The Absolute Pleasure of Tim Curry

It’s a brisk night in downtown Boston in the early 1980s, and I’m out with a group that includes a very nice, very pretty young woman from my college whom I hope to get to know better.

After dinner, one of the guys has an idea: a movie! Better yet, a midnight movie, after which, of course, we’d have to be gallant and walk the girls home.

Ambling down Newbury Street to the Exeter Street Theater (now long gone), I spot an unexpected and sartorially strange crowd lined up around the corner.

I am dressed like a basic preppy-wannabe: jeans, loafers, a button-down shirt.

But the people lined up to get into this movie include men in heavy makeup and—wait, can this be?— garter belts .

What the hell am I doing here? The movie, of course, was the 1975 flop turned cult hit The Rocky Horror Picture Show , and audiences came dressed as their favorite character.

Those tarted-up men were paying tribute to Tim Curry’s bizarrely glorious Dr.

Frank-N-Furter, who belts out a song about being a “sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania.” I may have been a youthful Republican, but I knew that I was watching something—and someone—amazing.

I saw the movie many more times, and although I wasn’t going in drag (if you know Rocky Horror , I was more the Brad Majors type), Curry’s pure, perverse joy on-screen was always a welcome escape.

The English actor died today at 80.

In a perfect tribute, Curry’s many fans are happily debating his greatest performances, which is remarkable given that he wasn’t in that many films and was rarely the lead.

Yet his charisma ensured a loyal following for generations.

Patricia Quinn, Tim Curry, and Nell Campbell in The Rocky Horror Picture Show . (20th Century Fox / Everett Collection) Curry’s magic lay in his ability to be outrageous without being self-conscious, but which Curry you love most might depend on your age and genre preferences.

After catching the first wave with Rocky Horror , I went on to buy one of the few albums he made as an aspiring rock star. ( “I Do the Rock” should have gotten more love.) I was among the audiences who were mesmerized by his 1985 performance as a demon , under a ton of makeup, in Legend .