Shock Treatment (1981)

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The biggest problem with "Shock Treatment" is that at its core, it is a much, much deeper and somewhat darker film than "Rocky Horror". RHPS is more of a flat-out comedy, but "Shock Treatment" is very much a dark comedy. You have to think a little bit to "get" what the movie is pushing to you, and you'll probably have to watch it more than once before it'll all really make sense, and that's not something that most people are willing to do.It also doesn't help the fact that Brad and Janet, while technically still the same characters from RHPS, are played by different people - and that Richard O'Brien, Patricia Quinn, and Little Nell are playing completely different characters. Again, this confuses the heck out of most people, and it generally ruins the movie for them.And that's a shame - because once you get under the surface of this movie, it's really quite ahead of its time. How many movies from the 70's and 80's can you think of that "prophesied" the coming of reality TV as a widely-accepted form of entertainment nearly two decades beforehand? And how likely do you think it would be that a married couple today might be willing to turn to video-administered pop psychology, a studio audience, and some very fake celebrities to try to find the answers to save their troubled marriages? "Shock Treatment" hits very close to home - maybe a little TOO close. I don't think too many people will argue that we live in some seriously dark times, and this movie takes that theme and runs with it.The only major sore spot I had with the film was that I thought the plot thread between Brad and Farley Flavors was a little forced and contrived - but given that Richard O'Brien had to drastically re-write the script because Tim Curry, Barry Bostwick, and Susan Sarandon chose not to take part, he did the best he could with the crew he did have, and I think it could have been much worse. No studio writer today could have written themselves out of such a corner, that's for sure. Plus, it's great fun to see Barrie Humphries hamming it up as Bert Schnick (quite the silly change from his stint as Dame Edna Everage), and a subtle cameo of Rik Mayall before "The Young Ones".And oddly enough, I find the music for "Shock Treatment" to be far more enjoyable and catchy than the tunes from RHPS. I know, I know, how can anyone NOT love "Time Warp", "Sweet Transvestite", etc.? Well, it's not that I hate them...I've just heard them only about a million times apiece, and even with the audience participation, they get stale after awhile. But there's something infectious about the tunes here; every time I hear or read yet another story about some stupid celebrity marriage that's going down the tubes, I get the urge to hum "Bitchin' in the Kitchen". When I think about my small hometown, I start singing "Denton" under my breath. Hearing Brad and Farley verbally slug it out in "Duel Duet" is both sad and hilarious, and though it's very short, I think that Jessica Harper, as Janet, singing "In My Own Way" is one of the most bittersweet situational songs I've ever heard, as she questions her decisions about Brad and their marriage, and vows to try to see things through to the end. If you ever saw "Phantom of the Paradise", you'll be familiar with Jessica's singing voice - the gal can belt out a tune.There are thousands of RHPS fans out there that will avoid this movie like the plague because they think it will taint everything about the original that they hold so dear to their hearts. And that's fine. They are two very, very different films, and "Shock Treatment" is not meant to be a late-night audience participation kind of gig.But if you can see this one with an open mind, I really encourage you to give it a viewing. It's definitely more fun than the individual sum of its parts.

"Shock Treatment" was recommended to me by a friend from work who has an odd fetish with "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," this films supposed prequel. Admittedly I'm not a fan. The songs were catchy enough but the story was bizarre and just plodded along at a lackadaisical pace. At least imitators like "Little Shop of Horrors" (1986) had clear cut stories that weren't just an exercise in corset wearing awkwardness. In fairness, I watched it by myself my sophomore year of college so maybe I wasn't able to latch on to its zeitgeist like many of my friends did. Maybe before I judge it definitively I should go to one of those midnight screenings where people lip-synch, throw things at the screen and tape rubber dildos on willing participants.But "Shock Treatment" can't be subjected to such...treatment. Aside from the actor playing Brad looking like Ben Folds, there is nothing that makes the couple stand out like Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick did. The main villain (also played by Cliff De Young) is blander than a bowl of oatmeal and the songs are right up there with him. It takes a special kind of apathy to start a song singing to a blender and other kitchen appliances. Additionally, you can tell the movie is trying oh so hard to make fun of consumer culture, but it misses its mark entirely like a four-year-old's first archery lesson.And as for the plot, I literally had to look the film up on Wikipedia to try to give a concise plot summary and I just watched it! Essentially its about the town of Denton which has been engulfed by a large television studio. Brad and Janet (Cliff De Young & Jessica Harper) supposedly the same characters from "Rocky Horror", are forced to endure a cavalcade of bizarre musical numbers while trying to keep their troubled marriage from falling apart. This of course involves him being committed and her becoming a network star. Because nothing says "I love you" like a straight jacket and glitter.If anything positive came out of this experience, "Shock Treatment" got me thinking about some of the other underrated musicals I have seen eons ago. Ones that actually make sense and are marginally entertaining like "Everyone Says I Love You" (1996), "The Brave Little Toaster" (1987) and "Man of La Mancha" (1972). Go watch those and leave "Shock Treatment" where it should be; in the gutter.http://theyservepopcorninhell.blogspot.com/

If you want to know what it is pure television you have to watch that sequel of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was done for television and constantly remindS you of the fact.The whole action takes place in the Denton TV studio. It is the story of a television show that changes sponsors. The new sponsor has to diabolize the older sponsor and to push forward a new icon for the new sponsor that creates at first a link with the older one. Hence they diabolize the older sponsor as some kind of emotional misfit and use his wife as the new icon. They will even reveal in the end that the new sponsor is in fact the twin brother of the older one. And there we have a basic simple primitive if not even simplistic theme that goes back to the oldest layers of prehistory, the conflict between two brothers, what's more twin brothers. Better than Abel and Cain. And this wife of the older sponsor will bring sight to the blind anchor man of the show. Isn't that divine and angelic and beautiful? Then it uses language as some kind of mesmerizing fascinating hypnotizing whip to make you get in line with the game. The rhyming patterns are so simple that they seem to be like the drums of some voodoo dance with a lot of Hollywood sauce on top and a simplistic comic flavour underneath. You are the pronged cattle taken up and tied up in that caravan, carnival, canned mental emptiness. And the main catch letter to your ears and eyes is F. F mind you like in the most famous four letter word in English, and yet it is five Fs in one motto. Farley Flavors' Fabulous Fast Foods that becomes in the mouth of some TV announcer: "First and Foremost, Farley Flavors' Fabulous Fast Foods Feed and Fortify Families For a Fabulous Future." From five to thirteen, from the devil to the witch, from the pentacle to the worst omen possible on earth. Be repetitive and you will always reach the bottom of hell and the dire straits or purgatory. But don't expect to find heaven in commercial repetitiveness.But the point is that this show, this film, this TV film, this film about TV and this film at the local TV station does not in the least try to make you think. It is here only to whirl you around into a maelstrom out of which you cannot escape. And don't believe there are good ones and bad ones. There are only old ones and new ones and new ones are neither better nor worse than old ones. They have only one aim which is to make you be a robotic un-thinker, a mechanized non-thinker, a motorized anti-thinker.That's the kind of rapport TV wants to establish with its audience: all-sensorial, hypnotic, non-mental acceptance of the show as good or the same all-sensorial, hypnotic, non-mental rejection of the show as bad. You like or don't like but you sure don't have to think about it. It is all at the level of your kinetic and kinesthetic, kinesiological primary response at the essentially physiological level of your being, what they justly call the "id" in the show, with Freud's picture somewhere lost in that mess.The only link with the Rocky Horror Picture Show is in fact in the flimsy vision of Grant Wood's painting known as American Gothic. But that is a cliché, nothing else, not even a wink.And be sure this TV film will not take any side between the losers of old and the winners of today. They will eventually all go their own ways but with the same convertible and one girl will be replaced by another one in the "First and Foremost, Farley Flavors' Fabulous Fast Foods Feed and Fortify families For a Fabulous Future" advertising venture, and the new one will even be better since she is a gorgeous, sumptuous, splendiferous, glorious and definitely opulent blonde. Television does not require the audience to think but only to feel good and relaxed.Some may say it is a pastiche of a TV show or even of a TV comic thriller. But it is such a good pastiche that we do believe it is the real stuff. It is a perfect imitation of a TV show and as such it is a perfect pastiche, but that does not give it any mental reflective distance. It is meant to carry your adhesion or your rejection but not to make you think in any way. You like or you dislike but to agree or disagree is not even a question.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

While not as popular, or recognized as, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Shock Treatment gives us another look into music genius Richard O'Brien's outlook on life. This time in reality television. Denton is just an allusion to the iron grip that the media holds on everyone's life. Heck, it was like O'Brien had a vision during the actor's strike to rewrite The Brad and Janet Show as Shock Treatment to warn us all about the media and its control on our lives. Someone tell me that the Farley Flavors Fabulous Fast Food logo is not the Nazi Swastika. But still, while not as popular as Rocky, ST still had its crowning moments. The villainous wardrobe change, the ride into the err sunset, and the everyone in town ending up in straight jackets for blindly following Mussolini I mean farley are all there. Despite lack of character development and confusing back story, Shock Treatment will please everyone, and their English teacher.