1. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

What? — Based on a well-received British play, this ode to the creeptastic has all the hybrid sexual identity mind games one could hope for in a corset and fishnet-bound tragedy. An overtly campy sci-fi rock musical replete with hair-raising frights, Rocky Horror kicks off the unsightly festivities with all-American fiancés Brad and Janet (Susan Sarandon) left stranded on a stormy night. In search of refuge, the everybody-loves-normal duo make their way to the nearest castle, where they are greeted by a sinister, sexually fluid — as in part bisexual, part transsexual, 100 percent whacked out — Dr. Frank-N-Furter from Planet Transsexual Transylvania. The unsullied couple penetrate a world of sexual exploration that knows no boundaries. The sexually emancipated Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry) has clocked many long hours in the lab to hatch his latest creation, an idealized pea-brain alpha male named Rocky whose sole raison d'être is to quench Dr. Furter's seemingly insatiable sexual thirst.

Furter also seduces wholesome Janet and her beau Brad into doing the (seriously) nasty with him. Every character in Rocky, from Frank-N-Furter as a transsexual alien all the way down to plain-as-noodle-soup Janet, is somehow unique and the film celebrates these differences, as one of the closing ditties "Don't Dream It — Be It" says with aplomb. This erotic tale makes countless allusions to pop culture, cartoons and rock, but the plot really takes a backseat to the decadent glam-rock operatics, and justly so.

Why? — It is the without a doubt the biggest cult film phenomenon ever in North America, with many theaters still running the film regularly some 30 years after its original run. Interestingly, it performed dreadfully upon its initial theatrical release, but got its second chance as a midnight movie offering. Word of mouth spread like wildfire, especially among gay and college crowds. Rocky Horror aficionados enthusiastically created a lively culture that boasts its own lexicon (those who have never seen the show are labelled "virgins," while repeat offenders are "sluts") on top of its admittedly geeky rules for audience participation and interactivity.

Rocky remains the only film featuring queer characters (other than Bob Fosse's Cabaret, where the gay boys are relegated to secondary roles) to be selected by the U.S. National Film Preservation Board, even though the Registry is meant to encompass a broad scope of film genres and reflect the diversity of American film heritage. And what gay man in the right mind would not endorse the film's call for sexual freedom? Frank-N-Furter is the epitome of everything deemed morally deviant thirty years ago. It was also one of the last '70s Hollywood films to present such prominently queer characters. The story celebrates sexuality of all kinds, something revolutionary in the mid-1970s, and in doing so makes gay sexuality just another normal part of human sexuality. Rocky Horror arguably opened the minds of a whole generation and opened the door for many of the queer friendly films that followed.

Almost Made the Cut: Zero Patience (John Greyson, 1993)

A tongue-in-cheek musical-comedy about Patient Zero, the French Canadian flight attendant whose sexual promiscuity the media believed was responsible for the spread of HIV in North America. Greyson, an eminent Canadian videographer and committed militant to the AIDS cause, disproves this urban legend by bringing Zero back (as a ghost) along with 19th century British anthropologist Sir Richard Francis Benson. The latter, transposed to present day as a museum curator piecing together a questionable exhibit on Zero, starts seeing things more clearly after shagging the Quebecois pretty boy. This whimsical and deceptively complex tale of love in the age of AIDS quickly grows on you, and you can't help but giggle at defiant song-and-dance numbers like the "Butthole Duet," where Zero and Burton practically wax poetic about the interplay of power in man-to-man loving. "I lie down and think of England, toot that horn and bang that drum; it's an insult to the Empire when I take it up the bum."

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