(MENAFN- The Conversation) I was lucky to encounter The Rocky Horror Picture Show early in life, when my mother tracked the DVD down at our local video store so we could watch it together from the comfort of our apartment.

My initial experience lacked some of the context and traditions which, over the last 50 years, have cemented Rocky Horror's status as the quintessential cult film.

Original 'Rocky Horror Picture Show' film poster. (20th Century Fox/Wikipedia)

Ironically, in my mother's case, introducing her child to Rocky Horror required her to remove it from the very setting which gave the film its social significance in the first place: the movie theatre.

While“cult cinema” remains a somewhat nebulous categorization, scholarship consistently ties the term directly to the social situation of audiences receiving films. For cult cinema studies vanguards like Danny Peary, a movie doesn't achieve cult status by simply inspiring a collective fan base. A cult film is born through ritualistic traditions of audience attendance that must occur in a public, social screening setting like a movie theatre.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show - the Hollywood-funded screen adaptation of Jim Sharman and Richard O'Brien's successful British stage musical - owes its cult success to independent, repertory cinemas.

Second life after box office flop

Considered a box office flop upon its 1975 release, the film soon found its second life as a midnight movie at New York City's Waverly Theatre the following year.

At late night screenings, Rocky Horror drew audiences who were attracted to the film's eclectic use of pastiche and radical depictions of queer sexuality.

Read more: At 50, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is 'imperfectly' good (and queer) as ever

Marking its 50th anniversary this year, the film continues to inspire a loyal following. Costumed fans still flock to local theatres, props in hand, to participate in performed traditions of audience participation, some of which have now been passed down for half a century.

Cult films and independent cinemas

One might argue that Rocky Horror's expansion beyond the raucous, rice-strewn aisles of midnight movie screenings into personal, domestic settings (for example, my childhood living room) signals the precarious existence of both cult cinema and independent theatres.

People at the Waverly Theater, New York City, during a screening of 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show.' (Dori Hartley/Wikimedia Commons), CC BY

Indeed, the two phenomena have become increasingly codependent. On the one hand, the Rocky Horror experience cannot be authentically replicated at home, since the exciting novelty of cult film screenings lies in the somewhat unpredictable nature of public, collective viewing practices.

The survival of Rocky Horror as we've come to know it hinges on the continued existence of independent cinemas, which provide settings for inclusive self expression and queer celebration that corporate cinema chains are less hospitable to.

In turn, cult cinema's ephemeral quality makes it resistant to the allure of private, individualized entertainment, hailed by technological developments like VHS and DVD and of course, most recently, online streaming services.

Movie-viewing changes

Throughout my time as the programmer for a non-profit repertory cinema in Victoria, B.C. in the face of post-pandemic attendance declines and online streaming competitors - not to mention Cineplex's continued monopoly over the Canadian theatrical exhibition landscape - I saw first-hand the economic necessity of screening Rocky Horror.

The Cinecenta in Victoria, B.C., is one of many independent cinemas that traditionally shows Rocky Horror around Halloween. (Amy Anderson), Author provided (no reuse)

When independent cinemas are looking for consistent sources of revenue, cult films like Rocky Horror are top of the list.

In my past cinema experience, the only other films that regularly had comparative popularity are now also considered cult titles: the early-aughts favourite The Room and more recently the Twilight movies.

Human experiences, together

Programming The Rocky Horror Picture Show for five years also revealed for me cult cinema's important relationship to chance. One of the more embarrassing moments of my programming career came when a projectionist unknowingly screened an unappetizingly sepia-toned version of Rocky Horror to a sold-out theatre audience. What remains a mortifying mistake still, I think, captures the essential element of humanness that remains integral to public moviegoing traditions.

Cult cinema exemplifies the adventurous nature of collective viewing. While Rocky Horror screenings traditionally encourage the audience's self-expression, as with all cinema, each showing is a unique occurrence. This reminds us that it's sometimes beneficial to suspend our expectations (colour grading aside) of how a film is meant to be seen.

Cult cinema: a paradox of time

In my doctoral research, I examine how moving images continually influence our lived relationship to time. Cinema is, at its heart, a medium of time, since its signature illusion of lifelike movement is created by displaying a collection of still images (or pixels) in a process of successive duration. Film theorist Mary Ann Doane observes that cinema's unique ties to temporality have profoundly structured many essential aspects of modern human experience.

A jogger runs beneath a marquee referencing a 'Rocky Horror Picture Show' song, during the pandemic, in April 2020, in West Hollywood, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Cult cinema poses an intriguing paradox with regards to time. At cinemas, we typically aspire to give films our undivided attention. We derive meaning - and hopefully, pleasure - through a concentrated and cohesive understanding of what is occurring on the screen in front of us.

Conversely, showings of Rocky Horror and other cult films require different levels of presence and engagement. The average theatrical Rocky Horror viewer's focus is divided dramatically between virtual, onscreen space and the physical environment of the theatre, including the audience's expressions.

Consequently, the spectator's perception vacillates between the film as an unchanging record of time passed (what Doane calls“cinematic time”) and the more contingent, unpredictable nature of“real” time perceived from and within our physical bodies.

The audience's movie

Perhaps the magic of cult cinema is formed where these two temporal frequencies meet: when Rocky Horror's cinematic time occurs in tandem with the delightful unpredictability of a live audience.

This sentiment was maybe best articulated by the actor Barry Bostwick, who played the role of Brad Majors in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, in a documentary interview:

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