Emeline V.
Yelp
GASP! Why such a poor rating? My rating doesn't reflect the quality of the cinema, as much as the experience I had going. I'm not a big cinema fan, I just love to pause my movies to go fetch something to eat and what not. But once a year comes a very special occasion that DEMANDS that I go to the Kino. That is the Rocky Horror Picture show. I have been going religiously every year for Halloween and decided that the tradition should go on, even on the other side of the Atlantic. Museum Lichtspiele likes to drum up its reputation: it is after all the only cinema which has been showing the RHPS for something like 30 years, without interruption, making it where the film is the longest running in the world. It is such an institution that a special room has been created just to project the movie, the decor matches Frank Furter's lab!
Knowing all of this, I braced myself for an evening of debauchery. You see in North America, a RHPS screening gives you license to dress garishly, and be as loud, vulgar and overjoyed as you please. You shout at the screen, throw a lifetime supply of toilet paper and rice and cards, and inundate the whole room.
The first suprise was how cramped the cinema in itself if and how much people would squeeze themselves in, in the middle of the week. Sadly, it turns out the place attracts maybe a more intellectual crowd, and everyone rushed in to see Meryl Streep. I found myself practically alone in Frank's lab, feeling very...vulnerable.
One or two people showed up in costumes, and that was it. Surely not enough to rival the traditional RHPS costume competition. More surprising was that most came with a sheet, of detailled instruction as to what to yell at the screen and when to throw rice. Blasphemy!!! My fellow cinema-goers proceeded to throw the bare minimum of rice, at the very precise moment indicated and ...that was that. I'm used to beeing swamped here!! Same with toilet paper rolls! I was also disappointed in discovering that, as it turns out, this German audience was very polite, and none of the usual swearwords were used to refer to the characters. And this comes from a polite Canadian!
The nail on the coffin was the Time Wrap. Tradition dictates that one should dance the whole way through the song, but perhaps that wasn't orderly enough, and most people just stoop up for the first chorus line. Lame. I am not impressed.
