Repo VS Rocky

By Spookydan

At this point anyone reading this knows that I am a huge fan of Repo! The Genetic Opera. You may also know that I just returned home from the Repo Road Tour where I was helping out with the pre-show and autographs and merch table. I just wanted to comment about what we saw while on tour. At almost every stop, The local Rocky Horror cast members and fans showed up to see what the hell this Repo movie is. In Michigan the Rocky cast was a major part of our evening, so much so that me and co-creator Darren Smith ended up at a house party with them until about 5am after the film! In Phoenix the Rocky Cast performed a Repo song in the Rocky costumes and did a mashup of the two films! And most importantly across the country Rocky fans actually played a part in helping us plan the tour and were involved in the locations and hotels, and organization.

Now the big question… Will Repo replace Rocky?
The answer is a resounding NO!

The creators of Repo never intended it to be a replacement for Rocky and never assumed or intended it to infringe on Rocky’s stomping ground. Now, the similarities do exist, and the fans certainly have a major crossover, but The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a sacred phenomenon that cannot be duplicated. Even the Rocky creators tried to duplicate it with a sequel called Shock Treatment, and it never quite clicked the same way. It’s available on DVD for those of you who are curious.

Throughout the tour I was asking Rocky fans if they thought that Repo would be embraced or shunned by the long time Rocky Horror fan. In almost every instance the people I spoke with told me that they were happy to have Repo come along and liked the idea of something new coming out of the woodwork that appeals to them. The Repo movement is in its infancy and is growing fast, but rest assured Repo is not trying to replace Rocky.

About a year ago, after Repo was done filming and was in the editing stage, Darren Bousman, Terrence Zdunich and I brought some friends to go see Rocky Horror at the Nuart in Santa Monica CA. They did their thing onstage to what looked like a sold out audience. Callbacks, shadowcasts, dancing, singing, devirgin-izing. The biggest surprise to me was how young the audience was, ranging from 13 to 40 years old, a good number of the players were very young! Many of the people in attendance were not even born when the film came out. The callback lines that are shouted throughout the film have been firmly in place for years and have changed and evolved slightly. Over the years the call backs have become a part of the soundtrack to Rocky Horror. Rocky Horror has been released with the Audience Participation track on CD and DVD.

Now Repo is beginning to have a similar effect on audiences, but this time the audience is creating the callbacks live in the theater. During a few of the Repo Road Tour stops there was so much shouting at the screen that you couldn’t even hear what was happening on screen! It was so amazing to see it first hand, listening to the crowd embrace the film and make it their own.

We are getting reports of Repo DVD parties all over the country, Repo army members are befriending each other and spreading the word as a group. Fan films are flooding youtube, Repo shadow casts are holding auditions and forming very solid troupes of performers, there are Repo radio shows, chat rooms, blogspots, fan artwork, and the costumes that fans are creating are nothing short of amazing. All of this, and the movie was only released on a few screens last November. You can now see it for yourself on DVD (if you can find it, its sold out in many markets).

Only time will tell if Repo has as much of a lasting impact as the unstoppable Rocky Horror Picture Show, but if the RepoRoadTour 3 was any indication of what is has become, I feel that we can look forward to much more Repo goodness in the near future.