CULT FOR A CAMPY FLICK SHRINKS, GROWS YOUNGER

Eddie Patterson clutched a small bag of rice tucked in the pocket of his stained tuxedo jacket--his “combat coat”--and ruefully stared at the line trailing from the Balboa Cinema’s ticket booth.

Like almost everyone gathered at the Newport Beach theater under a luminous half-moon, Patterson had left a comfortable home to catch a midnight screening of the cultish and campy “Rocky Horror Picture Show.” But unlike many of those waiting, he was no newcomer to this subculture ritual, and after seeing “Rocky Horror” more than 50 times during the past six years, Patterson felt he had a right to complain.

“It’s just not the same, not like it was,” he said as his girlfriend, Patty Echeverria, toyed with a plastic squirt bottle and nodded vigorously.

“You see, I first started coming in 1980, and people got much more involved then,” said the 28-year-old carpenter from Fountain Valley. “Those that were really into it came almost every week, got dressed up in the weird outfits and knew each other. But a lot of these,” he gestured to the growing line of mostly teen-agers, “they’re just kids who want to make a lot of noise and get each other wet. It’s the first time for most of them and it will probably be the last.”

Patterson added that the new breed of fans are more aggressive. He said he’s even seen fights break out in the aisles during some of the movie’s most lighthearted moments.

“Who can figure it out? Why would anyone want to slug anyone else during a comedy?” Patterson asked. “It makes me nervous, angry too.”

Sighing, Patterson looked to his friend for support. “Uh-huh,” Echeverria said solemnly, reflecting on her boyfriend’s remembrances of how it was. “I never went then, but Eric was there and he should know.” The 24-year-old Brea woman pointed the squirt bottle at him, and with her free hand, affectionately tickled his ribs.

Patterson knows every word of the movie’s script; it’s a requirement for a real fan. Beside, you have to remember the dialogue and the scenes to react properly. And at “Rocky Horror,” audience participation is the key. For example, fans use squirt bottles and water pistols to lampoon the film’s thunderstorm scene; they toss rice during the wedding sequence.

“It’s simple,” Patterson explained. “You get involved, you’re the entertainment, even more than the movie. The theater gets like a playground.”

The line began to move; the show would start in a few minutes. He shook his head. “It’s good, but it’s still not as good as it used to be. It used to be great.”

When “Rocky Horror” was first released by 20th Century Fox in 1975, the response to the comedy rock musical about a square couple’s wedding night with a band of transvestites from Transexual, Transylvania, was mild. But within a few years, word spread through the fringe, especially in the fad centers of New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and a cult was born.

Through the late 1970s and early ‘80s, many theaters recognized the drawing potential of the low-budget film and began showing it during midnight specials. Fans would appear, some almost every weekend, in elaborate dress-up and enjoy the audience participation. The Balboa Cinema was no different.

Other Orange County theaters, such as the Fox in Fullerton, have screened “Rocky Horror” intermittently, but the Balboa Cinema is considered to have the longest running affair with it. In fact, the movie has been a staple every Friday and Saturday for the past seven years, said Eric Levin, the theater’s general manager. That’s more than 700 performances, with no end in sight.

“It’s been very good to us, and as long as it makes money, we’ll keep playing it,” Levin said.

The 360-seat theater, which plays art films during the rest of the week, usually reaches two-thirds capacity (about 240 people) during screenings of “Rocky Horror” he noted. At $5 per person, (recently raised from $4), the Balboa Cinema makes a pretty good profit, even after it pays 20th Century Fox a small percentage of the gross for the print rental.

But Levin also says things have changed. The crowds are not quite as large as during the peak years, and there aren’t as many regulars as before. Gone also are the outlandish costumes and heavy face makeup that mimicked “Rocky Horror’s” incredible characters: Dr. Frank N. Furter, the transvestite scientist played by Tim Curry; his creation, Rocky; Frank-n-Furter’s associates, Riff Raff, Magenta and Columbia, and the naive couple, Brad and Janet, played by Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon.

“Every now and then someone will come in wearing a costume, but it’s fairly infrequent,” he said. “We still get a few regulars, but many have heard about what goes on (during the show) and are just curious. There tends to be a lot of new faces.”

New young faces. Where crowds used to be in their 20s, Levin said, most of the audience is now from 15 to 18. Instead of “Rocky Horror” regalia, they wear the street costumes of the day: short-cropped surfer hair, loose T-shirts and the ubiquitous baggy “jams” shorts for the boys; spiky hair, short skirts and clinging tops for the girls. Tans dominate. The red in the cheeks is more from too much beach sun than too much rouge.

But the attraction is still basically the same: zany, freewheeling fun and, as Levin puts it, “the chance to get away from parents and let off a lot of steam.”

Patterson’s doubts aside, most of the young crowd appears to know what they’re doing. Despite the dearth of costumed role-playing at a recent screening, bottles were squirting on cue, rice was pelting the screen and the audience gave a dedicated, if sometimes haphazard, reciting of key comic lines.

“It really doesn’t take much sweat to fake the words to ‘Time Warp’ (a crowd-favorite vaudevillian song-and-dance number),” observed Doe Walters, 17, of Huntington Beach, wearing a purple T-shirt with “Punk is Dead” scribbled across the front. “If you don’t know them, all you have to do is scream and jump around in the aisles. That’s easy.”

Her companion, Rick Lopez, 18, of Newport Beach, added, “I’ve come probably five times, and I get lost. But even if you don’t know when (to react), you just pay attention to everyone else and jump in when they do. It’s a kick.”

Summer is the big season for “Rocky Horror,” at least at the Balboa Cinema. Many out-of-school teen-agers, unable to find much to do at night, except perhaps cruise and find parties, look for late entertainment. They find it, too, sometimes at the theater’s expense.

Levin believes that the crowds, besides getting younger, are also becoming more mischievous, with a “small minority” turning to vandalism. He is accustomed to having a “hell of a time” cleansing the theater of water and rice after a screening, but not to repairing seats that have been slashed and torn.

“Some of the kids have brought in sharp objects, I guess, and worked over the seats,” he lamented. “We’ve had to guard against that.”

The Balboa Cinema even had to close down one recent Saturday night after a Styrofoam cup was set afire by a fan and placed near the screen. The blaze caused little damage and authorities were not called, according to Levin. “It was obviously lit to cause some problems, and we’re lucky that it didn’t,” he said. “We really have to keep an eye on some of them.”

Then there’s the booze, Levin said. The theater routinely confiscates smuggled containers of wine, beer and other alcoholic beverages.

“I don’t like having to watch all the time, but we have to protect the theater,”Levin said

But Albert Ramirez, 19, of Long Beach disputes the volatility of the crowds. If his friends get rowdy, it’s only a form of self-expression, he said. Ramirez, a veteran of about 10 screenings, said he’s never seen anyone cut a seat or hurt another fan.

“People just want to believe we make more trouble,” Ramirez said, playing with the tiny crucifix hanging from his left ear. “Even if it isn’t true.”

It was shortly before 2 a.m. when the exhausted but noisy crowd began walking out of a recent screening. Walters, her wet hair matted, her T-shirt mottled with water stains, took a big breath when asked if she had fun.

“Yeah, it was pretty wild, more so than usual,” she said in a small voice, “but this guy behind me kept squirting my neck.”

Lopez, droplets glistening in his “buzz” crew cut, laughed, “I think he liked you. He was trying to pick you up.” They headed toward their car parked in a brightly lit lot near the beach, both vowing to return “in a month or two.”

Patterson and Echeverria, emerging from the theater arm in arm, also said they would be back.

“Like I said, I’ve been coming for six years now and probably won’t stop until they stop showing it. Things have changed, but my liking it hasn’t,” Patterson said.