Shock Treatment

Shock Treatment (1981) is Jim Sharman's musical comedy, free to watch online on iFILM. It picks up the story of Brad and Janet Majors from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with the same director and the same songwriter, Richard O'Brien — but it is no straight sequel.

This time the whole town of Denton lives inside a TV studio, broadcast around the clock. Brad and Janet end up on a marriage game show called Marriage Maze, where Brad is declared a hopeless husband and locked away in a televised psychiatric ward run by Dr. Cosmo. Janet, meanwhile, gets groomed into the network's next big star — and the sponsor pulling the strings, Farley Flavors, has very personal reasons for it. Jessica Harper plays Janet; O'Brien and Patricia Quinn turn up as the twin doctors. The film flopped on release and found its cult afterward, and it plays as a sharp jab at television that turns every viewer into a contestant. Odd, tuneful and one of a kind — best for Rocky Horror fans who like their movies genuinely strange. Stream Shock Treatment (1981) online on iFILM.