Janet and Brad become contestants on a game show… but wind up as captives instead.

“Not a sequel or a prequel but an equal” is how the creators describe it. In modern terminology it’s an AU of Rocky Horror, one where Brad and Janet have a very different experience than the one we know so well.

In this movie, Brad is played by the wonderful Cliff De Young and Janet is Jessica Harper and her eyebrows. Richard O’Brien, Patricia Quinn and “Little” Nell Campbell return as staff in a medical drama show, while Charles Gray has a role similar to the Criminologist from Rocky Horror. There is exactly one actor that plays the same role in both films: Jeremy Newson as Ralph Hapschatt.

The entire film takes place in a TV studio, where the entire town of Denton (“The Home of Happiness”) seems to live, watching precursors to the reality shows that would soon take over the airwaves (remember Shock Treatment came out in 1981!). Brad and Janet have their marriage tested by wacky host Bert Schnick (Barry Humphries) on a show called Marriage Maze, and Brad is committed to psychiatric care on the medical drama, Dentonvale. Meanwhile, Janet’s parents (Darlene Johnson and Manning Redwood) cope with the embarrassment of it all on a home decor show that seems to be their new home.

All of this takes place under the watchful eye of Farley Flavors, also played by De Young (which foreshadows a soap-opera style “twist” in the final act). Flavors takes a shining to Janet, and under the tutelage of Brother-Sister psychiatrists Cosmo and Nation Mckinley (O’Brien and Quinn) — this is the second movie to cast those two as incestuous siblings, mind you — Janet becomes a big star in her own right, eventually forgetting poor Brad, locked away in a straight jacket and doped out of his mind.

All you need’s a bit of Ooh! Shock Treatment!

If you like camp musicals, if you like Jessica Harper or if you like Rocky Horror, you’ll find plenty to enjoy in this fun, drug-fuelled romp parody of the TV culture.