Record Replay- Rocky Horror Picture Show "The Time Warp"

When I was a kid, I had a good friend named Jim who was a movie buff. He was a year older than me, which made him all of nine to twelve years old at the time. We would go to the theater downtown a catch a flick at least a couple of times a month. I remember seeing the previews for an upcoming horror movie called "The Shining." Just a shot of a pair of elevator doors for about thirty seconds. Then they open and they spill blood into the lobby until it fills up the room and the screen. Coming Soon the screen read. Spooky. Look, I'm still talking about it thirty-four years later.

Jim also got me hooked a new show on the local PBS-TV station called "Sneak Previews." It featured two movie critics who would review movies, have spirited discussions about them and deliver either a Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down. Those critics were Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, who reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune respectively. They really pioneered a style that is often imitated but never quite as good as I remember it. Like that Dom Deluise movie "Fatso" that me and Jim saw at the Arlington Theater. Funny then and now? Not so much.

We lost Gene Siskel in 1999 and Roger Ebert lost his battle with cancer last year. I thought "The Time Warp" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show would be a good way to acknowledge Ebert's birthday on the Brizz Record Bin today. When the movie was released in 1975, Ebert gave it two out of four stars.

Richard O'Brien wrote the story and based the lead role of Frank-N-Furter on Alice Cooper. O'Brien also played the The Igor-like character Riff Raff who sings the male lead in the song.

Continuing the Time Warp...