We continue our celebration of the 35th anniversary of the American release of The Rocky Horror Picture Show with a look at the script for the aborted sequel Revenge Of The Old Queen.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show Part 2:
Revenge Of The Old Queen
A First Draft Screen Play Of A Musical For Film
With Book And Lyrics By Richard O’Brien
And Music By Richard Hartley
Undated Draft

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a film phenomenon like no other. A 1975 adaptation of the British rock musical that paid homage to 1950s science-fiction b-movie programmers and the then-current decade’s sex, drugs and rock and roll credo, it had failed in a traditional release only to find a new and continuous life on the midnight movie circuit. As THE decade was coming to a close and the popularity of Rocky Horror showed no signs of abating, studio executives at Twentieth Century Fox would turn to the musical’s creators Richard O’Brien and Richard Hartley for a direct to the big screen follow up. The result was 1981′s Shock Treatment, a film that wasn’t really embraced by Rocky Horror fans at the time.

It would be almost ten years before O’Brien and Hartley would take a second stab at a Rocky Horror Picture Show follow up. Where Shock Treatment followed the further travails of the now married Brad and Janet Majors without really referencing Rocky Horror in a story that was billed “Not a sequel but an equal,” this new attempt made it clear that it was a more direct sequel right from the script’s title page – The Rocky Horror Picture Show Part Two – The Revenge Of The Old Queen.

It has been a decade and a half since the events of that fateful evening chronicled in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. In the eternal night of the planet Transexual in the galaxy of Transylvania, General Riff Raff is found mourning over the coffin of his dead sister Magenta, and his mental disposition has not improved overtime. No one knows it was he who killed her in a fit of jealous rage over an alleged liaison she had with Lord de Lordy, second in line for the Old Queen’s Royal Deck chair after her son Frank N Furter. Magenta’s current deceased status, though, has apparently not put much of a damper on their “relationship.” Riff is summoned before the Great Furter herself, the Old Queen, who commands that he return to Earth and bring back her son Frank so he can assume his rightful place as her heir before she dies. It is apparent that Magenta’s murder isn’t the only one that Riff is hiding.

Meanwhile on Earth, Steve Majors, an agent for the Bureau of Investigation Into UFOs, has made a startling discovery. While reading an old file labeled “The Denton Affair,” he has uncovered the fact that the popular movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show, was based on actual events that happened to his older brother and his fiancee fifteen years ago. He confronts his boss Ray Ammbo with this information, plus the fact that there are still Transylvanians on Earth and that they have at least one safe house, hidden away in Fresno. Ray, whose son Sonny is a teen pop star with the song “The Moon Drenched Shores of Transylvania,” knows all this already, as he is obviously a collaborator with the Transylvanians. But he knows that the safe house has been abandoned for some time, so he lets Steve go and investigate in order to get him out of his hair.

Driving cross-country to Fresno, Steve is contacted by fellow agent Judy Brankmire, with whom he went to Denton High School. Judy has already arrived at the safe house and is waiting for Steve in order to begin their investigation. While waiting, she decides to freshen up with a shower, not knowing that the stall is a disguised transducer, a Transylvanian space and time teleporter. As she is soaping up, Judy is accidentally transported to Transylvania as Riff Raff teleports to Earth. Of course, the running shower soaks Riff. Judy arrives on Transylvania covered only in a bit of bubbles and is met by Lord de Lordy. The two are instantly smitten with each other.

At the Fresno safe house, Riff Raff has been alerted to Steve’s impending arrival by a phone call from the agent. Tricking Steve into believing that he is Judy’s brother George, Riff Raff bundles the agent into the transducer to Alaska. Riff then heads for Denton, only to discover that a housing development, Happy Homes, has been built on the land where the castle once stood. Returning to the local Holiday Inn, where a transducer has been hidden, he encounters Janet Majors, nee Weis, who is so far derelict that neither of them recognizes the other. Riff then teleports to the past.

Stranded at an Alaskan Holiday Inn, Steve takes a stab at figuring out the transducer’s controls, teleporting into Ray Ammbo’s office, joining Ray, Mary Lou, Sonny and the recently arrived Lord de Lordy and Judy, who are on the run from the Old Queen who has accused them of sedition. The group crams themselves into the transducer and teleports to the Denton Holiday Inn shower that Riff just used and then follow him back in time.

Everyone arrives outside the House but before Riff or anyone else can get inside to stop the younger Riff from murdering Frank, a firefight erupts between all the parties. Steve is knocked unconscious in the melee and Riff kills Lord de Lordy and Judy. The House takes off as it did at the end of the first film and the Old Queen’s soldiers are killed. Ray is also killed, but not before revealing that he is actually Sonny’s adoptive father – his real parents are Janet and Frank N Furter, making him next in line for the Transylvanian throne.

The Old Queen dies and Riff Raff pledges his allegiance to the new ruler, Sonny. Riff, Sonny, Janet and Mary Lou head back to the present and Transylvania for Sonny’s coronation. Forgotten, Steve regains consciousness. Heading back towards his childhood home, Steve tries to convince his mother that he is her son from the future. As she calls the cops, Steve shouts a warning that the Transylvanians are infiltrating the country and to “Keep watching the showers!”

The script’s title page states that the document is a “first draft screenplay of a musical for film.” What it should say is that it is a very rough first draft, one that only sketches out its characters and plot in the broadest of strokes. You can see where O’Brien is trying to feel his way through the story, having a rough idea of its form but not having it yet molded in to its final shape. The plot is the barest of bones with no strong narrative thrust outside of Riff Raff trying to cover up his being the murderer of Frank N Furter. Most of the song lyrics seem to be in place with the exception of the untitled one that Sonny sings in his introduction. (O’Brien notes that it goes “something or other like this” right in the script.)

Lots of ideas are hinted at but never get fully developed. For example, Steve Majors discovers that the movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show chronicled events that actually happened to his brother and his fiance at the hands of a sexually libertine extra-terrestrial mad scientist. But the idea never has a life of its own beyond the scene in which it is introduced except for allowing Sonny to interject “asshole” and “slut” when Steve mentions Brad and Janet in his presence later on. But it raises questions whose answers could have lead to some interesting plot lines. How did the movie get made and by whom? Was it secretly put together by Transylvanians and if so, for what purpose? W. D. Richter’s The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai: Across The Eight Dimension used a similar “fictional story as part of a film’s reality” device, but with Orson Welles’ famous “War Of The Worlds” Halloween broadcast being the actual arrival of aliens. However, Buckaroo Banzai scripter Earl Mac Rauch twisted the concept back on itself and had the aliens hypnotizing Welles into saying that his broadcast was a prank to cover up their arrival. But the appearance of a movie called The Rocky Horror Picture Show within the narrative of its sequel hints at many possibilities left unexplored.

Similarly, there are some characters who feel underdeveloped as well. Lord de Lordy seems to exist only to provide a reason for Riff Raff’s pre-film murder of his sister and to be the device to get the Old Queen to come to Earth. Once those two functions are done, author O’Brien, in the guise of his alter ego, promptly kills him off, along with Judy. Ray Ambo’s secretary Mary Lou has even less of a reason for being in the script outside of looking pretty in a short skirt.

Reading Revenge Of The Old Queen, it is hard not to try and interpret many of the choices O’Brien makes as reactions to criticisms of the previous Rocky Horror sequel, Shock Treatment. Where Shock Treatment seemed to distance itself from Rocky Horror in an effort to tell a new story about Brad and Janet, Revenge Of The Old Queen evokes Rocky Horror at every opportunity. By concentrating on Riff and the Transylvanians, it seems as if O’Brien was hoping to evoke the spirit of the early parts of Rocky Horror, specifically Brad and Janet’s arrival at Frank N Furter’s home and the “Time Warp” musical number. There’s some drugs and sex, and even the Transylvanians’ Earthling allies like Ray are hedonists of the first order. The film’s finale even takes place on the grounds of the first film’s phoneless castle while the finale of that film is going on inside!

Curiously, though, O’Brien does toss in a nod or two to Shock Treatment. During Riff Raff s opening soliloquy to his dead sister’s coffin, he exhorts her to come out so “we can play doctors and nurses,” an entreat that recalls the lyric in Shock Treatment‘s title tune that “Playing doctor and nurse can be good for your health.” The present day housing development built on the land formerly occupied by Frank N Furter’s castle is called “Happy Homes.”

It’s hard to completely be able to evaluate the new songs O’Brien has penned for the movie without hearing them performed. Reading the lyrics’ texts reveals that they do the jobs that songs in a musical are supposed to do – reveal characters’ emotions and motivations and move the plot along. They are also distinctly O’Brien’s work containing the internal rhymes, word play and sense of whimsy that can be found in the songs of Rocky Horror and Shock Treatment.

In “I’m A Mother (A Real Mother),” the Old Queen sings of her son Frank “Was ever a mother blessed with such a boy/ Was ever another’s breast pressed to such joy/ My one and only son was more libidinous/ Than any honeybun including Oedipus.” Later, some diner patrons warn us to “Never Let Your Daughter Date An Alien” by singing of “Creeping horror from the eerie depths of time and space/ Heaping horror on the fairer sex of a finite race.” There’s some definite rhythm to the language that is unmistakenly O’Brien’s.

But the biggest question concerning the script – Would Rocky Horror Picture Show fans have liked the movie that it would produce? – is hard to answer. While it certainly contains elements of the first film, there’s no real strong sense of theme or message. Rocky Horror extolled us to “Don’t dream it, be it.” (Even if that philosophy didn’t work out too well in the end for Frank N Furter.) In fact, given Brad’s off-screen fate and Janet’s boozy portrayal onscreen, it feels as if O’Brien is repurposing the end of Rocky Horror Picture Show into more of a cautionary tale. I don’t know how well that would have gone over with fans.

While I am unsure what the ultimate reasons were why this project was abandoned, I am sure that second pass through the script would have firmed it up and focused the story more.

Original Screenplay by Tab Murphy

Draft dated September 10, 1997

If it seems like there is unending parade of cartoon and comic book adaptations making its way to movie screens, just remember that there are hundreds more that never it make it out of development and into active production. Fortunately, one of those projects that never saw the camera is Disney’s attempt at a live action adaptation of the classic 1970’s Japanimation import Star Blazers.

For the uninitiated, Star Blazers is the American retitling of the Japanese animated series Space Cruiser Yamato. Its first season premiered in Japan in 1974 and made its way to the States in 1979. It told the story of a future earth under attack from the evil Gamilon Empire (How do we know they’re evil? Well, ummm, their skin turned from fleshtone to blue about a third of the way through the first season for no apparent reason. That’s got to be evil…).

The Gamilons have just about nuked the hell out of Earth and radioactivity will render our planet lifeless in one year’s time. Things look pretty hopeless until Earth receives an offer of help from the Princess Starsha of planet Iscandar. If the Earth can get a ship to Iscandar, Starsha will give them the Cosmo DNA, a device that will rid Earth of radioactivity and make it habitable again. She also supplies some technology to help the small band of adventurers make the perilous journey. Since most of the Earth’s fleet has been wiped out, the sunken WW2 battleship the Argo (Yamato in the original Japanese version) is retrofitted for spaceflight. The crew, known as the Star Force, are led by the wise and fatherly Captain Avatar and include the impetuous fighter jockey/weapons officer Derek Wildstar, his best friend Mark Venture, hottie nurse Nova, the frequently drunk Dr. Sane (although it wasn’t absolutely stated on the show, it was strongly implied), the engineer Orion, and the annoying (though not as annoying as that ‘bot over on Battle Of The Planets) comedy relief robot IQ-9.

Just ten years old when the show premiered, I thought it was fantastic. Each day, my friends and I would barrel home from school and head to one of the two houses on the block that had cable. Star Blazers was a core part of our afternoon TV diet- along with Speed Racer, Ultraman, The Space Giants and Battle of the Planets (The only American cartoons we would watch were the classic Bugs Bunny and Daffy Ducks from the 40s.). Star Blazers‘s mixture of outer space high adventure with a storyline firmly rooted in the mythic-quest tradition (The ship wasn’t renamed the Argo by accident) made a potent brew for a group of kids who were looking for a daily dose of Star Wars-type adventure.

Tab Murphy had the unenviable task of compressing the show’s first season, the entire “Quest for Iscandar” storyline, from 26 half hour episodes down to an entertaining 2-hour film that remains faithful to the original material. Unfortunately, his Sept. 10, 1997 draft doesn’t manage to do it.

The first half of the script roughly follows the storyline of the series’s first handful of episodes. Faced with annihilation, the Earth receives a visit from a mysterious alien woman with a message of hope and an offer of help. A battleship is retrofitted for spacetravel and crewed by a group of brash, young warriors. But unfortunately, the devil lies in the details, or in this case, the changes that Murphy has made.

Some of these changes are cosmetic name changes. Derek Wildstar is now Derrick Wilder, Nova is now Jo and the Princess Starsha character is now called Nova.

But the most glaring name change is the renaming of the Yamato/Argo to the Arizona. Yes, the same Arizona that was sunk at Pearl Harbor. While some might like the nationalistic imagery of such a change, on a surface level it does subtract from the mythic underpinnings of the story. By changing the ship’s name to the Argo, the American producers of the cartoon created a link to the classic Greek tale of Jason and the Argonauts and the implication that the heroes of many lands are making this journey. Naming the ship to the Arizona subtly refocuses the story from the desperate race by people of many nations to save the planet to the United States saves the world. Again (See Independence Day.). It doesn’t help matters that Star Force headquarters is now located inside Mount Rushmore, parodied in last year’s Team America: World Police.

On a second level, changing the ship’s origin is a huge slap in the face to original series creator Yoshinobu Nishizaki. Nishizaki is reported to be a die-hard, anti-American patriot and the series can be viewed as a rather unsuitable metaphor for the post- World War II American occupation. Throughout the course of the series, the crew of the Yamato, an actual Japanese battleship sunk in the closing days of World war II, come to realize that by trying to totally annihilate the Gamilons, they would be no better than their enemies (Of course, such a culturally entrenched subtext would have been impossible to translate for American audiences, hence the renaming of the ship in the first place.).

The cartoon’s Captain Avatar was missing in action in the script for a proposed live action version of Star Blazers.

But there are also changes that are far less subtle, the most glaring change being the elimination of the Captain Avatar character. Avatar was the weathered and seasoned space captain who served as a mentor figure to the crew of the Argo, developing a fatherly role towards Derek over the course of the show’s first season. This elimination, again, undermines the mythic structure of the story. Avatar was the teacher figure in the tradition of Merlin, Gandalf and Obi-Wan Kenobi. It was his character that helped Derek grow over the first season and to overcome his anger over his brother’s death in combat with the Gamilons. With Avatar’s elimination, Wilder comes off as a brash hotshot who doesn’t really develop any further over the course of the film.

Another change to the character of Wildstar/Wilder, is the addition of a kid sister, Erika. Once she is introduced, you know that it’s only a matter of time before she stows away aboard the Arizona, not that her stowing away carries any major plot significance. She seems to be there just to have a kid aboard.

Unfortunately, the crew of the Arizona doesn’t rate much better in the characterization department. Rather than being the best Earth has to offer, they’re now a group who had mutinied aboard their own vessel two years earlier and have been languishing in the stockade ever since. Why is Wilder forced to use these men as crew? Why wouldn’t the best of Earth’s warriors want to participate in a last desperate gamble to save their planet? I couldn’t really tell you, because the main reason no regular soldiers would volunteer for the Iscandar mission (“I was born on Earth, I’m gonna die on Earth,” states an incidental character referred to as Fat Mechanic) doesn’t make much sense to me. Since we only have about two hours for this story and the rest of the crew are introduced about a third of the way into the movie we don’t even get to find out much about them as characters.

Once the Star Force is on its way to Iscandar, Murphy takes a radical left turn from the source material. Since in the film version, Nova personally delivers the offer of the Cosmo DNA, she now joins the crew for the trip back. With the ship damaged during their escape from Earth, the Arizona makes a stop for supplies at the planet Sega (No doubt named in a triumph of product placement over good taste!). The crew gets the needed supplies, but not without a deadly run-in with the local insectoid population.

Returning to the Arizona, Wilder and company manage to head off a boarding attempt by some Gamilon soldiers. It’s also around this point that Murphy realizes he has to wrap things up fairly quickly. Nova reveals herself to be the half-Gamilon daughter of Leader Desslock, the Gamilon’s commander. She reveals that she is actually taking the Star Force to the planet Gamilon itself to retrieve the Cosmo DNA.

Somehow, the Arizona makes it into the Gamilon system undetected and members of the Star Force are able to infiltrate Desslock’s headquarters and steal the Cosmo DNA. Meanwhile, Derrick has a face-to-face meeting with Desslock while disguised as a Gamilon officer. A race back to Earth ensues, followed by a battle in which Nova sacrifices herself to ensure victory. It is also discovered that someone in Earth’s High Command is a traitor and has been hindering the Star Force from the beginning, though the script makes it pretty obvious who it is from the beginning. A quick coda featuring the activation of the Cosmo DNA and restoration of Earth wrap the story up.

The basic failing of the second half of the script is that with all the set up of the first hour, Murphy is under pressure to reach a speedy conclusion. Thus we have the cheat of never getting to Iscandar and having our heroes fight their way back to Earth. It is all set up and resolution, no complication. As the old saying goes, “It’s not the destination that’s important, it’s the journey.” Also, the mythic structure of the original is shot to pieces. The changed ending also invalidates the entire setup of the film, promising us one thing and than telling us “Just kidding!” There’s a difference between plot twists and just plain bad plotting and this definitely falls into the latter category.

Ultimately, the idea of turning Star Blazers into a live action film may sound fun at first, but the two-hour film format doesn’t contain enough room to do the concept justice. Disney would be better off developing the material as a six to ten hour miniseries for television. And we could end each evening with the cartoon’s chilling closing voiceover, “Can the Star Force do it? Earth has only X days left!”.