HORROR: AUDIENCE HAS A `ROCKY' TIME AT CAMPUS FILM

Almost everyone at the University Center Ballroom Thursday night to see the early showing of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" came as they were. But no one left that way.

Once you've done "The Time Warp," the song says, "nothing can ever be the same."

"Rocky Horror," perhaps the only audience participation movie in the history of film making, is now in its third decade of entertaining boisterous crowds who know every twitch of Dr. Frank-N-Furter's lips.

Many in the audience gleefully offer up their own dialogue. One member of the audience Thursday was aided by "The Official Rocky Horror Audience Participation Guide."

A cult classic presented as a Halloween season offering by the Student Activity Council, "Rocky Horror" is the story of a hapless couple Brad and Janet unfortunate enough to have a flat tire near the good doctor's Transylvanian castle. It is, of course, a dark and stormy night.

What ensues is an outrageous riot of horror film cliches, transvestism, pansexualism, cannibalism and self-parody set to rock 'n' roll. Good audiences dress as their favorite characters and bring their own riot gear.

Arthur Wilhite, a 1985 graduate of Southeast, brought along "the basic props" rice, confetti, toilet paper, a flashlight and a water spritzer.

Armed with his audience participation guide, the 31-year-old aficionado of the movie became the self-appointed master of ceremonies for the evening. Wilhite shouted out a running commentary and led about 25 members of the audience in an impromptu "Time Warp" dance sequence when the time came.

"Rocky Horror" has become performance art and a janitor's nightmare. A blizzard of rice and confetti flies during the opening wedding scene, all wetted down later when the water spritzers come out during Janet and Brad's rainy walk to the castle.

By the end of the night, the floor and the audience's hair need a good scrubbing.

The University Center banned some of the more esoteric and messy props hot dogs, prunes, syrup, eggs and big water guns and prohibited throwing objects at the screen.

Wilhite, a Southeast graduate, has seen "Rocky Horror" uncounted times since his senior year in high school in Columbia.

Inside all the fun is a message, he says, to be found in the song "Don't dream it be it."

"It's encouraging them to be whatever they can be, to reinvent themselves," Wilhite said. "It says non-conformity is a virtue."

Laura Curtis, a sophomore English major who dressed in white as "a grave person," was witnessing her third "Rocky Horror" but doesn't get any message.

She thinks it has remained popular for so many years "because the movie is so ridiculously silly. You can't take it seriously."