As we continue to look at the interfaces in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, this post will focus on the interfaces used to bring Rocky to life. The fancy Latinate word for this is vivification.
Come up to the lab
The interfaces in the lab where the procedure happens are mounted on an illuminated glass-brick wall. They are heavy and industrial-looking, cased in powder coat red and bolted together. They connect by pipe conduits. It very much reminds me of the ghost containment panel in Ghostbusters, which world be released nine years later.
They include…
- Sonic Oscillator
- Reactor Power Input
- Medusa
- Handwheel
- Sonic Transducer
- Monitor
- Triple Contact Electro Magnet
We’ll talk about the whole set in a later post, but for now let’s focus on the ones involved in the vivification scene—when Frank-N-Furter brings Rocky to life before the Transylvanian conventioneers. These devices are the Sonic Oscillator, the Reactor Power Input, and the Handwheel.
Throughout the scene, Frank-N-Furter acts as a dramatic ringleader, telling his helpers what to do next. He begins by calling to Riff Raff, who stands at the instrument panel. Frank shouts, “Throw open the switches on the Sonic Oscillator!” Which brings us to…
The Sonic Oscillator
This box has two large, vertical lever switches on the left. To the right of the switches is a column with small, dim, cowled displays. (That right half is the Reactor Power Input, to be discussed below.) Riff Raff pulls each of the the levers down, and as he does so, one of the cowled screens illuminate with faint green oscilloscope waves. It has no other discernible effect.
Several critiques about this interface.
- Up maps more intuitively to on, open, and more. The levers should be pushed up to turn the oscillators on.
- If they’re critical they remain in an up position for a duration or to prevent accidental activation, it should either latch or the friction joint holding it in place should be very strong.
- The prop makers were probably constrained to the size of available oscilloscopes, but the screens are quite small compared to their housing. If they are meant to be read at any distance, those screens should be larger, and the displays be reworked to be more legible.
- These controls are poorly mapped to their actuators. Imagine the improvement: Levers half this height could be stacked on top of the other, and be much more clearly associated with their screens by dint of being adjacent to them and only to them. As it is, when off, the rightmost lever is closest to the screen it does not control.
- The two levers are quite close to each other. If they are meant to be operated simultaneously, that’s fine, but in the scene Riff Raff operates them separately, so it’s not their only use. If they weren’t stacked to improve their mappings like I suggested above, they should at least be moved apart to decrease the risk of accidental activation.
Three More Triangles!
Next Frank shouts, “And step up the reactor power input three…more…points!”
The right half of the box has an unlabeled, diamond-shaped dial on top, and, below, a set of eight red triangles arranged in a circle looking a bit like the Umbrella Corporation logo.
(Sorry about the darkness of these images. Keeping the illumination of the buttons visible means I can’t raise the midtone levels, like I could for the prior images.)
At Frank’s command, Riff Raff presses three alternating triangles in the umbrella control. (If numbering like a clock that goes to 8, he presses 5, then 7, then 1.) They illuminate as he presses them. With each button, the needle in the dial steps to the next graduation. Steam begins to escape from the nearby pipes (a side effect, one presumes). Neither the steam nor the reactor power input has any other discernible effect.
Several critiques about this interface.
- The face should illuminate when the input is above zero for better readability, glanceability, and association with the illuminated buttons.
- The needle is barely visible, especially from a distance. The needle should be as visible as the glowing buttons.
- The umbrella-top arrangement of the buttons is poorly mapped. Up maps to more. Right also maps to more in left-to-right reading cultures. This clock wheel arrangement implies circularity, which makes no sense to modify a variable between 0 and 7.
- Skipping places makes no sense. (The every-other button thing.) Had Frank asked to step it up five or more points, the interaction and display would have been awkward and error prone to both execute and read.
- Presuming buttons show target value and the dial shows actual value, then they should be tightly mapped. Think of a thermostat where the target temperature is displayed adjacent to the actual temperature. See the comp below for a better suggestion of mapping.
- If [measurement does not equal target] is an issue, then we need an alert. If the reading exceeds the setting, the setting button should blink; if it falls short, all buttons between the reading and the setting should blink to signal that it the value is not where it should be. Though, I have to note that if that kind of precision is called for, then it shouldn’t be buttons at all, but be a control that offers more precision, like a dial.
- Riff Raff should just be able to press any button and have it and all the lower value buttons illuminate automatically. Press three, and one and two should illuminate without his having to press them. He shouldn’t have to press all three in sequence. It should also not prevent him from doing so, if he (or Frank) want to be dramatic.
- Generally speaking, graduations should be labeled. This particular interface has few enough elements that I might give it a pass, since I suspect it can be easily subitized, positively (how many are lit) or negatively (how many are dim).
Much better. The comp raises the additional question of how it is turned off. I presume in the original they were toggle buttons that you would press again to turn off, so that could work here. So—press any but the current setting, and it changes. Press the current illuminated setting and the whole thing turns off. If the stakes are high enough, though, Riff might need a separate control or a safeguarded control. We can’t say because we don’t know what this actually does.
Put your hump into it, Riff!
After stepping up the reactor power three… more… points, Riff Raff kneels down to a handwheel, which he cranks clockwise to lower a ceiling-mounted apparatus from high in a cupola to just above the vat.
This is mechanical, which puts constraints on usability changes. Certainly that grip could be made wider and the axis could be raised to some more ergonomic position. (Or, given what we see on screen, it could be steam-powered and activated by a valve.) But note that, as it is, narratively, this does some things.
- It adds to the weight of the scene via the effort heuristic.
- It signals that Riff Raff is a servant, having to do difficult manual labor in a humbling position amid steam; which increases the surprise of his later mutiny. (And presages the awesome steam conversation scene in Alien four years later.)
The rainbow soup
The apparatus Riff lowers houses seven colored cylinders of matching-colored, viscous fluid. When they come within reach, Frank-N-Furter turns valves at the bottom of each one to allow the fluids to pour into the vat, turning its contents into a layered, upside-down rainbow.
Manual valves are a fine interface, since it appears precision is not required. This step is more improvisational art than science, it seems.
Aside: Watching this scene carefully I notice that even though the colored fluids are in an inexplicable order in the interface: yellow blue red purple orange blue green (no, I have no idea why there are two blues, maybe one was supposed to be indigo?), Curry takes pains to open them in rainbow order: red orange yellow green blue blue purple. Note this was *not* a reference to the rainbow flag, which goes in the opposite display order and which Gilbert Baker wouldn’t invent until three years after this film was released. It was Curry (or someone on set) paying attention to real-world light spectra.
Anyway, after enough of the fluid has been dropped to create a layered rainbow effect in the vat, Frank-N-Furter frantically closes the valves. (If you’re wondering, editing makes it difficult to tell in what order he closes the valves, but it seems random.) After a beat, Riff Raff cranks the handwheel counterclockwise to lift Rocky—who is gripping the ceiling-mounted apparatus—out of the vat. The rest of the procedure is analog and does not involve technological interfaces, but does involve a musical number in which Rocky is unwrapped like a reverse mummy, while singing.
That’s it. That’s how Rocky is brought to life. And, now I am happy to declare…
This is the best series of interfaces in the movie
Not for its usability. It’s fairly wretched for that (see lengthy notes above). But…
Diegetically, the unusability is a feature. First, by contributing to the perception to the conventioneers that big, dramatic science is happening before their eyes. It’s impressive theatrics. I think it could go even farther in seeming usable while still maintaining inscrutable complexity, but this does the trick for Transylvanians. Second, it builds on guild mentality. That is, the inscrutability helps deter others from thinking they could easily do it themselves. It’s a kind of job security through obscurity.
Extradiegetically, because the film is partly meant to mock B-movie sci-fi, the fact that they are…
- poorly designed
- pseudoscientific at best,
- cinegenic, and
- histrionic;
…they are perfect.
No notes.
I mean, 1800-ish words of notes.
But you know, “no notes.”
As if all this drama wasn’t enough. In the next post it’s going to get turned up to 11. Triple Contact Electro Magnet (currently scheduled for 22 Sep 2026)
