a review of

Decided to make this a Jessica Harper double feature (had just watched Suspiria for the first time). I taped Shock Treatment off tv sometime in high school and watched it over and over but haven't seen it since 2005 or earlier. This time I watched it on youtube where some kind person has uploaded it. Like many in the reviews, the first time I went in expecting some kind of sequel to RHPS, but it's not really that. The tagline at the time was that it's an "Equal". Not only are Brad and Janet played by completely different people, Jessica Harper doesn't look nor sound like Susan Sarandon, at all. Many actors did return but play *other characters*. So that all seems very intentional. Since I hadn't seen it in 20 years I was curious how it held up and also WHY did I watch it so many times? Maybe as a very closeted (even to myself) trans and queer person in a bigoted small town, it had places where I could relate, and nobody I knew had heard of it, which made it feel like this special thing I'd harvested from late night cable. If RHPS is about letting your freak flag fly then Shock Treatment is about being forced to conform by any means necessary. The television motif emphasizes the artificiality of these expectations. Also Jessica Harper is so pretty and her singing voice is like dusky velvet. It's hard not to watch without the lens of what O'Brien has been saying in the last decade or so, which is pretty terrible. It's hard not to see internalized baggage in some of the themes and how the message it is trying to send seems to be written by someone dealing with great personal conflict. I mean there is even a song about coming out of the closet, followed by the characters being rejected immediately. And yeah I also feel my own conflict with this movie. The parts I can relate to are very difficult parts of my life. I don't know when I'll watch it again but some of the songs will stay in my head.