The Rocki Whore Picture Show (2011)

You would be right to surrender to a despairing groan when confronted with the prospect of a porno remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Partly because it’s been done at least once before, and what a mess that turned out to be; but also because the original was sexually charged enough that a little more flesh really shouldn’t make much difference. It would be like ripping off the bed clothes in that infamous scene in Mick Jagger’s Performance, to see if he and Anita Pallenberg are truly performing, like the scuttlebutt reckons. Sometimes, less is more.

And sometimes, more is even more. Director Brad Armstrong’s The Rocki Whore Picture Show: A Hardcore Parody is close enough to the original movie that it’s sometimes easy to forget it’s a parody; but moves far enough across the XXX spectrum that any lingering questions in your mind are answered… what really went on across the course of that dark and stormy night in a mysterious castle full of strange, perverted beings?Well… a porno shoot for a start. That is what Brad and Janet blunder in on, and the attention to detail is phenomenal. With the cast utilizing costumes that were loaned by the cast of more mainstream Rocky Horror re-enactment companies, and sticking sufficiently to the script for the late-night crowd to still get their participatory rocks off; and with the soundtrack close enough to comfort, the movie really only jars when we start seeing scenes that even imagination had never strayed towards. Janet (the ever-remarkable Jessica Drake) blowing Brad (Rocco Read)? Eddie (Armstrong) creaming Columbia (Alektra Blue)? Enough, already!

The parody parodies itself. Unlike most journeys into these waters, Rocki Whore takes its biggest liberties with the cast names. Frank N Furter becomes Frank N Beans, Riff Raff is Stiff Staff (Randy Spears), Magenta is Vagina (Nikki Hunter)… and Rocky himself is now Rocki herself (Puma Swede), a man-made porn beauty who could have stepped out of another Armstrong production, as one of the living fuck-droids in 2040. Indeed, such a conceptual cross-over could not have been an accident, even if it was a subconscious one, and watching the two movies back to back might even make you wonder which is the truest parody?

But such unexpected bonuses are par for the course in a movie that makes you hunger to watch the original, even as you scramble for more… er, visceral… pleasures to help you through the night. This little beauty, for a start. And with that distraction out of the way, we return to the movie….

Ron Jeremy plays the Doctor Scott character with all the aplomb you could hope for, lascivious lingerie and all, and two new characters, Mona (Kaylani Lei) and Lisa (Annie Cruz), are so well absorbed that you forget they’re not a part of the original story. In fact, the only thing that really stands out as much missed from the original is that classic moment when Riff Raff opens the door, spies the two lover standing out in the rain, and informs them with an oozing lack of concern, “you’re wet.”

Or maybe, under these circumstances, and with Jessica Drake dripping in the doorway, that was just taken for granted.