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``Well, I see the Quaaludes are kicking in,'' Susan Steffee tells her less-than-enthusiastic audience. The crowd rises to the challenge.

``Give me an L!'' Steffee shouts, and the audience obliges with a lung-busting yell. ``Give me an I! . . . Give me a P! . . . Give me an S! . . . What's that spell?''

``Lips!'' the audience roars.

``What do we want?''

``LIPS!!''

``When do we want 'em?''

``NOW!!!''

Having stirred her audience into a frenzy, Steffee starts the chant ``Lips, lips, lips,'' pounding her metal-shinned black boots on the Tower Theatre stage. The movie is about to begin.

Welcome, one and all, to the world's only truly interactive movie, ``The Rocky Horror Picture Show.''

Since its premiere on Sept. 26, 1975 -- 20 years ago Tuesday -- ``Rocky Horror'' has exploded from a bizarre little rock musical to a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon.

Fans dress up like their favorite characters. They throw objects at key moments -- rice during a wedding, toast when someone proposes a toast. They shout lines in response to (or in anticipation of) the dialogue. They even create an indoor rainstorm with spray bottles and squirt guns.

In many cities, die-hard fans -- some of whom have seen the movie hundreds of times -- re-enact the film in front of the screen. Salt Lake City joins those ranks for ``Rocky Horror's'' 20th anniversary, with full-cast performances at midnight tonight and Saturday at the Tower Theatre, 876 E. 900 South in Salt Lake City. Admission is $1, though fans who dress in costume get in free.

An affectionately batty spoof of old sci-fi monster movies, ``The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' follows newly engaged nerds Janet Weiss and Brad Majors on one dark and stormy night. When their car breaks down on a rain-slickened road, they seek refuge in a nearby castle. There they meet Dr. Frank N. Furter, a flamboyant space alien in fishnet stockings, who is about to complete his greatest creation: the well-muscled Rocky. As the night progresses, Frank seduces Brad and Janet to ``give yourself over to absolute pleasure'' -- but Frank must face the music when his servants revolt.

``The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' made its Salt Lake City debut on Thanksgiving weekend 1976, at the now-demolished Centre Theatre. Within a couple of years, ``Rocky Horror'' found a home at the Blue Mouse, a defunct theater now infamous for the times the police raided it for its ``obscene'' art films.

Blue Mouse: It was at the Blue Mouse, in September 1987, where Steffee -- attending with her debate class from Taylorsville High School -- first saw ``Rocky Horror.'' The audience's reckless abandon appealed to her immediately.

``I'd never been to a movie where people did things like that,'' says Steffee, now a 23-year-old aspiring art student. ``I've been to plenty of movies where you wanted to. You wanted to cuss and swear and say the characters were stupid; you wanted to throw stuff at the screen. It's like everything you ever wanted to do in a movie theater, but would have gotten thrown out for.''

Steffee was back the next night, and within a couple of months was going up onstage. There was no emcee then, but soon Steffee and her friends were inventing audience dialogue that now forms the core of the Salt Lake stage show.

``We'd just ad-lib,'' Steffee says. ``We'd think of something funny, and someone would say it. And the next week, you'd hear someone in the crowd say something that we had said.''

Many of the jokes took jabs at Utah culture, specifically the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When Brad says ``hi'' at the castle door, the emcee adds, ``we're Mormon missionaries.'' When Rocky is found huddled under a blanket, the response is ``BYU campus police -- you're busted.''

Every city has its sacred cows that are filleted at ``Rocky Horror.'' In Seattle, they joke about Boeing and the Mariners; in Las Vegas, UNLV takes a few hits.

``Whatever the big thing [in another city] that they want to make fun of, that's what the lines are about there,'' Steffee says. ``Here, it's the LDS Church that everybody is rebelling against, so that's what we make R>fun of.''

The Blue Mouse ``was really intimate,'' says Steffee, who estimates she has seen the movie at least 300 times and has been emcee for well over 100 screenings. ``During the introduction, with a loud speaking voice, . . . people even in the back could hear me. It was like having 150 people over to your house to do it.''

Rotting Dogs: Over time, the Blue Mouse took on a certain odor, as management allowed fans to bring in almost anything, and only one janitor was around to clean up afterward. Hot dogs rotted under the stage for years. (The Tower bans hot dogs, confetti, eggs and cigarette lighters; toast, rice, toilet paper and playing cards are still thrown freely -- though management will turn off the projector if anything hits the screen.)

Steffee recalls one roll of toilet paper permanently stuck in the Blue Mouse's ceiling pipes. ``We threw everything we had at that thing, but it was just wedged,'' she says. ``I'm sure when they knock the building down, they're going to find this section of ceiling and pipe with this toilet paper stuck in it, and not be able to figure out where the hell it came from.''

The Blue Mouse closed in 1990. ``Rocky Horror'' then played at two benefits for the Tower Theatre, one at the Murray Theatre and one at Cinema In Your Face. In January 1992, the movie began its current run at the Tower.

Nicholas von Herberstein saw the London theatrical production of ``The Rocky Horror Show'' in 1985, and saw the movie for the first time in 1987 in Colorado. Still, when he first saw ``Rocky Horror'' at the Tower, in September 1992, it was only the third time he had seen the film.

One month later, he stood on the Tower stage in full Frank costume -- bustier, heels, fishnets, makeup, the works.

``It was kind of a nervous experience, since I hadn't seen the show very often,'' says von Herberstein, 26, a scuba instructor and a senior studying history at the University of Utah. ``But I knew I could lip-synch.''

Over the past three years,R> von Herberstein has seen the show 50 or 60 times. Ever since taking the stage, he has tried to organize a full cast to re-enact the film.

Steps, Moves: That cast is finally in place. About a dozen fans -- most of them in their teens and 20s -- have spent the past two months rehearsing the movie's dance steps and character moves. They also have accumulated enough costumes and props to win a fair-sized scavenger hunt, including a tuxedo, Mickey Mouse ears, a feather duster, a hair dryer and (count 'em) four feather boas.

``It's going to be one hell of a show,'' von Herberstein promises.

Behind the humor and outlandishness of ``Rocky Horror,'' Steffee and von Herberstein find in the film a positive message about sexual awakening and tolerance.

In 1975, gay sex was seldom discussed (and never depicted) in movies. ``Rocky Horror'' talked about homosexuality, bisexuality and transvestitism openly and with humor.

``It was a movie that really dealt with one of the problems of society that nobody talked about -- or would talk about,'' von Herberstein says.

``It's an open environment -- anybody's welcome,'' says Steffee, who has been out of the closet since her senior year of high school. ``Maybe there's a gay or lesbian kid out there, and they don't know where to meet anybody that they can talk to. . . . Whatever's going on in the movie, for some reason it seems all right. That's the setting of the movie -- nobody gets upset, nobody in the movie says, `That's bad, that's unnatural, that's nasty.' It's where things that are different are acceptable.''

The movie, von Herberstein said, also gives young viewers ``a clean outlet for rebellion, for frustration. . . . They can sit down and, in a fun sort of way, complain about their lives, the area that they live in.''

To the moral guardians who might frown on ``Rocky Horror,'' von Herberstein asks: ``Would you rather have [the kids] in the theater . . . where they can release their frustrations, or would you rather have thR>em down at Pioneer Park doing drugs?''

Steffee believes ``The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' will never die, because the movie's first fans are the parents of today's fans. ``It's got an appeal to it that goes across generations,'' she says. ``If your parents can laugh at it and you can laugh at it, that's unusual -- it's a one-of-a-kind.''

After all, Steffee notes, ``How many movies can you curse and swear and throw things?''

Do the Time Warp

``The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' will celebrate its 20th anniversary with two screenings, accompanied by a full-cast re-creation onstage. The shows are midnight tonight and Saturday, at the Tower Theatre, 876 E. 900 South, Salt Lake City. Admission is $1, though fans dressed in ``Rocky Horror'' costumes can get in free.