Vintage Image of the Day: Shock Treatment
Filed under: Comedy, Music & Musicals, Vintage Image of the Day, Remakes and Sequels
Last week, it was Susan Sarandon's birthday so I posted an image of her as Janet Weiss in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And today, it's Jessica Harper's birthday, so it only seems right that I post a photo of the actress as Janet Weiss Majors in the 1981 sequel, Shock Treatment. Harper's early film career is marked by a number of cult favorites: she was one of the schoolgirls in the classic horror film Suspiria and starred in the midnight favorite Phantom of the Paradise. She also appeared in Woody Allen's Russian spoof Love and Death, Allen's Stardust Memories, and Steve Martin's first failed venture into drama, Pennies from Heaven. In recent years she's moved to occasional guest roles on TV shows.
Shock Treatment is a mighty strange little film, set almost entirely in a TV studio with a plot that revolves around television shows and stars. Although Brad and Janet are back, they're played by different actors (Cliff DeYoung and Harper). Actors from Rocky Horror are in the sequel, but they have different roles. In the above photo, you can see Nell Campbell (who played Columbia), Patricia Quinn (who played Magenta), and Richard O'Brien (who played Riff-Raff) all playing alleged medical professionals. The medical aide in the right-hand corner of the photo is Rik Mayall, whom I always remember from The Young Ones although he's had better roles since then. I could go on and on, but the DVD was finally released last month, so you might want to see Shock Treatment for yourself.
[Photo via Shock Treatment Daily, a LiveJournal community that regularly posts screenshots from the film.]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-10-2006 @ 2:29PM
Das Klaun said...
One bit of truly trivial trivia, and one caveat:
First, there is ONE actor in Shock Treatment playing the same character he played in Rocky Horror. Jeremy Newsom plays Ralph Hapschatt, whose wedding Brad and Janet attended at the beginning of RHPS. Everyone else is either playing a different character or played by a different actor.
One caveat for anyone whose ears perk up at the word "sequel." This is NOT a sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The events of that late november evening are not mentioned, there is no Frank N. Furter, no Riff Raff or Magenta, Judge Wright is not the criminologist. It's another story with some of the same characters. As Richard O'Brien said, "it's not a prequel or a sequel. It's an equal."
There were two attempts by O'Brien at a true sequel; in the late 70s he wrote a musical called "Rocky Horror Shows His Heels," showing what happened to the characters after the events of RHPS, culminating in a resurrected Frank N. Furter witnessing Janet give birth to his baby. Many of the songs written for RHSHH were rewritten and reused for Shock Treatment.
More recently, O'Brien wrote a less direct sequel called "Revenge Of The Old Queen." In that one, Frank's mother, the queen of Transylvania, seeks the truth about her son's demise, while FBI agent Steve Majors investigates what could have caused his brother Brad's insanity.
While a little bit of digging online will turn up the ROTOQ script, RHSHH doesn't seem to be available anywhere.
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