A few posts ago, I mentioned picking up a bottle of Witch's Brew martini mix from Harry and David during a day trip to Maine and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Last night, we pulled out our cauldron and got our hag on.
Witch’s Brew is a brownish liquid made up of chocolate, orange, and cognac flavors. Ordinarily, none of those flavors are extremely compelling to me in drink form, but slapping a Halloween label on any comestible will make me pour it into my person.
My wife actually nailed its description. It tasted like some concoction you'd mix yourself with whatever spare liquor is laying around on some random night of misspent creativity. Of course, it is alcohol, so it got better with every taste. And then every drink. And by the end of the bottle it was my favorite drink ever. And then this morning I hated it again.
However, before our decision-making abilities became too impaired, we had an important choice to make. We needed a Halloween movie to watch during our private carousing. Now, I have a whole roll call of movies that I like to watch when I'm drinking: Harvey, either Bill and Ted movie, American History X, to name a few. But I don’t really have an established Halloween drinking movie.
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| Like you're under sedaaaation! |
You know this, but Rocky Horror tells the story of a transvestite mad doctor alien named Frank-N-Furter who is sent to this planet to loosen us Earthlings up a bit, but who instead goes decadent with his own personal obsessions. And everybody sings a lot. And Meatloaf lives up to his name.
If ever there was an enigma of cinema for me, it's The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I mean, I get the movie as far as one can, I just don’t understand how it mainstreamed as firmly as it did for as long as it has. Sure, Time Warp is a catchy song and “Anticip… … …ation” is the best one-word quote in all moviedom and, heck, now that I have a wife and kid I can admit to being strangely compelled by Tim Curry’s character (the aforementioned Dr. Frank-N-Furter), but the whole movie somehow averages out to being somehow rather dull and decidedly fringe at the same time.
The movie starts out interesting enough, but then somewhere around the Rocky Horror re-animation scene, just goes downhill until it finally corpse-thuds during the floor show finale. Even Tim Curry’s character stops being interesting at some point…although his voice never does. The whole thing should have stayed a cult film, honestly. Instead, it’s one of the most well-known films in cinema. And I don’t know why.
Of course, it doesn’t matter that I don’t get the reason. It’s here entrenched to the point that every Halloween, some television show will take its turn referencing it. This year, Glee is doing a whole episode based around it. For the rest of us, it’s on Netflix Instant Watch, available to any who want to drink Halloween cordials and laugh at Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick in their underwear.
