Fans in fishnets and corsets lined up for blocks down Glenwood Avenue at midnight, waiting to pack the Rialto Theatre's 432 seats one more time for Dr. Frank-N-Furter. The sold-out screening of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” on August 28 doubled as a memorial for actor Tim Curry, who died three days earlier at age 80 at his home in Los Angeles. By the time the film ended around 2 a.m., the marquee outside read “goodnight sweet transvestite,” and the crowd spilled into the street holding candles.
Curry's death on August 25 sent shockwaves through the cult-film community, and Raleigh's response came together fast. As TMZ first reported the actor's passing, the Rialto Theatre announced its tribute screening within a day, and the late-night showing sold out its auditorium at $11 a ticket. The theater has screened “Rocky Horror” since the late 1970s, and Friday's gathering leaned on that history rather than inventing something new, according to the News & Observer, whose reporter Josh Shaffer has covered the Triangle for the paper since 2004.
A Reunion Dressed in Fishnets
Longtime regular Mike McLean, who once played Eddie in the Rialto's live shadow cast, told the paper the night felt like a reunion rather than a funeral. Roughly 100 first-time attendees, known in Rocky Horror tradition as “virgins,” joined audience members who shouted call-and-response lines throughout the screening while a costumed cast performed live below the screen. That cast, the Low Down Cheap Little Punks, has staged shadow performances alongside the film at the Rialto since 1986, according to the Rocky Horror Picture Show official fan site.
Hayes Permar, the Rialto's managing partner, asked the crowd for a head count of who planned to join the film's underwear run and promised a candlelight vigil once the movie ended. Fans kept that promise together, singing “I'm Going Home” as they gathered outside afterward. The projectionist known as Peri has seen the film more than 1,000 times, per the account given to the News & Observer.
Decades of Memories Under One Marquee
For some in the crowd, the night carried personal weight stretching back generations. Courtney Lynne Bush, who first attended a Rocky Horror screening at the Rialto around 2005 as an 18-year-old, said her mother and stepfather had their second date at the same theater back in 1991. Magda Coughlin brought her 16-year-old son, Sam, saying she wanted him to experience the film before it was gone, a sentiment that echoed through a crowd spanning decades of Rialto regulars.
The Rialto itself nearly didn't survive to host this send-off. The venue opened in 1936 as the Colony Theatre inside a converted grocery store in Raleigh's Five Points neighborhood before being renamed the Rialto in 1983, according to Visit Raleigh. It temporarily closed in August 2022 when longtime operator Bill Peebles retired, and it only reopened in 2023 after an investment group led by Permar bought the building to preserve it as a community gathering space, as INDY Week reported at the time.
A Nationwide Wave of Grief for a Cult Icon
Raleigh's vigil was one node in a much larger, spontaneous outpouring. In Portland, more than 100 fans gathered in drag and built an altar at the Clinton Street Theater on August 26, a venue that has screened “Rocky Horror” weekly since 1978, according to OPB. Independent theaters nationwide organized similar memorials in the days after Curry's death, turning a single celebrity loss into a coast-to-coast wave of grassroots tributes.
Curry originated the role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the 1973 London stage production before starring in the 1975 film, reportedly auditioning for writer Richard O'Brien by singing “Tutti Frutti” and later modeling the character's regal accent on the voice of Queen Elizabeth II, according to Legacy.com. The actor suffered a major stroke in 2012 that required brain surgery and left him using a wheelchair, after which he shifted primarily to voice acting in animated series and video games for more than a decade, per Animation Magazine.
From Box-Office Flop to Permanent Archive
“Rocky Horror” famously bombed at the box office in 1975 before becoming an underground camp phenomenon built on midnight screenings and audience participation just like Raleigh's. The film now holds the Guinness World Record for the longest continuous theatrical release in film history, having stayed in limited distribution for more than 50 years, according to SlashFilm. In 2005, the Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, determining it to be culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
None of that history was lost on the crowd that filled Glenwood Avenue after Friday's screening. For a theater that has already survived one brush with closure, the sold-out house and candlelit sidewalk stood as proof that the Rialto's four-decade run with “Rocky Horror” isn't ending anytime soon.
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