Hello to all of you. Unconventional conventions. Welcome back to Rocky Talk. It's a Rocky horror podcast that talks about everything and anything Rocky horror. I'm John. Now I'm Aaron and I'm Jacob Aaron. Jacob insert random third person that comes in and out every so often. I have a bit on this show since. No. Back in man. Yeah. Back in the day I think about the last episode that I was almost like episode like 80 or something like that. I was a busy fucking bee and I hate both of you, but now I am back. Oh man. So you're gonna fill us in. We got to do the thing. Let's take a moment. What did you do? Not just this week, John, but like what have you been doing for the last month? I've kind of been off the grid uh for the past like two months or so. I actually had a friend of mine come from out of the country who was staying with us for a little bit and they are now currently back in their home country and I am. Yes, exactly. And I am back in my home country and my schedule has freed up and I'm a person again. It's, I saw you got back to streaming just the other day too. Yeah, I started streaming again regularly last week because I have to, um, well, first off, I've been gone for, you know, 84 years and, uh, also my wallet hurts a little bit and that was my side hustle and I wasn't doing it. So now I got to get back to the hustle so I can fill up the wallet so that I can deplete it again at con. You understand? Oh, I know about depleting money at con. Yeah. You know about depleting money, period. Sweetie. Uh, you're not wrong. You're not wrong. Best of luck at the poker game. Oh, none for me. Thank you. I, I will be losing my money at the bar not to other people in the Rocky community. Ok. So you're not giving me any money is what you're telling me. I don't know. What are you gonna do for it? There's very little that I wouldn't do for $20. Aaron. All right. Well, I guess we all know what I'm doing at Con now. I'm just gonna bring a stack of twenties and see what I can get John to do. That. Sounds like a great time and I'm very excited to see what happens. So, Aaron, what have you been up to? How is con prep going? Uh, well, I need to go to the bank and get a bunch of twenties apparently. Um No, it's been going fucking fantastic. I have been balls deep in our panel. Getting, yeah, getting all ready for that and just trying to get all of my Jack costumes sorted out and learning all of the parts and just, oh, it has been busy, busy, busy. And then on top of that, you know, regular work just like I'm, I'm still uh still writing code every 9 to 5. So uh all of that smashing together, it's been some late, late, late fucking nights. That sounds horrible. Uh You know, I'm here for it. It's always crazy, right? Like con's fucking crazy and then like you get a quick breather and then it's right back into it for, you know, the Halloween season. But uh I love it. It's the best time of year. I hate you. What about you, Jacob? Uh Yeah, I've been getting ready for my God. Uh You know, me and my girlfriend have the room and so we've been, we've been experimenting with butt plugs just so that we can be super duper spicy at con because of course, like something you need to do, you know, you've got to set yourself up for success. So we've been bringing out, you know, the whips, the chains on and on. I could bore you. Um And uh you know, I've been eating a lot of pizza. I hope that's not related. I mean, it absolutely is you know, you got a carbo load ahead of these days where you're like, really, you know, knees deep as you said, Aaron just balls deep in the panel, which is my other name for Andrea. So it is absolutely wild that both of you are actively preparing for Khan. I haven't done a goddamn thing for Khan and I will not be doing a goddamn thing for K I'm just gonna be there, be excruciatingly sexy and that's it. And I don't have to prepare for that. I'm not performing in anything. The only obligation that I have at Khan is to obviously be at the Rocky Talkie panel. Aside from that, I am just going to sit and then everybody is gonna come to me and then everybody is also going to come to me. You're gonna do whatever my $20 says you're gonna do damn right. And I'm gonna make a shit ton of money this week. I'm just going to be paying for $20 copies. That's, that's what it sounds like. John's gonna run to the Dunkin Donuts right downstairs and I'm gonna pay him $20. This sounds great. Yep. I, I am going to be Aaron's personal bitch all weekend and I'm gonna make so much money because he's gonna be trashed the entire time and he's just gonna give me $20 to just do dumb things because I don't have shame and he does not have control over his money. So, I think this is a win-win for all three of us. Aaron's gonna give me money. I'm gonna do things for Aaron and Jacob is gonna have like, four butt plugs in. Yeah. Speaking as someone who's once sold a cigarette to Aaron for about 100 and $50 this sounds like a pretty feasible plan. I see no holes. I'm about to see some holes. Well, you can't see them if they're all plugged up. All right, y'all. So now that that's out of the way, how about we dive into our first segment? Global news. Global News is the first one, right? I haven't been here in like three years, so I'm a little rusty. They do it different over in Vietnam. E they do very different. You wouldn't believe. All right guys, first up in global news, I know we are all in fucking R K O mode right now. And for those of us on the east coast who want to keep the party going after we all depart Providence, we've got some great, great news. Atlantic City's Annual Horror Con and Film Festival will be held next month from September 16th through the 18th at the Showboat Hotel. We don't like the Showboat Hotel for undisclosed reasons. Yeah, I absolutely have every idea what Jacob is talking about. Yeah. Fuck the Showboat Hotel, the fucking Showboat Hotel. This episode of Rocky Talkies sponsored by the Showboat Hotel in Atlantic City, they are not sponsoring shit anymore. Let me tell you so like I loved, loved past tense. The showboat, right? The AC 08 Con was held at the showboat. The 40 7-Eleven Con was held at the showboat. It was a fucking awesome place. It, it was very accommodating. The casino was great. The bars were packed like it was hopping and then we went back there. I don't know what Jacob you were with us like four years ago or something now. And it is a fucking ghost town. They no longer have a casino at the showboat hotel. So it's a big empty space on the casino floor. The bars are closed. There's no restaurants in the hotel anymore. Honestly, the only thing that's great about it, they let you bring your pets. Oh OK. So Meg can go. Uh Yeah. Yeah, you can uh bring your pussy. Yeah. I, I wasn't even aware of what we were talking about and was kind of mystified why I was meant to review this place, but now that I know what we're referencing, I still barely remember it, which I think speaks to how terrible it is. Yeah, I mean, it's cheap. I'll give it that. It's cheap. It's probably not for the horror con so good luck with that. But like it's, it's not bad and I mean, you're still on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. You are like a five minute walk from any of the 20 other casinos that are sitting right there and all of the food and all of the everything. So like it's not a bad, you know, location. It's not a bad venue. It's just that uh the showboat has clearly seen some better days as Aaron mentioned, the casino part is no longer there. So if you're on the main floor, just for the first lobby floor, it is fucking eerie. It's like a goddamn ghost town. There is one strip that is connected to the elevators on the right side and to the left of that is just massive open carpeted space of nothingness with pillars and like some walls and some glass stained windows. But fuck, man, it's like, I, I don't, I don't even know how to explain it like the set of Sesame Street, but it's closed down and it's their off season, but it works. The Sesame Street have an off season. Uh They ain't getting funding, right? I mean, I just HBO picked them up. Right. I think so. Yeah. All right. Well, Big Bird's not homeless yet while ignoring its choice of venue for just a hot second. This convention's goal is to allow die hard sp fans to see amazing horror films in the indie scene and mingle with big names in the horror world, participate in Q and A sessions shot vendors from around the world and watch some of the best indie films around like just this week. New Jersey Horror Con announced that they're going to be hosting a Rocky Horror picture show reunion featuring three of our favorites. Bet you can't guess who. Well, if I was a gambling sort of man and I am. In fact, I'm coming for you fuckers at the R K O strip poker tournament in a couple of days. Uh We've been through this Jacob. It is not strip poker, maybe not the way you play. But if I was a wagering kind of guy, I'd have to throw my money on the queen of vodka, the queen of boobies and the king of my heart, my son and my stars, the light of my life, my bear bear. Wow. Damn buddy. You got it in one. Yep. That's right. Patricia Quinn Nell Campbell and Barry Boss Rick are all going to be headliners at the showboat to meet and greet fans. Probably do some kind of panel conversation and maybe even do some photo op sessions if you don't mind shelling out 50 bucks for a picture. I mean, their involvement in the convention is still yet to be announced, but it is being touted as a whole ass rocky horror reunion. So I'm sure it'll be good. Whatever it is also headlining at this con is Peter Chris from Kiss and Tom Savi from Friday the 13th, Dawn of the Dead and from dusk till dawn, as well as a whole host of other B and C list film stars from horror classics like Fright Night Scream and return to Horror High. And these are still very early days for this convention and a lot of their biggest announcements are still to come including their entire film lineup. So if you're interested in checking them out and maybe stopping by the Rocky reunion yourself, be sure to stay tuned to all the latest announcements at New Jersey horror con dot com. They've also got a Facebook group for fans of the con if you're looking for even more engagement. And as always, we've got that all in for you in our show notes, Ben. How come it's always those three who show up to everything, nothing against Nell Pat or my bear bear. But it would be nice to switch it up every now and again. I mean, Jonathan Adams and Meatloaf are dead, Peter. Hi. It is too busy selling antiques. I mean, everyone's got a fucking excuse. Uh Yeah, I mean, Richard and Susan are just kind of party poopers. They're, they're too good to show up shit like this. I mean, I guess Tim Tim curry shows up virtually to stuff from time to time. But I mean, you understand why occasionally he'll even do in real life cons, but like that's once in a blue moon. Well, speaking of in real life cons, I guess it's time to move on over to some community news first up in community news. We've got even more con talk for you monster mania. Con that is, I don't know what other con that you think that I would be talking about. Yeah, I mean, Monster Mania is like the forefront con of the scene right now. Yeah, it is the con to end all cons Monster Mania Con is Philadelphia's semi annual film and memorabilia convention featuring the biggest names in horror. This season, the convention is going to be hitting three different cities. It'll be Cherry Hill in New Jersey from August 12th to 14th. Hunt, the Valley Maryland from September 30th to October 2nd and Oaks Pennsylvania from November 11th to the 13th. And they've got some great lineups for all the horror nerds out there. The Cherry Hill location is going to feature a scream reunion nineties, Heartthrob's Matthew Lillard Skeet, Ulrich and Jamie Kennedy Nev Campbell was scheduled, but apparently she's filming something and sends her regards and other big names include Ralph Macho from the karate kid because that is a horror movie, Doug Bradley who played Pinhead and Gary Busey, just Gary Busey. But like that's, that makes sense. He's a really scary looking guy. This k is also going to be holding something called the Yogi Memorial Yorkie auction on Sunday afternoon. Um We here at Rocky Talkie have no idea what this event is and we cannot find a single thing about it. We do however know that the image used to advertise. It includes a photo of seven Yorkies. So it's sure to be a frighteningly adorable time. What kind of fucking con is this? I don't know, monster mean, I'm assuming it's like a horror con. But why is Ralph Macho there? Why is Gary Busey there? I get, he's scary. But like, ok, what does this have to do with auctioning off? Your, just? Ok. I mean, everyone knows that as dogs go down in size they go up in Scare Factor, you know, the tinier, the dog, the scarier it is to, to an extent. Yeah, but Yorkies are like disgustingly. They're like the exception to the rule. I would agree. I don't understand what's going on with this con. I, I have no idea. John, are they auctioning off Yorkies? Are they raising money for Yorkies? Will there be Yorkies available for auction winners to pat? I, I really have more and more questions the longer I look at this picture and most excitingly of all, though Monster Mania is going to feature an extra special performance by none other than the Transylvania Nipple production cast on Saturday, August 13th at 11 PM, which is why we're talking about this con. They'll still be writing their post con high. So that show is sure to be a banger of a time, but their performance is a ticketed event and you need to have a special wristband to enter. Keep in mind that wristbands for Saturday are almost sold out. So if you're interested in attending and seeing them, you want to get your tickets sooner rather than later tickets to the Cherry Hill Con range from 25 bucks for a Sunday pass to a whopping 150 $50 for a three day VIP pass that includes a con T shirt and a jump, the line card for early admission into the vendor rooms and celebrity guest events. Can you cut the line to pet the first? That's the real question. Yeah, I, I would hope so. Like in my opinion, they definitely qualify celebrity guests on account of how they are. Well, if you want some smooshy ushi or you just want to learn more about T M P's performance, the spooky guests or the cuddly wooly Yorkies, you can find out all the des on monster Mania's website. We've got that link for you in our show notes. Yeah. If you want to learn a little bit more about the SMS, you can actually D M Me on Instagram at Hi John J O N, I'm dad. Hi John. I'm a dad for the shi. Make sure you include your $20. Yes, of course. All right. Last up in community news Wired recently dropped a new article all about how participants of San Diego Comic Con have been tweaking their costumes this year to include some extremely clever mask to help curb the spread of COVID amongst attendees. As you might expect. Cosplayers are nothing if not creative as all fuck and know exactly. How to an extra costume piece to make it look both intentional and fierce. Yeah, this was pretty cool. The article has got some fabulous ideas for themed face coverings which seems like a topic that might possibly be relevant to some of our community this week. And we thought we'd just briefly run down a couple of our favorites. Yo, Samantha Sherman does not look a day over like 40. She looks great for 52. Damn girl. Let's go. Samantha Sherman. If you're listening to this props who is Samantha Sherman, uh She's the one who's dressed as magenta at the top. It says it right beneath the photo. Uh I personally love the uh the nineties cup mask. Oh right. The like uh the, the vapor wavy kind of, there's a, there's a name for that. Yeah, I forget what it's called. I, I had to download it like eight different times in my career as a graphic designer and I always forget the name of it every time, but that's cute. That's really cute. This is actually really, really annoying and super frustrating because the San Diego Comic Con is, you know, happening uh and they're requiring masks, they're requiring uh vaccinations or a negative COVID test and masks. And it's really, really annoying because Twitch is in the same exact convention hall in October and they literally just released. You don't have to be vaccinated and you don't have to be wearing a mask and they're like, but it's the venue. Who said that and it's like, bitch, no, it's not. They told San Diego Comic Con that they had to do this. Oh, there's another Rocky one in here. Something is sus there. Is it really? Yeah, there's a frank down below that has uh, a, a whole like dummy Rocky in the rap with the gold shorts on the outside of the wraps. This is really funny actually. Oh, actually this person's name is Mark Sherman. Do you think there's any relationship to Samantha Sherman? Possibly t on the Wired article. Um My favorite is without a doubt the black Boba Fett and white Boba Fett. But it's, it's a woman. So Boba Fett si, don't know. They look amazing. God. The, the dude looks like he's in a little Mariachi band. He's got a guitar with the bounty hunter logo from Star Wars. The lady has like a sawed off shotgun looking thing and a Bandelier of like bullets, man. They, they look so fucking good. Oh, and they've got these masks as they wearing the helmets of boba. Nice, nice, nice. Yeah, these are, these are great. This is, I mean, I, I love Cosplay. That's the whole reason I go to, you know, New York Comic Con when it's around is to check out the costumes and, you know, obviously empty my wallet. But like this is, this is pretty cool. I like, I like a lot of these costumes these are great. The cosplay that I'm bringing to, which is not San Diego comic-con. It's just, you know, the same thing does not have a mask, but I'm going to be adding a mask to it because that's icky. Yep. So, what's our favorite here? I mean, I mean, you gotta be the magenta. Right. Yeah. It's got to be the, the Paquin magenta with like the Trixie and lips mask. Like, get it. Like, it's funny because the lips, they pats and pale magenta. No, the, the boba fat is 100% for me. That is the best. I, I'm out of the, I'm fuck the Rocky horror ones. I'm on my own. I'm an island. I mean, I agree. Fuck the Rocky horror ones. But I was just trying to be topical. All right. All right. Topic. You should be in a medicine cabinet. Topical. This dick. I don't know. I tried. All right. Well, I mean, if you two aren't on board with these, like, have you guys seen any Rocky themed, you know, like face mask stuff that, like you're like, oh, I like that. That's clever. No lap scene scene. Yeah. Magenta and Columbia did it before. It was cool. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I, I picked up a couple a, a couple of masks a while back from someone in the community. They did, um, like Brad and Janet themed ones with like the, the material uh from Janet's dress and Brad's like plaid cumber bun thing, I think. Yeah, it's cool. I think that's a fun way to, to tie it in. Talk to me when you get a mask that says asshole and when meg gets a mask that says slut and then wear them out in public. Yeah, maybe not in public. I'll give you $20. See, I don't do shit for $20. And remember face coverings don't have to be masks If you're wearing an outfit that can be paired with some kind of head piece or face shield, that could be really neat too. A as I mentioned, that bowl of that stuff is really crazy. So just a reminder to anyone planning to mask up while in costume, it is totally possible to theme your face accessories to match your body accessories and even make them additive to the costume instead of just feeling like they're like a cumbersome necessity. And if you can't figure it out, you can use my face accessory to match your body accessory. If you know what I mean? Again. D M me on Instagram at Hijo. I'm dad H I J O N I MD ad $20.20 bucks or if you're super hot free. Yeah, like 20 bucks for me. So no, you're see, here's the thing, right? He's a 10 but he'll give me $20 to do whatever he wants. He's still a 10 but he'll still do it. So, yes for you still 20 goddamn it. That's just like, uh, colleges inflate tuition prices and give students a lot of scholarships. But if, to make it seem like you're getting a lot off. But actually the prices are inflated in the first place and if you're a rich student you do not get those, uh, scholarships because they know you're gonna pay everything upfront. So, what's the point in giving you cash? So, Aaron, you're like a, you're like a little rich kid being taken advantage of by a big old college college. Yeah. And as somebody who works in higher education, as somebody who works at a college, that's true. Distracts. That's a really, really good metaphor. Jacob. And you wonder why I dropped out. He makes more money than both Jacob and me combined. Yeah. And with that humiliating comment, who's ready to jack it? All right guys, Arch Ocon is this week and we've got a mind blowing panel lined up for all of you out there, drop into the Hilton Ballroom at noon on Friday and you'll get to see all of our pretty faces in person and like, actually do it. We know that Khan's everyone is like up until like 56 AM, you know, getting blasted out of their mind, whether it's from booze or Ved or their asshole. But trust me, I don't like fucking waking up either. You're gonna want to be there. You will absolutely want to be there because at that panel we're going to reveal all of the secrets behind a never produced Richard o'brien musical from 1987. A musical that nobody has ever fucking heard of. It's going to be ridiculous and to get the ball rolling, I thought he might do a bit of a primer today. Some background information about the man himself. Richard o'brien. He's old, he's bald, he's sexy. It's a me a John Woo Richard o'brien. The other old bald, sexy dude. I don't know why there can't just be two of them us. So let's dig into it. I want to talk about Richard o'brien's collected works and just to be clear, we're gonna limit this to stuff that Richard wrote. He's been in a billion movies, TV, shows, plays appearances, et cetera. But this is specifically things that he actually put pen to paper and wrote. So where do we start then? Did he write anything before Rob? Not really. I mean, he had certainly done some music and he had had a bunch of acting gigs on stage and screen, but Rocky was really the first thing that he had ever written that actually got produced. So let's start there. The Rocky Horror Show comes out in 1973. I'm pretty sure everyone listening has heard it before. It eventually makes its way to the west end to L A to Broad and all over the world. Richard and Jim Sharman always wants to Tinker have a bunch of revisions that sneak their way in throughout the run. And in 74 the film is made releasing in 75 you get more revisions to the stage show slowly bringing it in line with film over the next few decades. But right there after Richard finishes Rocky, he doesn't jump right into shock treatment. Even before he begins on this Rocky sequel. Richard wants to see if he can capture lightning in a bottle on stage for a second time. In 1976 he writes a stage show called T Z. It opened in August at the Royal Court theater in London. That's the same place that Rocky premiered three years earlier. It runs for 38 performances and the cast featured Richard himself, Eugene Delisle, Belinda Sinclair, Paul Nicholas Diane Langton and Warren Clark as the titular T Z. I don't know a single fucking person that you just said, Belinda Sinclair was Janet. I don't know the initial person that you said and T Z is the title of the thing. So the show was produced by Michael White. I also don't know who that is, who had produced the initial stage run of Rocky Horror. Oh, well, maybe I should have just read the script a little bit more. John and Richard had Brian Thompson. I know that name returned to do set designs as well. So as far as the plot for this thing, uh T Z was a futuristic musical that was kind of loosely based on the legend of Tarzan. So there's these two explorers who are visiting the ruined remains of what had once been Los Angeles when they're there. They're captured by a sadistic former pop singer named Bone Idol and his nymphomaniac consort princess LA. They also stumble across the mythical T Z A now grossly overweight former Tarzan esque muscle man who is searching for his Jane in the now overgrown city and you might hear muscle man and go like, oh like Rocky. But in this case, not really, you shouldn't feel too bad though because the critics picked up on this as well. And the comparisons were not very flattering to the new play after its 38 show run, the show essentially disappeared and all you have to do is check out some reviews to see why according to plays and players. It was riddled with quote, false starts and dead ends or at least allowing false starts and dead ends to reveal themselves all over the project. The application of the cast is not enough to hide the emptiness of this project. End quote. So, yeah, it closed and T Z was never revived. Fresh off that disappointment. Richard tried his hand at another stage musical in August of 1978. We got the stage musical disaster again. Richard Hartley signed on for the music and Brian Thompson whipped up some set designs. Richard went back to the Rocky horror people for casting Christopher Malcolm, Pat Quinn and John Adams all signed on to do this show. It was staged at the Institute of Contemporary Arts on London's Mall. The plot this time, a group of B movie actors find themselves stranded in the Bermuda triangle. We see the reactions of the characters as they watch a pair of giant icebergs collide and ignite a killer tsunami that destroys the West Indies and the entire east coast of America. This is Richard's weird take on the disaster movie spoof. The characters are very self aware, often referring back to the solutions their fictional characters used in the shows they had been in that contained other disasters, disaster bombed just like T Z did. And if there was any doubt, a review in The Guardian from shortly after its release concludes with, you may be tempted to think that this being the IC A, you were witnessing the first ripple of a tidal wave of art Banel. In fact, of course, it's just o'brien taking the dick. John doesn't know how to pronounce banal. No, I don't. I also did not know that there was another show called Disaster because the there was like that musical like, oh, yeah, what was it? A couple of years ago? It had like Roger Bart Carrie Butler, Adam Pascal and it did really poorly. So maybe we shouldn't be calling stage shows Disaster. Yeah, we should just call them something else. I was gonna make a fat ham joke in there. But it wouldn't have been, uh, rest in peace. Fat ham. It closed yesterday. I heard and I went, I didn't get a chance to see it. I was sad. So, with two stage shows written, produced and bombed with critics, Richard turns back to Rocky Horror for the remainder of the seventies because he needs money. You know, he pens the unproduced sequel. Rocky horror shows his heels in 78 this is like the straight sequel like Frank is back from the dead. Janet is pregnant and Frank turns the town of Denton into a swarm of raging transsexuals. Brad and Doctor Scott were turned gay and Rocky is back from the dead. Too unfortunate. Frank's body begins to decompose and Frank and company are overwhelmed by the townspeople. We see Janet with her new baby being whisked away by Riff and Magenta at the film's conclusion. So this story contains the initial versions of the songs, Little black dress breaking out looking for trade and you're looking at an ace. At that point, it's still titled, I Wanna Be An Ace. Uh All of these would later be repurposed for shock treatment in the studio. Despite Richard delivering an honest to God, Rocky horror sequel were not sold on the script. They had problems with the music. The script was lackluster and they basically didn't like the artsy direction that Jim Sherman had taken with Rocky if it was to be made it needed a lot of Polish. The script review for this thing from the studio was leaked at some point. Uh with the actual date on the review coming from a Fox executive in June of 1979 the script itself, uh the only copies I know of are held in private hands. Larry has it. Right. Yeah, I think it was part of the Michael White collection. Uh There was plans to like reveal it to the community but due to let's call it friction from Richard o'brien's people. It was never given a wider release and nobody's really seen it on top of all of the issues with the story, Tim Curry refused to participate in the sequel and Jim Sharman was not too keen on the idea either like he felt like it was going to be blatant retreading over old ground. The project was mothballed with Richard taking a few of the better bits and songs and beginning work on another story. The Brad and Janet show in 1981 Richard told Fan Goria magazine that they had gone through five drafts to eventually settle on shock treatment. An actor's strike resulted in further shuffling where the film was ultimately set in the TV studio instead of Denton proper, almost entirely out of logistical problems, not creative choices, but the early eighties were not particularly kind to movie musicals following the kind of renaissance era of the late seventies that produced things like Jesus Christ superstar and Tommy and of course, Rocky Horror, uh the producers in Hollywood just kind of started throwing everything against the wall, some of it stuck stuff like Saturday night fever or grease. Uh But others did not really fare so well. The Beatles Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band. That was a fucking catastrophe. Uh But it was nothing compared to the shit show that was Xanadu and yeah, shock treatment kind of entered into this musical hellscape, not really sure of what it was or what it wanted to be. So they tried their traditional release and it flopped, they tried it as a midnight movie. It flopped. Segments of the Rocky community tried to latch onto it, even shadow casting the film, but the efforts were forced and shows lasted only like a few weeks over the decades. I think shock treatment has found its home as the beloved special little brother to Rocky. We love him, but goddamn he is confusing and hyperactive in 2014. However, shock treatment would have another go at breaking into the social consciousness. There was a stage adaptation by Tom Crowley and Richard o'brien seemed extremely enthused. He said, quote, shock treatment has been waiting patiently in the wings for a stage premiere since the film was released in 1981. Just as Rocky began life upstairs at the royal court. It seems a perfect fit for shock treatment. The show opened in April of 2015 it was originally scheduled to run through May. But public demand extended its run through June and the reviews were like, generally positive. That works. Though some critics ironically observed that the prescient notion of reality television taking over the American masses now felt like kind of dated, which I mean, sure, it's 2015. Uh the show closed without much fanfare, but it was a nice end cap and a great example of shock treatment. Stepping out of the long shadow cast by Rocky Horror. It's older and far kinkier brother. But jumping back back to the early eighties with Chuck treatment considered a sloppy meth on release, Richard turned his attention back to the stage. In 82 he wrote the Stripper, a musical adaptation of a 1961 Carter Brown novel. It's a who done it. Noir story of a young woman's demise. The body world of a good old fashioned gangster flick and a lot of innuendo, she Richard turned once again to Richard Hartley to flesh out the music. And Brian Thompson signed on to direct shocker though apparently there was a lot of tension between o'brien and Thompson this time around. He felt the script was too long and it needed substantial editing. The cast was stumbling over problematic dialogue during rehearsals and Thompson begged o'brien to let him make changes. O'brien refused and apparently the argument was so heated that Thompson effectively had to ban Richard from the theater crazy. So despite this. Richard o'brien still regards the stripper as one of his finest pieces of work. The production put on by the Sydney Theater Company received overwhelmingly positive reviews. It was funny, sexy and a great musical. But for one reason or another, it never gained significant traction. Like personally, I think it's one of Richard's most underrated and completely under appreciated works. I, I think it's great following the stripper in 1983 Richard o'brien and Richard Hartley again collaborated to create some songs for the film. The return of Captain Invincible. They were not involved directly in the film, script or production, but the songs are definitely the standout pieces in this like really weird campy film. Yeah, we talked about it a few weeks ago. Uh Captain Invincible just got a new blu-ray release. Go check out uh our review of that if you're interested in just learning a little bit more about this really, really weird movie. So from here we get into a period in the mid eighties where Richard kind of seems to be a little lost creatively. He writes and puts on a stage show named Top People. It's not a musical and centers around the gossip column fashion scene. It, it centers specifically around an American Jewish film producer who has a penchant for dressing in a Nazi S s uniform. The producer, Coerces, the show's lead to assassinate the president of some third world Banana Republic and simultaneously, there's a place and to kill an international arms dealer with killer bees. If you couldn't tell it was bad. A scathing review in London's The Guardian from October of 1984 says it better than we ever could. Even the worst shows usually have some redeeming feature. This has none. The acting is bad. The sets are ugly. The direction is hopeless. I can take a show that aspires and fails. This one aims low and misses. What angers me is that one sees many shows around town that deserve a wider audience. Yet a lump of Steven like this gets deposited in the west end. I should dearly like to know why. Holy shit, dude. He literally took a shit on it. Yeah, it was not good and Richard seemed to be a bit creatively stifled after this series of flops and Misses and poops. So in 1985 he apparently wrote a book titled, oh, no, not Faust again. So the community knows very little about this one. It doesn't seem like it was intended to be on stage or a film script. It's just a witty little book that Richard apparently put together, but he never found a publisher. And again, the only copies of this that supposedly exist are held in private collections. And then in 1987 what's going on? Uh We're skipping that one. That's the topic for our con panel, right? OK. So in 1987 Richard wrote a film musical that quote rock, rock rocks. And that's all we're gonna say about that. You'll have to come to R K O con at noon on Friday to hear all the juicy details. Or you could just like, wait a week or two and we'll drop the whole thing as a full podcast episode. But come on. Uh So, uh after that, whatever that may be also in 1987 Richard alluded to another film he had been working on named to Rose Bud. I imagine the title is evocative of the film. But again, we know very little about this piece as well. Richard mentioned in a 1987 newspaper interview that he was looking for financing for the film in L A but nothing was heard about it since I imagine in part due to the name at two Rosebud, right? This is around the time in the late eighties where Richard seems to throw up his hands and kind of just goes back to Rocky Horror because that's where the money is. This might have been on the back burner for like the better part of a few years. But discussion really ramps up in 1988 around the revenge of the old queen. And I mean, this is a, a whole story for another episode, but sufficient to say it's far closer to a literal Rocky horror sequel than shock treatment ever was. The community has access to the full script for this and a demo copy of at least one of the songs that was supposed to be included. It's a weird one. I, I find it unlikely that this movie would have seen much success, at least in the form that we have access to it today. But the community really thought this thing was coming and I think Richard did too. There was a ton of buzz around it but it died out into nothing. The early nineties were like similarly uneventful again. Rumors surfaced of another Rocky horror sequel script this time with Frank as a surgeon in a New York City. Penthouse M T V's Lauder erroneously reported that Marilyn Manson was actually in discussion to play the icon Franken Furter, but that too led nowhere. But while Richard wasn't shopping around his latest ideas, he was certainly getting work. He hosted the Crystal Maze for three seasons in the early nineties. It was regularly channel four's highest rated program reaching a peak of seven million viewers for the 1993 Christmas special, but just because he was on TV. Don't think that Richard wasn't really working on anything in 1995. He performed a small number of shows as the devilish charmer, Mephistopheles Smith in a musical comedy show that he wrote titled Disgracefully Yours. And a decade later, it was adapted into a full musical simply titled Mephistopheles Smith. There's not much of a plot. It's more of a sermon for the devil punctuated by like appropriately wicked songs. However, the later productions of the show received very lukewarm reviews. They said that the lead actors were just unable to convincingly hold together the evangelist dialogue that is supposed to weave the show together as the nineties drew to a close. There were again, rumors that Richard was working on a new Rocky Horror musical this time for this stage, Rocky Horror, the second coming. Oh Yeah, never made it out of conceptualization stages. Very little is known about the show and it seems that any to expand on the Rocky Horror story was quickly dashed by the lackluster performance of the Broadway revival and its tumultuous closing after September 11th. And it wasn't until 2008 that we got another Richard written show. But this time it was for radio radio in 2000 and eight. Yeah. Very topical. Well, ok, kind of it was an audio pantomime. Uh and it was called Pig In Boots. It's this kind of like fairy tale Christmas Panto. Uh As far as I can tell, it was only ever performed once, maybe twice. There are recordings of it online, but frankly, uh it's not very good. There's a few funny moments and some of the dialogue has that like Richard flair to it. The puns the intentionally, you know, mispronounced words to make things right. It's got that. Uh but as a whole, it is an entirely forgettable piece and that's really the last thing that we've got that was produced in 2015. Richard commented in a BBC interview that he was working on a musical titled Alive On Arrival. And he described it as quote, a little musical about a girl that goes to the land of the dead and she's still alive. No idea whether it's got any legs on it, but I'm enjoying fiddling around with some words. So he basically wrote Coco. Uh Yeah. Sounds a lot like he wrote Coco. You heard it here? First Folks, Richard o'brien wrote Coco. Well, he wrote the bastardized foreign B movie version and, and if anything ever came of it, I mean, we haven't seen anything. It seems like Richard has slowly drifted into, you know, enjoying his twilight years content in the smash hit. That was rocky horror, but never really being able to quite step outside of its shadow. I hope you guys enjoyed this brief rundown of Richard's collected works as we were researching and digging into the film that he wrote in 1987. The subject of our panel, we did a ton of digging into all of these other o'brien classics. And I've got to say there are actually quite a few gems in there. If you haven't listened to the stripper, go do it now, uh Start with the song, Man of Steel. It's fucking hilarious. We're gonna put a quick little clip in here. I love this song. I want to follow your tips. Your your, on my nerves with your wonderful curves. It dazz on my eyes with electric to, to be more specific. I don't know which part of you make me feel like a man. Me, you give me a hard on. Yeah. Something tells me that Richard o'brien was never supposed to be famous. Maybe, maybe that's a hot take for a rocky horror podcast. But I, you know, I've always heard it, you know, by everyone that talks about it as being like Richard o'brien does his best work when there are other people around him doing their best work, right? Like between Jim Sherman and Richard Hartley and Brian Thompson and Sue blank. You know, the people that he consistently went back to and worked with over and over, he produced some good stuff, but it's when like he doesn't have that voice sitting there going, you know, Richard, maybe we don't need a song about having an erection that he seems to produce some really weird stuff. Does he have a song about having an erection? You should go listen to what we just listened to. I'm planning on it. I'm planning on it. All right. Well, spoiler, it's about that. And on that note, that's our show, I guess. As always, we'd like to thank our editor Aaron from Tennessee, dude. We appreciate all of your work. If anyone has a question that they'd like us to answer on air for our, ask a question segment or some community news that they'd like us to talk about or even a cool story to share with the community. We would love to include it on our show. Just go to our website Rocky talk you podcast dot com and fill out our contact form to tell us all about it. And if you want even more Rocky talkie content, check us out on Facebook, youtube, Instagram and tiktok all at Rocky Talkie podcast. If you're enjoying Rocky Talkie, please help us out by rating, reviewing and subscribing to the show. It makes the podcast more accessible to new listeners which really helps us grow the show and my penis. How has it been 85 episodes? And I haven't made that joke. I'm amazed you could keep it in your pants that long and to all our listeners who are going up to Providence this week, we would absolutely love to see you at our con panel. It's going to be on Friday at noon in the ballroom. We've all worked really hard to come up with an extremely spicy story to share with you, especially Aaron. Yeah, I was about to say I haven't done shit. Mostly, mostly Aaron. Yeah. It's, it's all, it's all Aaron. Yeah, I haven't done shit. I'm literally like everyone knows why I'm here. I'm hot. Yeah, everyone knows why I'm here. Um Do we? I actually, no, I don't, I Yeah, I'm not sure. Um I, I was told there would be cake and I guess that's part of it. Um yeah, I was told I was told the same thing uh but Meg just tells me I'm pretty every so often so that keeps me around you. You're very pretty John. Thank you so much, Jacob. You are too. Not gonna lie. Yeah, I really like your uh like your cream colored glasses. You don't really see those that much and I, I really, I can make you wearing them. I don't get it. And so many people these glasses have gotten like twentyish comments now. Like I don't, I, I just picked them because I like white and I, and I thought like, oh you know, cars come in white so glasses can come in white too. Fucking man glasses, bro. Yeah, I have a pair of white frames too and everyone's always like, oh my God, I love your glasses. I'm like, why? And they're like because they're white and I'm, and then you go home thinking about it, you know. Yes. Yes, you are both racist. Yeah. But that seems kind of irrelevant to the classes. Both Erin and Meg have to get white glasses. So all four of us can be wearing white glasses during our Con panel. That's disgusting and not gonna happen. I think you would look cute with white glasses. We know you're going to love it. This freaky little thing we got going down at con and we can't wait to share it with you all of you. Yeah, I know that Aaron was like we would absolutely love to see you. We really hope you can make it. You're going like you're going to be there. So like we we were gonna love to have you there but you're going to be there. You have no excuse you don't. What the fuck? I will personally send John to your room to wake you up at 11 30 AM to get your ass down to the ballroom for 20 bucks. Absolutely. We can't wait to see you there. 20 bucks a floor. John, go knock on every door. Let's go. We'll see you guys soon. Happy R K O R O R O K. Bye bye to October 2nd and Oaks. I always, I never know what the P A thing is that Pennsylvania, is that what P A is fucking? I always get tripped up on that. Fuck me with a stick.