Shock Treatment: 25Th Anniversary Edition DVD Review

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Title: Shock Treatment: 25^Th Anniversary Edition

Region: One

Genre: Musical

Stars: Jessica Harper, Cliff De Young, Patricia Quinn, Richard O’Brien, Charles Gray, Nell Campbell, Ruby Wax, Barry Humphries, Rik Mayall, and Jeremy Newson

Writers Richard O’Brien and Jim Sharman:

Director: Jim Sharman

Feature length: 92 minutes

Extras: Feature Length Audio Commentary By Shock Treatment Fan Club Presidents Mad Man Mike and Bill Brennan, DTV Presents: A Shockumentary, Lets Rock’ ‘n’ Roll: Shock Treatment’s Super Score Featurette, Original Theatrical Trailer, and International Trailer

Languages: English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and Dolby Surround Sound and Spanish Language Monaural Sound

Subtitles: English Closed Captions and English Subtitles For The Deaf and Hard Of Hearing, and French and Spanish Language Subtitles

Packaging: Amaray Keep Case

Chapter Stops: 32

Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and Dolby Surround Sound, and Monaural Sound

Year of Theatrical Release: 1981/DVD Release: 2006

Theatrical Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox

Home Video Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment

MPAA Rating: PG

Reviewer: Mark A. Rivera

In the mid 1970s Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show, based on his stage musical, was released theatrically and at first failed to attract a mainstream audience. However the film would soon grew to become a legend through midnight screenings that developed into full out interactive experiences long before the age of the home computer became common. The Rocky Horror Picture Show would grow beyond the boundaries of age, race, creed, and sexuality through the fantastic musical numbers, which incurred a best-selling record and the superb and campy performances of then still relatively unknown Actors Tim Curry, Barry Bostwick, Susan Sarandon, and a small, but memorable cameo performance by Meatloaf. The Rocky Horror Picture Show soon became a generational film with brothers and sisters imparting their experiences of going to see a midnight show to their younger siblings. My older brother took me to see it once when I was barely a teenager at a movie theater in Brooklyn and years later I would go to Greenwich Village, Manhattan with friends from high school and college and if there is a place to see and gain the true interactive experience that simply can’t be translated to home video, it was going to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show in the Village. By that time however it was already the late 1980s and as successful as The Rocky Horror Picture Show had become, a follow-up feature film entitled Shock Treatment seemed to fall into cinema obscurity.

For years there were rumors printed in Rocky Horror Picture Show fan magazines about a direct sequel to the film, but nothing like this would ever come to pass. Instead Actor and Writer as well as Song Writer Richard O’Brien along with Writer and Director Jim Sharman took the further surreal adventures of Brad and Janet Majors into a completely different direction that was at once a product of the era in which it was produced and at the same time was way ahead of it’s time in predicting the rise of reality TV, corporate megalomania, and the Huxley like drugging of American citizens with various miracle pills to treat real disorders like depression and anxiety for example, but ignoring the most important part of any road to recovery, which is human contact and support.

Television and computers have insulated us as a society in strange ways. You can go online and look at and or buy virtually anything like ordering a pizza over the telephone and the merger of media technology has made things like e-mail and internet access as much of a necessity in the twenty-first century for Western citizens on both sides of the Atlantic as having a telephone in one’s home became a necessity for our parents’ generation. So while we may not all be living in a giant TV studio in any literal sense, internally it is extremely easy for post baby boomer generations to view their lives as if it were their own reality TV shows. I suspect some now view it as video game too. I’d like to think that with age comes maturity and the realization that everything we watch and most of what we read is essentially a form of drama and thus needs to be looked upon with a certain sense of healthy skepticism. Unfortunately we all too often get too cut up in the drama and forget that like some form of sports entertainment, the action onscreen may be real, but the outcome was predetermined long before the two professional wrestlers entered the ring on a primetime TV show.

You know I think that there are certain films and books that should be required viewing and reading regardless of one’s personal interest and I think that a great way to remind people that much of what they see on TV is created for entertainment value so one will keep returning day in and day out is to make people do an internship on a film set or TV studio or work a few days as a Production Assistant on a music video, commercial or industrial video and maybe even an on location news crew because then it will hit home that the glamour of show business is only skin deep and everyone who works in various capacities in front or behind the screen are human. Perhaps that would help stop people from harassing movie stars and instead start focusing on their own lives? I mean it wouldn’t solve all the problems that occur in life because nothing ever does, but it would at least help some people make the differentiation between what is real and what is not. There’s nothing wrong with entertainment as long as you can differentiate the difference between reality and fantasy.

Shock Treatment should not be taken literally like the giant dome of a studio built around Jim Carrey’s character in The Truman Show and that is actually just as allegorical as Shock Treatment or The Matrix Trilogy. Strip away the music, glossy colors, outrageous characters, and humor from Shock Treatment and it becomes a troublesome cautionary tale with a semi tragic ending for the citizens of “Denton, The Home Of Happiness, USA” who ultimately become little more than seduced inmates in Farley Flavor’s TV studio, which happens to also be something akin to a giant mental hospital where the audience ultimately become inmates, sacrificing their individuality and humanity for Farley Flavors mad plan to enslave humanity through drugs regardless if that drug is television, medications, or both because maybe if they are lucky, they’ll get to appear on TV. They certainly will keep watching it. In the end the only way to beat Flavors is not to participate. Thus the losers who are kicked out of the studio at the end are really the winners because they have escaped the matrix and rediscovered their individuality and humanity.

Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick did not return to reprise their roles from The Rocky Horror Show for various reasons so Cliff De Young plays Brad and Jessica Harper plays Janet in Shock Treatment while Richard O’Brien, Patricia Quinn, “Little Nell” Campbell, and Charles Gray play different characters that do seem to call to mind the characters they played in The Rocky Horror Picture Show as a way of echoing beats from the original film, but carrying the storyline in new directions. Jeremy Newson is the only actor who returns from the first film playing the same character he did back then. Otherwise Shock Treatment is not a sequel so much as it is a separate entity onto itself that just happens to feature characters from another film and definitely does what it can keep entertain the fans of The Rocky Horror Show through visual nods and so forth, but at the same time being accessible to an entirely new audience. You do not have to have seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show to follow and enjoy Shock Treatment.

In the feature length audio commentary with Shock Treatment Fan Club Presidents Mad Man Mike and Bill Brennan, they keep referring to Shock Treatment as a not a sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but an equal. Well while I agree that Shock Treatment is not a sequel or at the very least, the typical sequel to a cult hit gone mainstream, but I’m sorry to say that Shock Treatment is not an equal and to call it so I think misleads viewers who will then still expect something just like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and become disappointed when they see the two films are almost as different as night and day at times. That is perhaps what hurt the film when it was first released in 1981 and is probably the reason why it has never caught on quite the way The Rocky Horror Picture Show exploded into pop culture. I even cringed when I heard some of the talk back interactions at the screen that groups of people are encouraged to do at fan screenings. It just didn’t feel the same and certainly doesn’t work personally for me as a viewer.

The films in many ways are so different that I think Shock Treatment probably benefits now more from being a new DVD release while I still think The Rocky Horror Picture Show works best when seen on the big screen with a large fan audience. Now to be fair to Mad Man Mike and Bill Brennan, I have never seen Shock Treatment on the big screen. I barely remember seeing it on VHS in the 1980s so perhaps if I saw fan screening of Shock Treatment on the big screen the way I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show, I’d feel differently, but in my opinion the experience of seeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show on the big screen seems to be more like a right of passage and I would go on to argue that the film probably relates more to young people than Shock Treatment and perhaps the intended audience of Shock Treatment is an older crowd that is past their teenage years and thus it reaches viewers of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in their twenties, thirties, and maybe older and probably carries more resonance with these age groups as a result. If one film is kind of about rebellion and self-discovery then Shock Treatment is about taking responsibility for one’s life in order to maintain that sense of self and individuality because there are too many forces out there that will gladly take control of your life for you if you let them.

The 25^th Anniversary Edition DVD, which also happens to be the DVD debut of Shock Treatment is bright and colorful with some scenes looking as though they can pop right out of the screen while others purposely are marred with various video noise and grain to remind us of the differences between the world of the people on the stage and the puppet masters behind the scenes, the world of the mass audience stuck day in and out on the bleachers, and the world as it is captured on video circa 1981. Shock Treatment is presented in an anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) aspect ratio with a new English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Soundtrack mix that captures the infectious soundtrack beautifully. The music of Shock Treatment appears to be influenced by very early 80s New Wave much like The Rocky Horror Picture Show has elements of 70s glam-rock in it. An English Dolby Surround Soundtrack and a Spanish Language Monaural Soundtrack are encoded onto the DVD as well as English Closed Captions and English Subtitles For The Deaf and Hard Of Hearing, and French and Spanish Language Subtitles are provided as options too.

I am not sure why, but in the featurettes as well as just about anything outside of the movie and trailers, Richard O’Brien is nowhere to be seen or heard. This is a disappointment considering it is the film’s 25^Th anniversary DVD debut and neither Shock Treatment nor The Rock Horror Picture Show would exist without him and he did participate in the two-disc DVD set Fox released for The Rocky Horror Picture Show a few years ago. Anyone know why he did not participate on this DVD? Two featurettes with new-videotaped interviews with Actor Cliff De Young and Actress Patricia Quinn as well as the filmmakers are included and presented in 16 by 9 widescreen regarding the making of the film (14:53) as well as the music of the film (6:00). The (1.33:1) theatrical trailer (2:36) and a rather tinny sounding international trailer (2:19) wrap up the extra value features on this DVD. The interactive menus feature clips from the film, animated transitions and full motion scene selections too and all are easy to navigate. Within the keep case is a six-page booklet containing film facts, production information and quotes from the film, scene selection information, and the address for the free Shock Treatment fan club. Since some of you are likely to rent the film first before buying it, so here is the information on the fan club for those who are interested, but cannot buy the DVD at this time:

Just send a self-addressed stamped envelope to:

Official Shock Treatment Fan Club
118 Perry Street, #J46
New York, New York 10014

Shock Treatment: 25^Th Anniversary Edition is available on DVD now both separately or within a DVD gift set that contains The Rocky Horror Picture Show too at retailers on and offline courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

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