RHPS Official Spain Fan Club

Barcelona, Spain

A Little History

In October, 1995, at the XXVIII Sitges Fantastic Film Festival, a certain flick was screened, half coincidence, half padding, for which there was a long line two hours prior to the show. Those 590 fans who could enter the cinema were dressed up and even shouted "asshole!" to one of the characters from the movie, among other things. You already know what movie we're talking about? Yes, it was The Rocky Horror Picture Show, RHPS for short.

It was a great success, and in December 1995 RHPS started being screened at the Cine-Teatre de l'Eixample (now Guasch Teatre) in Barcelona. The Rocky Horror plague had invaded the city, and it was too late to control it. In April 1996 The Rocky Horror Show, the musical that inspired the movie, opened at Teatre Arnau. It was then, in that context of horrorite effervescence that our beloved RHPS Official Spain Fan Club was founded. But after almost a year of notable success, the Teatre de l'Eixample performances were cancelled on November 1st, 1996, ironically, on All Souls' Day. The Rocky Horror Picture Show closed its doors to the audience until March 7th, 1998 at the Cinema Mèlies. It lasted until June 13th, 1998.

But the Fan Club didn't die, on the contrary. It carried out lots of activities, published Sonic Transducer, The RHPS Magazine, designed its first website, hended out the oficial badge and the membership card among its... well, members. And above all, it followed Rocky Horror wherever he went, from Barcelona to London, to New York and back to Barcelona. For some time, RHPS was screened at the M�li�s cinemas and afterwards went to Madrid, Valencia and Euskadi, among other places. Maybe, from all that travelling around, poor old Rocky was getting more tired each day and his flame became smaller and smaller.

The Fan Club Now

Ten years after its founding, at the end of 2006, some of us insisted on stoking the fire up. And, well, here we are. Some are still the same, there is some new blood (almost virgins), but we are united by the same feeling: we're Transylvanians, we're creatures of the night, and we can't stand still if we listen to the Time Warp (I've even danced the Time Warp when I heard it in a supermarket in the Costa Brava).

And what is our job nowadays? In the past we went to many home-made, dull and bad organized RHPS screenings, and we don't want it to happen again. Our mission now is to turn RHPS into an even stranger journey, and above all, an experience of absolute pleasure. We do it in different ways:

a) Organizing our own screenings. With the charming, grateful and essential help from the Casablanca cinemas, The Unconventionalists celebrate Rocky Horror's birth and decadence (yes, all together). Every first Saturday of the month, at 10 PM, at the Casablanca Gr�cia cinemas (C/ Girona, 173-175, Barcelona, Spain).

b) Giving information at our website (www.rhps.es). Here you can learn about The Rocky Horror Picture Show, what you have to do at a screening and, in general, how it's done.

c) Supporting logistically and morally the different Spanish screenings. If you own a movie theater or you're preparing a movie festival or season, get in contact with us (info[at]rhps.es) and we'll help you with whatever is in our hands.

d) Periodically publishing our newsletter, so you can be up to date with the news. You can subscribe to it in our website.

e) Apart from our website, we run:

• a blog (rhps-es.blogspot.com), where we post chronicles and images from the performances we attend

• a message board (www.foros.net/RHPSSpain.html) in which we (and you) talk about anything related to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and which you can also use to keep in touch directly with other fans

• a web album with lots of pictures (picasaweb.google.com/fotos.rhps.bcn)

• a web map that lists RHPS Spanish fans and historical and current screening locations (www.communitywalk.com/rhps_espa�a/map/87417)