaps Linus O’Brien could have done a little bit more with it; I assume that he has hours more stories and recollections, and might have dug even deeper into the fan culture that has turned the property into probably the most successful cult movie ever. But this is a tidy and sincerely admiring overview.

O’Brien is blessed with a solid rise-and-fall-and-rise structure around which to build his story, starting by returning with Richard O’Brien to his New Zealand hometown. I’ve seen at least three or four docs with similar scenes of famous people going back to their old neighborhoods and having sweet interactions with residents who are amazed at the prodigal son’s return, and I love those scenes every time.

From there, Richard walks his son through his early theatrical history and the roots of the original London production, often contributing renditions of the indelible songs on an acoustic guitar. The tales of the collaborative process spawned by an accelerated theatrical run — originally just a pot-sweetener so that Sharman would direct something else for the Royal Court — are charming and freewheeling and made me wish Strange Journey was just a bit less formally bland.

But that’s OK! O’Brien’s mission is not to do a documentary that’s as out-there as its subject matter. He wants to honor something that means a lot to his family and a family of fans. In that respect it’s notable how much more interesting Linus O’Brien’s interactions with Richard are when they’re casually father-son, rather than formally director-subject. There’s a version of Strange Journey that’s maybe 10 percent more personal that probably would have been superior.

That, of course, does not mean that Strange Journey isn’t personal. Because of course it is.

“I always felt that I was living in no man’s land. I never felt that I belonged anywhere,” Richard O’Brien says in the documentary.

Linus talks with his father about his assertion of being “70 percent male and 30 percent female” and the documentary is awash in conversation about what it meant to do a story with a trans protagonist — sorry, but Dr. Frank-N-Furter is the hero here — in the 1970s and what Rocky Horror has meant for decades of fans in terms of queer aesthetics, queer visibility and being a generally jubilant celebration of identity. What looked like it was too “out there” to be successful when the movie first tanked in 1975 has played a not-insignificant role in forming communities and shaping mainstream discourse ever since, as several outside observers discuss in the documentary.

There is, of course, an entirely additional documentary that could be made about what happened to The Rocky Horror Picture Show after the first midnight screening at the Waverly on April 1, 1976, delving more deeply into the rice and toast and devirginizing and shadow casting of it all (and I’m guessing there has been). Linus O’Brien gives that chapter of the story a respectful 20 minutes, with lots of rambunctious footage and a sweet acknowledgment of Sal Piro, one of the earliest and most influential superfans, who died in 2023.

Strange Journey arrives at one of the last moments when its core journey isn’t tinged with melancholy and mortality, with Curry still in strong and enthusiastic form after his 2012 stroke and most of the other principals coming across with sharp, high-personality memories. Several key contributors have passed, but only Meat Loaf gets any real tributes in his absence.

At the end of the documentary, Richard O’Brien reflects on his realization over the years that Rocky Horror hasn’t truly belonged to him for years. It belongs, he says, to the fans, and Strange Journey is a record they’ll be pleased to have.