The Official Rocky Horror picture show movie novel

by Richard J. Anobile, Jim Sharman, Richard O'Brien

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• Format: Perfect Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 089104180X
• ISBN13: 9780891041801
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: A & W Visual Library
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Great Supplement to the Film

This novel is a great way to learn all the lyrics to the cult film. It has great screen shots and the whole script. It is a must have for anyone who loves rocky horror.

No need to wait for midnight with this "RHPS" photo novel

Edited and adapted by Richard J. Anobile from the screenplay by Jim Sharman and Richard O'Brien, "The Official 'Rocky Horror Picture Show' Movie Novel" allowed fans of the legendary midnight movie to give themselves over to absolute pleasure during the rest of the week in addition to playing the soundtrack album over and over again. In those dark days before videotape and DVD this movie novel was the best way of learning the script and figuring out new things to add to the audience participation element of the midnight madness. Anobile was one of the pioneers in the use of the frame blow-up technique to re-create entire films in book form. I still have my copy of "Why a Duck?" which is how my best friend and I learned the best Marx Brothers routines when we were in high school and devout Marxists. Anobile also did movie novels for "Animal Crackers," "Mork and Mindy," "Battlestar Galactica," and "Alien." He does a good job of using photos and text to capture the rhythm and insanity of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." For example, when we get to "Dammit Janet," he groups pictures of Brad and Janet around one of Magenta and Riff Raff as the "American Gothic" couple so that their counterpoint of "Janet" to his lyrics is laid out appropriately. You can tell song lyrics apart from the dialogue because everything that gets sung appears in boldface. The dialogue is presented in novel form so that characters are exclaiming, answering, agreeing and the like and you can always tell who is saying what (and how). I should also underscore that Anobile plays with the picture frames as well, so that they are not always rectangles: squares, circles, and other shapes are used as well. They are also sound effects added in the campy tradition of "Batman" the television series. This is a campy way of presenting a movie, but remember that this was all we had a quarter-century ago and that this was an extremely campy movie in the first place. An introduction is provided by Sal Piro, President of The National "Rocky Horror Picture Show" Fan Club," which celebrates the fact that for the first time in cinematic history audiences had taken over a film: talking back to the screen, wearing makeup and dressing like the characters, and showing up with props to participate and parallel the film's actions (I never dressed up, but I did bring a bell for when Frank is chasing Janet after dinner is cut short ("What? Meatloaf again?"). So one of the downsides here is that none of the audience participation elements are part of this book, but then that is not the point and there are other books (and audio presentations) that take care of that slight omission.