"Chicago Sun-Times" critic Roger Ebert noted that when first released, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" was "ignored by pretty much everyone, including the future fanatics who would eventually count the hundreds of times they'd seen it". He considered it more a "long-running social phenomenon" than a movie, rating it 2.5 out of 4 stars and describing Curry as "the best thing in the movie, maybe because he seems to be having the most fun" but thinking the story would work better performed on stage for a live audience. Bill Henkin noted that "Variety" thought that the "campy hijinks" of the film seemed laboured, and also mentioned that the "San Francisco Chronicle" John Wasserman, who had liked the stage play in London, found the film "lacking both charm and dramatic impact". "Newsweek", in 1978, called the film "tasteless, plotless and pointless".