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The film stars Barry Bostwick, Susan Sarandon and Tim Curry. Nell Campbell, Patricia Quinn, Peter Hinwood, Jonathan Adams, Charles Gray and O'Brien are featured in supporting roles, and rock singer Meat Loaf makes a brief appearance.
The story begins with a straitlaced couple, Brad Majors (Bostwick) and Janet Weiss (Sarandon) pledging their engagement immediately after serving as attendants at their friends' wedding. At this point a narrator (Gray) appears to provide some exposition of the plot, as he will do throughout the film. The action returns to the young couple: while on their way to pay a visit to their academic mentor, Dr. Everett v. Scott (Adams), they have a flat tire and stop at a remote castle in the woods to use the phone. In the castle, Dr. Frank N. Furter, (Curry) a gender-bending scientist from another planet, is giving a party to celebrate the creation of Rocky Horror (Hinwood), a new strongman playmate. However, the Doctor's former companion, Eddie (Meat Loaf), is forgotten, but not gone, and furthermore the other inhabitants of the castle (Campbell, Quinn, O'Brien) have their own plans for both the Doctor and his creation...
Taken at face value, the film could be considered as ground-breaking for its frank (albeit comical) depiction of subjects such a transvestism, homosexuality, and cannibalism.
Nonetheless, the film is much better known for the cult following which developed as the film began playing at midnight, first at the Waverly Theater in New York City. People began shouting responses to the characters' statements on the screen (including abuse of the characters or actors, vulgar sex jokes, puns, or pop culture references). Casts of fans dress up as the characters and act out the movie in front of the screen. Other audience participation includes dancing the Time Warp, throwing buttered toast, water, toilet paper, and rice at the appropriate points in the movie. What were originally ad lib responses from the audience are now, in some locales, as tightly scripted as any screenplay, with audience members who provide "incorrect" responses angrily shouted down just as if they were being disruptive in a normal movie.
A "sequel" (a few of the characters from Rocky Horror are in the movie, but played by different actors) to the film, called Shock Treatment, was made, but despite its appeal to cult audiences and campy nature, it has not caught on as much as the original.
One theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and another theater in Portland, Oregon have both played the movie weekly since 1978. A cinema in Munich, Germany has been playing the movie every single night since about 1990.