He's dressed as a court jester in drag, with a red dress and matching hat with condoms dangling from the brim.
In most places David Blunk would stick out.
Not at "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."
With gender-bending attire the norm and enough fishnet stockings to outfit several Motley Crue concerts, Blunk blends into the scenery at the Tropicana Cinemas, which hosts a performance and showing of the film each Saturday at midnight.
"Where else can you do this and no one's going to look at us and think anything about us?" Blunk asks.
There are cast and audience members dressed as the film's characters nerdy Brad; goodie-two-shoes-turned-vamp Janet; muscled monster in gold lame shorts Rocky; deranged transvestite Dr. Frank-N-Furter and audience members with large red "V"s marked on their faces to denote their virgin status with the performance.
At this recent show, for example, more than half the audience were "Rocky Horror Picture Show" virgins, which requires a "virgin sacrifice" by the film's decades-old ritual.
The sacrifice typically consists of a pledge of allegiance to the film, and, depending on the cast, a humiliating request, such as a sex-act simulation.
"I'm almost terrified," said Charlene Naft, 21, minutes before being sacrificed. "I've heard a lot of creepy stories."
She need not have worried. The virgin sacrifice was nothing more than reciting the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" pledge: "I, state your name, pledge allegiance to the lips of 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show.' And to the decadence for which it stands ..." It's colorful, quirky and fun.
And it's part of what keeps the film's fans, such as Blunk, coming back again and again.
At 41, Blunk estimates he's seen the film in the theater more than 1,000 times, and has watched it on video and DVD more than 7,000 times. He has the famous "Rocky Horror" lips symbol tattooed on his back, along with a tattoo of a sign in the film "Enter at Your Own Risk!" Both his garage and one bedroom in his home are dedicated to "Rocky Horror."
"It really is something to get into," he said.
Blunk will be one of hundreds expected to attend the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" convention, "Cirque Du Rockeil," at the Frontier.
The four-day convention, which commemorates the film's 30th anniversary, concludes Sunday. (The Hard Rock Hotel hosted the film's 25th anniversary convention in 2000.)
Among "Cirque Du Rockeil's" highlights: a lingerie bull-riding contest; costume contest -- both movie-accurate and original; and an all-star "Rocky Horror Picture Show" production, featuring cast members from around the nation, at the main theater at Cashman Center, 850 Las Vegas Blvd. North.
"Rocky Horror" merchandise -- dolls, pins, buttons, books, posters, records -- will also be available.
"It's like a 'Star Trek' convention for 'Rocky Horror Picture' people," said Mark Tomaino, producer of "Midnight Insanity," the Los Angeles-based "Rocky Horror Picture Show" cast that is putting the convention together.
"This is a big anniversary."
For more information on "Cirque Du Rockeil," check out the "Midnight Insanity" Web site: www.midnightinsanity- .com/CirqueDuRockeil/.
Shock rock
Megan Tabor was a student at Kent State University in 1979 when a roommate from California convinced her she needed to see "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."
"He couldn't explain it to me," she said. "I was told it was a party and that I just had to go."
Tabor and her boyfriend drove 40 miles north to Cleveland to see the film and were surprised at what they saw: nothing.
No party. No costumes. No one dancing onstage. No lines yelled out to the screen.
"We kept waiting for a party, but there was no party," she said. "But I really loved the movie. "We walked out of the movie and back to the car and said, 'We should see this again.' "
Weeks later when she learned "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" was coming to Kent State, Tabor fashioned a costume of a Transylvanian character from memory.
At the film's showing, she talked to a few others in the crowd who also dressed up as characters from the movie.
After meeting for late-night pancakes at a nearby restaurant, the group decided to dress up as characters from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and act out the film during the movie's showing the following week.
Tabor opted to act out the role of Janet.
"I was painfully shy ... it was something I would never do," she said. "But that's why I loved it. It was the easiest part I ever got. You don't have to really talk, just mime."
The audience loved the group's performance. And so did the theater's manager, who wanted to know if they could perform every week.
"And that's how it started for us," Tabor said.
Eight months later the group learned about another "Rocky Horror Picture Show" performance group in New York, and then a group in San Francisco.
"It was just one of those weird coincidences," she said. "I've never heard of it happening like that again. Normally you go to a show and join the cast, or you go to a show and see it's not playing and create a cast."
Which is what Tabor did when she moved to Las Vegas 15 years ago.
Seeing there was no Las Vegas production, she formed a "Rocky Horror" performance group, which has gone by several names, the latest being Divine Decadence.
"Like many groups we went through many incarnations," Tabor said. "At times it was just me in charge, other times I had an assistant. It always changes.
"I run it like 'M*A*S*H.' When the choppers come in, we get going. The rest of the time we're sipping martinis. We have a couple of Hot Lips running around who want order, but we just keep it really calm and cool."
Divine Decadence isn't the only "Rocky Horror Picture Show" production in Las Vegas. Frankie's Favorite Obsession, named for a line in the movie, splintered from Divine Decadence four years ago over the infamous "creative differences."
The two productions alternate Saturday shows at the Tropicana Cinemas Theater and feature authentic costumes and props.
Katie Greene, the director, producer and co-founder of Frankie's Favorite Obsession, or FFO, as it is known by cast members, said the difference in the two groups is in their approach to the performance.
"Their philosophy is ad-libbing and is not always movie accurate," Greene said. "Our philosophy is that we are movie accurate and ... our performances match the screen."
Tabor, however, said after a decade of "Rocky Horror Picture Show" performances by the group, it's important to shake up the production to keep it fresh for the cast and audience, such as theme nights or even the occasional wet T-shirt contest.
"We get the same people going to the show over and over," she said. "It becomes like 'Cheers.' "
Time warp
"The Rocky Horror Picture Show" was born in 1973 as a musical play, titled "The Rocky Horror Show," written by Richard O'Brien. A fan of campy '50s sci-fi, O'Brien conceived "The Rocky Horror Show" as a spoof of the B movies he watched while growing up with a dose of '60s sexual liberation.
The story involves a sexually repressed couple, Brad and Janet, who stumble across the castle of a transvestite, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, late one stormy night. Frank-N-Furter, who is holding a convention of visitors from the planet Transsexual, uses the occasion to unveil his ultimate creation, a muscular blond man named Rocky Horror. Rocky, however, rejects his creator's advances, so Frank-N-Furter announces he is leaving Earth to return to the galaxy Transylvania.
His assistants, Riff Raff the butler and Magenta the maid, however, have plans to stop him.
Featuring catchy numbers such as "The Time Warp," "Hot Patootie -- Bless My Soul" and "Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me," the musical opened at the Royal Court Theater Upstairs in London for a five-week experimental run with Tim Curry as Frank-N-Furter.
It was successful enough to move to the larger King's Road Theater, where it had a seven-year run and garnered several awards, including Best Musical by the London Evening Standard. While in London, music producer Lou Adler saw "The Rocky Horror Show" and was impressed enough with the production to purchase the play's U.S. rights.
Stage to film
In 1974 "The Rocky Horror Show" opened at the Roxy Theater in Los Angeles for a yearlong run, with Curry reprising his role as Frank-N-Furter and Meatloaf as Eddie, a saxophone-playing biker.
The musical, however, bombed on Broadway in April 1975, and was closed after 49 performances.
Despite the play's failure in New York, Adler and 20th Century Fox teamed to produce a film version of the musical.
Released in September 1975, the movie, retitled "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," played in only a handful of test markets around the country.
Despite a cast that included Curry, Meatloaf, O'Brien as Riff Raff and then-unknowns Susan Sarandon as Janet and Barry Bostwick as Brad, the movie flopped and was quickly shelved without a nationwide theatrical release.
An executive in the promotions department of 20th Century Fox, Tim Deegan, however, believed in the potential for "Rocky Horror" as a cult film. He convinced the management of the Waverly Theater in New York to replace its midnight movie with "Rocky Horror."
On April 1, 1976, "Rocky Horror" made its debut as a midnight movie at a theater packed with loyal fans. And those fans -- and many more -- kept coming back each week.
"There was a buzz about it," said Sal Piro, who saw the film nine months after its midnight run opening. "It attracted the cult people and the gay crowd at first. Then word got out and then it was open season for everyone.
"Everyone came. It was like a giant snowball effect."
With cheap sets, hokey dialogue -- often delivered with pregnant pauses ("antici ... pation") -- "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" was ripe for audience comments.
"People would yell out things one week and think of something to yell out the next week," Piro said. "One person or two people together would yell out a line and then that line became public property. The next week you were all set to yell out your line and the whole audience yells it out."
Ad-libbed comments from theatergoers evolved into audience participation. Later, fans began dressing up as their favorite characters and acting them out onstage in sync with the film, while audiences began incorporating props, such as rice, toast, squirt guns and noisemakers, while watching the movie.
Club sprouts
Seeing the film's increasing number of fans, Piro and some other New York friends founded The Rocky Horror Picture Show Fan Club in 1977.
For $4.95 members received a six-month membership to the fan club, subscription to the fan newsletter "The Transylvanian," membership card and discounts to all fan-club events and on merchandise.
"Three weeks later we had a member in Australia," he said. "It showed to me the power of how it had spread."
Piro, who has been fan club president since its inception, estimates membership today somewhere between 20,000-30,000 fans.
Because of its legions of fans, "Rocky Horror" has gone on to gross $150 million at the box office and sold millions of copies on VHS and DVD.
It is also the longest continually running film in history, with at least one showing every week for nearly three decades.
Not surprisingly, other Hollywood studios have tried to duplicate the success of "Rocky Horror."
A few years ago MGM tried to turn "Showgirls" into a cult-film phenomenon with midnight movie showings in New York and Los Angeles, featuring drag queens who would yell out lines during the movie.
"But you just couldn't take a bad movie and make a cult movie out of it," Piro said. "With the curiosity factor, the movie ran 5-6 weeks, then ran its course."
The same quick demise befell an attempt to turn showings of "The Sound of Music" into midnight costumed singalongs, complete with a bouncing ball on the screen.
"It did well in London and some cities, but again, 6-7 weeks and that was it," he said.
Piro doubts if the cult success of "Rocky Horror" can ever be duplicated.
"(Studios) don't allow things to build anymore. Anything they say is the next 'Rocky Horror,' if it doesn't do the numbers they pull it and put it out on DVD," he said. "For 'Rocky Horror,' it was the right time and right place."
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