The Liberation of Dr. Frank-N-Furter

“That was my first awareness that when you cross dress you become powerful. And, for good or bad, you become the most important person in the room. And for a man to forfeit his privilege, because we all commodify masculinity—which in theory means you step down the ladder in power, but by doing so you step up the ladder. It doesn’t make sense. It’s like a paradox. And that’s what makes it so compelling to watch.” —Trixie Mattell in Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror

“God knows it gave me license to forego expectations and embrace my contradictions.” —Tim Curry in Vagabond: A Memoir

Few male stars make their debuts leading with their high heels, but then few bear much resemblance to Tim Curry. In The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Curry plays Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a corset- and stockings-clad mad scientist with a Frankenstein complex who’s also, as he proclaims in song, “a sweet transvestite from Transexual Transylvania.” In The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Transexual is a planet and Transylvania a galaxy but they also describe, respectively, the sexual fluidity and gothic trappings of the film’s world. It’s confusing, but confusion is much of the point.

Dr. Frank-N-Furter was a role Curry knew well, despite never appearing in a film before. A London-based actor who’d earned attention for appearing in Hair, Curry originated the role in the first London production of The Rocky Horror Show in 1973, then became the only original cast member to follow the show to Los Angeles, where it became a hit with the hip crowd. Curry reprised the role for the film adaptation and a run on Broadway that debuted shortly before the film’s release in 1975. The stage version flopped in New York and the movie version flopped worldwide and that would have been the end of it had the film not found a second life as a midnight movie, attracting a cult following that swelled throughout the 1970s and into the ’80s and beyond.