"I would like, if I may, to take you...on a strange journey."

In point of fact, The Rocky Horror Picture Show was popular with audiences (but not critics), having been based on the successful musical The Rocky Horror Show. In the early 1970s, while British actor Richard O'Brien was writing the stage show, glam rock was intensely popular, especially in the UK; this was David Bowie's early heyday, with Ziggy Stardust debuting in 1972, one year before The Rocky Horror Show.^1 O'Brien played right into the combination of glam rock, genderfuckery, and gothic sci-fi/horror. (Soylent Green and Westworld also came out in 1973.) So the musical was very well-received by early-70s audiences, running nearly 3000 performances (until 1980) and winning the Evening Standard award for best musical.

When you've got a hit stage musical, what else do you do but make a movie? (Looking at you, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Rent, Grease, Chicago...) So of course they did, with much of the creative team and many of the cast working on the film. Tim Curry (Frank), Pat Quinn (Magenta), Little Nell (Columbia), Sue Blane (costumes), and of course O'Brien himself (Riff-raff) all repeated their work.

Now, this is not to say that everyone loved the musical or the movie. In 1975, when The Rocky Horror Show premiered on Broadway at the Belasco - including Tim Curry - it closed after only 45 shows. A reviewer in Gay Scene (a NYC gay newspaper) described it as "dated and disappointing."^2 It still received Tony and Drama Desk nominations, so to quote Frank-N-Furter..."but it isn't all bad, is it?" As for the movie, Roger Ebert gave it 2.5/4 stars, Newsweek called it "tasteless, plotless, and pointless" ...you get the idea.

The cult following started early, though, at NYC's Waverly Theater. That's the origin of the midnight showing, the audience participation lines, the costumes, the props...all starting in 1976. The first shadowcast was in LA in 1977, just two years after it started. So while it was criticized early, the momentum built, and now we're coming up on the 50th anniversary.

You asked, though, about the queer/trans themes being problematic. ("That's a rather tender subject...") If the stage show or movie had come out 10 years earlier, that would absolutely have been an issue. But the 1970s were post-Summer of Love, post-Stonewall, post-Woodstock...most of the early midnight showings were attended by queer and trans folks who recognized the themes of self-discovery just as much as the lipstick and fishnets. Of course, various forms of queerness were still considered psychiatric disorders at this point (let alone religious abominations), so there were plenty of doctors and priests and so forth who criticized it. But it was still critical in the development of many young queer lives, as Elizabeth Reba Weise wrote in "Bisexuality, Rocky Horror, and Me."^3

In summary, there were definitely people who were opposed to The Rocky Horror Picture Show when it debuted, but not so much because it was queer, more that they just didn't like it (camp isn't for everyone so... "dig it if you can..."). Despite this, it became a midnight phenomenon, and empowered generations of queer people, including myself, to be more out and proud than they would have been otherwise.

^1 - Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music by Philip Auslander, 2006.
^2 - Review by Avery Willard, Gay Scene vol 5 iss 11, Apr 1975, p8.
^3 - In Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out, eds. Hutchins and Ka'ahumanu, 1991.