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Script / The Revenge of the Old Queen
aka: Revenge Of The Old Queen

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The Revenge of the Old Queen is an unproduced sequel for The Rocky Horror Picture Show, written in 1988 by franchise creator Richard O'Brien. It takes place after the film and seems to ignore Shock Treatment. It takes place many years after the Denton Affair and the Miss Mental Health scare, the script suggests in the 1980s or 1990s. Riff Raff is on a mission from the Old Queen to bring Frank back to the planet and galaxy; however, the Queen is unaware Frank had been murdered by Riff a long time ago, but he goes anyway and bumps into stranger characters.


The Revenge of the Old Queen provides examples of

  • Aliens Among Us: Transylvanian spies and human sympathisers are stationed all over the world.
  • Aliens in Cardiff: Riff Raff teleports to a Transylvanian safe house in Fresno, California. Though they're mentioned to have teleporters hidden in places all over the world including Washington.
  • Alien Sea: Transsexual has an "ink-black glutinous sea that gloops like an ocean of oil" alongside a beach of black sand.
  • Aliens Speaking English: As well as speaking it, the "TRANSDUCER PROGRAMMING FOR THE BEGINNER" manual's cover is written in English, but the instructions inside are in an alien language.
  • All There in the Script:
  • Always Night: Justified as the planet Transsexual somehow has no sun.
  • Ambiguously Absent Parent: Frank's father is never alluded to in this script.
  • Ambiguously Related: Given that the script seems to ignore Shock Treatment, Brad being adopted may no longer be canon. Meaning it's unclear whether his brother Steve and their mother are his biological family or adopted.
  • Anal Probing: One of the fears of the diners singing "Never Let Your Daughter Date an Alien".
  • Antagonist Title: If you consider The Old Queen the story's villain.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Janet's character profile says "She drinks, smokes, dyes her hair, hooks and watches television".
  • Artistic License – Space: Transsexual is specified to have no sun. Although rogue planets that don't orbit stars exist in real life, they wouldn't be warm enough to sustain, let alone evolve humanoid life.
  • Ascended Extra: Riff Raff is now one of the main characters.
  • Assimilation Plot: Steve believes that Transylvanians are trying to make us all slaves to sensation, just like them.
  • As You Know: "We PAN AROUND and see a very SMALL PERSON dressed in the manner of this strange Planet (which as we all know by now) is the Planet of Transsexual in the Galaxy of Transylvania".
  • Attractive Bent-Gender: Steve finds Riff (of all people) in drag very attractive, believing him to be a beautiful woman. The script goes out of its way to state that Riff looks good. Then, Riff is lightly built with quite androgynous facial features...his offputting appearance in the first film is mostly down to a fake hunchback and scraggly receding hair (it's implied he's fully bald by the time of this sequel, but he's wearing a wig when in drag.)
  • Back to the Early Installment: They travel back to the events of the first movie to try and save Frank but don't get into the castle before it blasts off.
  • Benevolent Alien Invasion: Your mileage may vary on whether you think Transylvanians trying to make us be more like them is a good thing or a bad thing.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Most of the characters who are still alive at the end of the movie are living happily on Transsexual except for Steve, who's stranded in the past, being arrested by the police who think he's insane.
  • Blast Out: The climax turns into this. Riff is at the castle trying to stop himself from killing Frank in the past. Ray, De Lordy and others pursue him there. The Old Queen and her mooks are there in pursuit of De Lordy. When Riff sees the Old Queen, thinking she's onto his deception and is after him, he shoots at her and narrowly misses. Cue all the Queen's mooks shooting at Riff, Riff shooting back, Ray, De Lordy and the rest of their group caught in the crossfire... then the Queen realises De Lordy is there and orders her mooks to shoot him, one of them hitting Steve in the process... it ends with Riff killing De Lordy and Judy, and Ray getting hit by a stray shot and killed. Including two different characters, at different points, ordering everyone to hold their fire... and in both cases it works for all of a minute before people start shooting again.
  • Book Ends: The script starts and ends with Riff Raff about to climb into Magenta's coffin.
  • Broad Strokes: Takes broad strokes from an earlier attempt at a sequel where Brad turns gay and Janet gives birth to Frank's son. It could nearly be considered canon if you ignore the ending where Janet and her baby go off to Transsexual.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: A very extreme black comedy example. Riff Raff is described in the script as "more than a little loopy", which turns out to be a major understatement: he's completely lost his mind since the events of the original film, and has not only killed his sister, but talks to her corpse as if she's still alive and has sex with it. You might expect someone deranged enough to beg a corpse for forgiveness one moment, angrily berate it the next, and greet it with "Hi honey, I'm home!" in the final scene to have very little capacity for rational thought and planning. However, Riff's psychotic break doesn't seem to have affected his competence as a high-ranking general (who isn't a General Ripper) at all. If anything, he's the most competent character in the script, scheming his way through the plot, successfully carrying out various disguises and deceptions, and coming out on top in the end thanks to his opportunism and quick thinking, as well as holding his own in combat against multiple opponents. His insanity only comes up in his first and last scene and doesn't otherwise cause him any problems.
  • Canon Discontinuity: Seems to ignore Shock Treatment with Janet only referred to as Brad's fiance when they were married in Shock Treatment.
  • Cerebus Ret Con: The first movie only hints at it in the song ''Superheroes" but we know now that the events in Frank’s castle destroyed Brad and Janet’s lives.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Doctor Scott is the only surviving character from the first movie who isn't mentioned, which is strange because the UFO bureau he belonged to features prominently.
  • Contrived Coincidence:
    • Steve investigates a Transylvanian safe house at the same time Riff Raff has been dispatched to Earth. Also Riff Raff uses a teleporter hidden in a hotel room that Janet happens to be staying in.
    • Judy accidentally activates the Transducer to send her to Transsexual at the same time Riff Raff teleports to Earth, if she'd been a few seconds earlier or later one of them could have been tele-fragged.
  • Cut-and-Paste Suburb: Child!Steve and his mother live in one in the past.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: Played in multiple directions.
    • Steve, as a conservative Midwesterner, is not meant to be particularly likeable, with his Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today? attitude, and the way Brad becoming openly gay as almost more of a shameful and horrific fate than his death in an unfortunate accident, being used to make him seem laughably backward in his views.
    • The Transylvanians, meanwhile, lack many of the prejudices found on Earth, but also have some more disturbing alien values, being a Feudal Future where the Queen can have people brutally tortured and executed, and having no incest taboo. Also, while murder is apparently still a crime, it's implied that Riff Raff thinks the reasonable reaction to Judy's "You've killed him [the man she's in love with]—kill me too!" is...to grant the request. (On a more comedic note, despite aforementioned torture and the fact Frank whipped him, Riff Raff's idea of the ultimate act of sadism is apparently stealing lipstick.)
  • Feudal Future: The Old Queen of Transylvania appears to be an absolute monarch, able to punish people for disobeying her with torture or execution (by drawing and quartering) without trial. There are also Lords, such as Lord De Lordy.
  • Forgotten First Meeting: Riff Raff and Janet don’t recognize each other at first. Janet doesn't recognise Riff because she's been trying to forget the events of the first movie for the last 15 years (he's also fully bald now and dressed differently). Riff doesn't recognise Janet because she's aged pretty badly, and because he never paid that much attention to her anyway.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: Riff Raff's backstory is a little vague, but he describes himself as "born to be the victim // born a pawn without the system" and in the original film was a mistreated servant (really a slave in all but name). At the start of the script (15 years on from the original film) he's a General, and he gets promoted to The Dragon to Sonny by the end, with implications that he still sees himself as "born to rule" and has plans to be The Starscream. He got where he is in large part by murder, scheming and backstabbing.
  • Gass Hole: When Steve finally gets over his nostalgia of Judy, he remembers that she used to sit at the back of Miss Peterson's class and pass wind.
  • Greasy Spoon: The coffee shop where the customers sing "Never Let Your Daughter Date an Alien" is described as "a typical William Hopper style of diner".
  • Happy Ending Override: This movie shows that Riff Raff got away with killing Frank for a few years by lying about it, but the plot kicks off when the queen sends him back to Earth to bring Frank home.
  • Haughty Help: The Queen's servants behave this way towards Riff Raff, clearly looking down on him even though he is a General. It's likely a combination of the "reflected glory" type, as they work for the Queen, and "offended sensibilities" at someone implied to be from a much lower class background than them outranking them.
  • Hollywood Thin: When Steve is gushing about Judy's beauty, he guesses her height and weight as 5ft7 and 111 pounds, which is actually underweight. ("Judy" is actually Riff Raff in drag, who is 5ft8, and Steve's guess at his weight was based on how he looked with two grapefruits down the front of his dress. The weight might be an inaccurate guess in-universe, and might say something about Steve's rather dickish and sexist personality that this is his idea of an attractive woman, but it's noticeable that the same character generally viewed as creepily scrawny as a man is seen as so attractive as a woman.)
  • I Love the Dead: The very last scene is Riff Raff climbing into Magenta's coffin.
  • Information Wants to Be Free: The script starts with a paragraph written by the guy who uploaded it, saying that he feels bad putting it online without permission but thinks that Rocky Horror fans deserve to read it.
  • Interspecies Romance: Between De Lordy and Judy; the song "Never Let Your Daughter Date an Alien" explains why this is a bad thing.
  • "I Want" Song: Riff Raff sings Short End Of The Stick about how he wants to rule rather than follow. Judy Judy Judy is Steve's song about how he wants Judy.
  • Leg Focus: In-universe and played for laughs, Steve's description of Judy focusses heavily on her "legs that went right up to heaven". Of course, unknown to Steve, the "Judy" he met was actually Riff in drag (who admittedly has pretty long legs for his height)...
  • Lightning Reveal: One shows a road sign leading to Fresno with a Transylvanian lightning bolt symbol on it.
  • Missing Mom: Janet to Sonny. They reunite at the end when Sonny takes the royal throne after the Old Queen dies.
  • Morton's Fork: Riff can admit that he killed Frank or go to Earth, pretend to look for him and fail. Either way he'll be in trouble.
  • Mummies at the Dinner Table: Riff Raff's thing with Magenta's corpse overlaps with this, as it's a deranged obsession with the corpse of the woman he loved when she was alive, rather than a fetish for corpses in general. He's described as having gone mad and talks to her as if she was still alive, alternately begging for her forgiveness, angrily ranting at her, or addressing her affectionately/seductively, though he is clearly aware on some level that he killed her as he asks why she "made him" do it at one point. She is still in her coffin...but he keeps the coffin in his chambers and gets in there with her.
  • Mythology Gag: There a few nods to Shock Treatment;
    • Riff Raff tells Magenta's corpse that they can play Doctors and nurses, a reference to the characters they played in Shock Treatment, also a nod to the title song that says “Playing doctor and nurse can be good for your health.” .
    • The housing estate that was built where Frank's castle used to be is called Happy Homes after the reality show Janet's parents starred in.
  • Naked First Impression: Judy is transported to Transylvania while in the shower. She arrives stark naked... right in front of Lord De Lordy.
  • Never Recycle a Building: Averted. A housing estate is being built where Frank's castle was in the first movie, meaning that Riff can't locate Frank's body.
  • No Name Given: The small servant is just called Small Person in the script.
  • Peggy Sue: Riff Raff goes back in time to try and stop himself killing Frank in the first movie but fails.
  • Pleasure Planet: the The Moon Drenched Shores of Transylvania song implies Transsexual to be this and Riff Raff has to cover his ears to block out "the sighs, moans and groans of unseen Transylvanians drowning in pleasure".
  • Portal Network: The Transylvanians have a network of teleporter/time machines hidden throughout Earth.
  • P.O.V. Sequel: Thanks to timetravel, we briefly see the outside of the castle from the first movie as Riff Raff is running in to kill Frank at the end of The Floor Show.
  • Remember the New Guy?: The fog during the Super-Heroes song in the first movie must have obscured all the time travellers come back to save Frank.
  • Revenge of the Sequel: Being a satire of horror movies, this kind of title is fitting.
  • Rhyming with Itself: Every line in the chorus of The Moon Drenched Shores of Transylvania ends with the word "Transylvania".
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: Frank is revealed to be a prince who spends his time doing experiments on another planet. His mother assumes he's just on Earth to have sex.
  • Setting Introduction Song: Starts with "Thee Moon Drenched Shores Of Transylvania" which describes the Pleasure Planet Transsexual.
  • Shoe Phone: The Transylvanian teleporters that we see are disguised as showers in Holiday Inns.
  • Stable Time Loop: At one point Steve mentions a crazy guy showing up on his lawn when he was a kid and getting arrested by the police. At the end Steve is stranded in the past and goes to his mother, ranting about aliens and time travel. She calls the police, who drag him off, thinking he's insane.
  • The Name Is Bond, James Bond: Riff introduces himself as "Brankmire, George Brankmire" while pretending to be a government agent.
  • The Starscream:
    • De Lordy is next in line for the throne after Frank and knows that he's dead. He can't wait for the queen to die so he can rule.
    • Riff Raff again shows shades of it during Short End of the Stick ("I was born to rule, not follow") and No Hiding Place ("there's going to be [...] changes made with me at the top"). He ends the story as Sonny's supposedly loyal second-in-command, but it's clear it's all an act and he'll be getting up to more scheming in the future.
  • Storming the Castle: The Old Queen makes The Transylvanians run in and rescue Frank but they're too late. The castle launches into outer space and the blast kills them.
  • Stylistic Suck: The movie starts with us seeing the journey from Earth to Transsexual. It looks deliberately fake as it's part of one of Sonny's music videos, but ends with a quicker, more realistic looking version of the same journey.
  • Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Brad and Magenta have both died since the last movie.
  • Teleporter Accident: Riff Raff invokes this trope so that Steve will step into the transducer by himself so he can send Steve out of the way to Alaska.
  • Time-Passes Montage: On the way to Fresno, we get "A MONTAGE of SHOTS of STEVE's car hurtling through DAYS and NIGHTS, RAIN and SUNSHINE, PUNCTURES and TRAFFIC COPS, etc. This of course gives us the passing of time.".
  • Time-Travellers Are Spies: When Riff Raff first meets Steve, he's in drag and pretends to be fellow agent Judy. The next morning he pretends to be her fictional brother, also an agent investigating aliens. Not really a time travel example but the characters do end up travelling back in time later on.
  • Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Janet has blocked the events of the first movie from her mind.
  • A True Story in My Universe: The Rocky Horror Picture Show has been made as a movie since the events of the first film, though it seems to be called The Rocky Horror Show rather than The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
  • Unexplained Recovery: Frank implied his mother was dead in the original movie, as he swore on his mother's grave that he wouldn't tell Janet that he and Brad slept together . It's possible he was just saying that to appease Brad.
  • Vichy Earth: The Transylvanians have infiltrated the American government and it's implied that they've done this to others.
  • Viewers Are Morons: The Denton Holiday Inn has a different colour and style from the Alaska one in order not to confuse the viewers.
  • We Are Everywhere: The bureau and/or transylvanians seem to have agents everywhere. A random man in the diner reports what Steve and Riff are doing to somebody on the phone.
  • Wholesome Crossdresser: Riff Raff's stated to be one while disguised as Judy. (He's not a particularly wholesome person, but he's an anti-hero if anything in this story rather than a true villain, and the actual crossdressing is done for disguise reasons rather than creepy reasons and is stated to look both convincing and attractive.)
  • Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: Riff Raff asks Magenta's corpse at the start why she made him kill the only thing he ever loved.
  • Wig, Dress, Accent: Riff uses this.
    • First with a red wig, makeup (including fake freckles), a dress, and fake breasts (grapefruits) to pass himself off as Judy (an accent isn't mentioned, though he is stated to use a falsetto voice and his voice is already quite high, but considering he knows Judy is an American government agent and that Steve doesn't think he sounds British, he's probably using an accent). He's successful at looking like an attractive woman (he doesn't actually look like Judy, but only because he was going off Steve's description and Steve misremembered the real Judy's hair colour.)
    • Then without the wig/makeup/etc and in ordinary human men's clothes, but presumably still using an American accent since Steve readily assumes he's from Denton, he pretends to be Judy's brother George. Again, it works because Steve has never met either Riff Raff or the nonexistent real George Brankmire, so has no reason to believe this bald man in normal-looking clothes with an obvious "family" resemblance to "Judy" is anything other than who he says he is.
  • Wrong Time-Travel Savvy: Ambiguous. A Stable Time Loop is demonstrated with child Steve's encounter with his future self, but both Riff Raff and The Old Queen attempt and fail to stop Frank being killed in the first movie. The reason they fail is not in itself a Stable Time Loop, though (they fail because they're too busy fighting each other), and it's never actually stated that the rules of time travel in this universe would have made saving him impossible. The sci-fi is so soft that time travel working in a consistent way is not guaranteed, and it would hardly be the only soft sci-fi series to contain both examples of Stable Time Loop and cases of changing the past actually being possible.
  • Younger than She Looks: Janet is described as being around 35 but looking at least 50 due to being aged by the events of the original movie.

Alternative Title(s): Revenge Of The Old Queen

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