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They came sporting leather corsets, ripped stockings, glittery top hats, kilts and the occasional tuxedo — a horde of unabashed freaks stretching for blocks down Glenwood Avenue at midnight, gathered for a raucous, giddy, semi-naughty vigil.
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For decades, the more adventurous and off-kilter night owls in Raleigh found shelter in the darkness of the Rialto Theater, which has screened the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” more or less continuously since the late 1970s, enough that the longtime projectionist Peri boasts of seeing it “north of 1,000 times.”
So in tribute to the late Tim Curry, the British actor who died Aug. 25 and immortalized the gender-bending Dr. Frank-N-Furter, three generations of devotees flocked back to share memories of flying hot dogs, water pistols and shouting themselves hoarse till 2 a.m.
The marquee out on Glenwood read “Goodnight Sweet Transvestite,” baffling the uninitiated, but the packed house inside included roughly 100 “virgins,” first-timers with the letter V painted on their foreheads.
“My mom and stepdad had their second date here in 1991,” said Courtney Lynne Bush, “and I came for the first time as a senior in high school around 2005 when I was 18, and I’m so blessed to bring my boyfriend here, and he is a Rocky Horror virgin. For us to have this wee little positive cult here in Raleigh is such a sensation — to remember and live on his legacy.”
For those who remain virginal, “Rocky Horror” famously bombed at the box office in 1975 then grew increasingly larger as a campy underground phenomenon, and the plot hardly mattered as much as the alternate, audience-participation script shouted more loudly than the actual dialog.
In wee hours of Saturday, the Rialto projectionist cranked the volume far beyond normal levels but little could be heard beyond what fans were hollering. In keeping with Rialto tradition, a live, costumed cast performed just below the screen, also belting out the lines for, in many cases, somewhere north of the 100th time.
“It feels like a reunion of sorts,” said Mike McLean, who portrayed Eddie in the live cast decades ago. “I see a bunch of people I knew in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Where would you go to have nightlife? Also, if you were a queer kid in the ‘80s and ‘90s, or a queer-questioning kid, where would you go find a place to fly your freak flag? Not many places.”
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Parents brought just-old-enough children to show them how they, too, once were cool.
“It’s Rocky Horror,” said Magda Coughlin, son Sam in tow. “My son is finally 16. We did it as kids. I wanted him to see it before it’s gone.”
“I think it’s a tragedy in this country,” said husband Mark, lamenting the lack of water pistols, “that a man can go see Rocky Horror and not get wet.”
Anyone who experienced Rocky Horror carries at least one story of dizzy misbehavior — an anecdote of uncharacteristic lawlessness they wear like a medal. This columnist, for example, cherishes the high school memory of hitting a far-more-popular, far-more-handsome, far-more-athletic football player square in the chest with a semi-rotten tomato.
“It was real hot dogs flying across the stage,” recalled Martha Gordon, sporting a red derby and recalling her youth of 1979. “Real water guns, water pistols, and the best part was everybody there was either drunk or stoned. About the time the real Oscar Mayer hot dog comes flying through the air and lands and hits the person’s head and everybody wants to start fighting, and then you have to explain, ‘No this is part of it. Just sit down and enjoy.’”
As Rialto managing partner Hayes Permar welcomed the throng of fans, he congratulated the generations who showed up week after week, up all night in service of their outlandish calling. He asked for a head count on how many people would participate in the underwear run, and he promised that, at film’s end, the Rialto would hold a candlelight vigil while singing “I’m Going Home” — Tim Curry’s soaring, operatic solo song.
And as cigarette lighters flickered in the darkness, Curry’s iconic, disembodied, red lipstick lips appeared on-screen, and hundreds shouted the lines they had shouted a hundred times before — a chorus every eccentric knows by heart.
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This story was originally published August 29, 2026 at 11:06 AM.