Rocky Horror Picture Show Secrets: Casting Tim Curry Over Mick Jagger, More

They filmed at Bray Studios, home of the classic Hammer horror films, on a $1 million budget.

“We were an hour outside of London,” Sarandon recalled to Entertainment Tonight in 2025, “the studio had no roof, it was January. I got a pneumonia almost immediately, as one does when they’re in their underwear, wet, in a freezing-cold studio.”

“When I see it,” she noted, “I think, ‘God, we must have had so much fun.’ But actually, it was quite difficult.”

Bostwick agreed, calling it “a miserable shoot.”

“I was always wet, I was in my underwear,” he told The Guardian, “and every 20 minutes, the prop guy was spraying me down with ice-cold water, because they apparently didn’t know how to heat up water in England at the time.”

Added Nell Campbell, who played tap-dancing servant Columbia, “We would have to hike to the bathrooms. And we were all being paid a very small amount.”