Melancholy

The topic of the movie Shock Treatment came up in conversation last night after Ennie and I watched the episode of Patrick Willems.

Now this isn’t about Streets of Fire in any way. But it came out roughly in the same era as Shock Treatment. It’s a movie that is awesome and awful at the same time.

The thing with Shock Treatment is that it’s not a good movie — until you watch it maybe half a dozen times. At that point it transforms into an amazing work of art. In case you’re out of the loop, Shock Treatment is written by Richard O’Brien — the same guy who wrote Rocky Horror. It’s kind of a sequel to Rocky, but not really. It has some of the same cast and some of the same characters, but there’s almost no commonality between them.

Here’s the thing: I’ve seen it dozens of times. Maybe hundreds. I was in Cleveland’s Rocky Horror cast, Simply His Servants, for a long long while. Sometimes we would have a showing of Shock Treatment and we would act that out in front of the screen as well. I did this in a couple of conventions as well.

This morning I listened to the sound track while coding away in bed. While listening and coding, I was also watching the movie in my head.

It’s been around a decade since I last played in Rocky. It’s been far longer since I did that with Shock Treatment.

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The melancholy is from looking back at a time that only exists in memory. There are people I acted with that are no longer even here any more. There are cast members of movie who are no longer.

It’s something that was never perfect at the time, but damn, it feels that way looking back at it now. It’s hitting me in the feels.

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Is Shock Treatment a masterpiece? No. But… maybe it is? Maybe just for me.