Once upon a time, not very long ago, the thought of a new Rocky Horror calendar appearing regularly every year almost seemed like a foolish dream. Up until about five years ago, I think there had only ever been six official Rocky Horror Horror Picture Show calendars produced (and one of those was just a poster). Then along came Slow Dazzle and Mick Rock, and, from 2003 onwards, Rocky fans suddenly had a stunning new calendar to look forward to every year.

Well, next year, we can go one better, as two different Rocky Horror calendars for 2008 have come along at once.

While just slightly smaller and not quite as glossy as the UK published Slow Dazzle calendars, Day Dream's effort (produced I imagine primarily for the US and Canadian market) is never-the-less a lovely looking item, with a beautiful selection of classic Rocky photos to see us through another year. In fact, the front of the calendar, which features the now well known (30th Anniversary) image of Frank sitting across the famous lips, proudly announces that this is a "16 month calendar", and the first page contains the remaining four months of 2007, so that it can be hung on the wall and used right away.

Mick Rock was hired by Jim Sharman to be the Special Photographer on the movie and he kept the rights to use his own photos, which are currently used exclusively each year for the Slow Dazzle Rocky Horror calendars; but there were other official photographers employed by 20th Century Fox to document the making of the film, and it is some of those (Fox owned) images which can be seen here.

Each month for 2008 employs the tradtional use of a double page spread with the actual calendar on the lower page (including special dates, religious festivals and events - Valentine's Day, Independence Day, Hallowe'en, Christmas etc. - in small print on the squares for the relevent dates) with the year, month and days written in the well known bloody font, and a black and white photo (printed in a pop-art style) of one of the characters (a different picture for each month) to the left of the dates.
The upper page for each month has a gorgeous large photo from the movie, printed slightly diagonally across the page, with a small pair of lips at the top right corner (and the word "lips" written three times down the right hand side) and a smaller different picture in the lower left corner.

My favourite image on this calendar is the lovely posed shot for February of Little Nell and Pat Quinn (in costume) on the Denton church set "rehearsing" The Time Warp, a different shot of which is also used as the smaller inset photo for August. Other photos include a nice picture of our beloved Oakley Court as Frank's castle (on the opening page) for the final third of 2007; Tim as Floorshow Frank for January; Riff Raff and the coffin clock for March; Tim as Frank in his so-called "Egyptian" pose, grinning madly with his hands together over his head, for June; and a fabulous shot of Riff, Brad and Janet watching a crazed Magenta belting out her verse for The Time Warp for September.

As a devoted Rocky Horror collector, I was thrilled to find a second calendar available for next year. I probably would not suggest buying the Day Dream calendar instead of the regular Slow Dazzle one - after all, a portion of the proceeds from the sales of the Slow Dazzle Rocky calendars goes to a worthy charity, and a fall in sales might make them think twice about continuing to bring out a new one every twelve months (even if they do, quite irritatingly, keep recycling some of the same images every couple of years) - but, when January rolls around, I shall certainly be hanging them both side by side, as I think they will compliment each other very well indeed.

Rob Bagnall (August 2007).

ISBN-10: 0768882168    ISBN-13: 978-0768882162

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