Shock Treatment

The Rocky Horror Picture Show again, thinly disguised. The same writers (Richard O'Brien and Richard Hartley), the same director, virtually the same songs. As an exercise in nostalgia, it might work, but who wants to remember the '70s? Harper proves she can sing, O'Brien proves he can't act, and Sharman films inventively, but fringe theatre material does not a big screen musical make. Rocky Horror succeeded in its spot-on sense of style, but here the style, like the whole concept of rock musicals, seems a decade out of date, bypassed by films like Quadrophenia which integrate music and story in a different way.