The Rocky Horror Picture Show does something truly remarkable. It contains a dancing hunchback alien, a crossdressing mad scientist, and a room that is most often entered by motorcycles or wheelchairs crashing through the wall, and yet it manages to be boring.

Well, ultimately. More of it is painful than boring. I confess that it starts well enough, for one who is in the mood for over-the-top camp. I enjoyed myself for about ten minutes, but then it starts getting more and more deviant and less and less funny. By the end, it has launched a mind-numbing assault of nonsense like, thankfully, no other movie that I have ever seen.

The only compliment I can pay the film is really just another criticism. Tim Curry's performance is so wild and thorough that he has brought to life what might be the single most vile, abrasive character in the history of movies. This is not a good thing, unless you are a masochist. Then again, I suppose, it would not surprise me to learn that masochists are this movie's intended audience.

This is not the worst movie ever made, but it just might be the most painful.