The 1975 film
The Rocky Horror Picture Show opens with a
title sequence of a disembodied mouth against a black background singing in homage to classic
science fiction films. (The image holds inspired impact of both the immobile lips fixed in a
Mona Lisa smile in
Man Ray's
surreal painting ''A l'heure de l'observatoire, les Amoureux'', and
Samuel Beckett's active isolated
mouth in his theatre work
Not I). The song is performed by composer/writer
Richard O'Brien (who portrayed Riff-Raff) and
lip synced, as the now-iconic pair of red lips, by co-star
Patricia Quinn (who played Magenta). Quinn's head had to be strapped to a board to keep it stationary while filming. In its original 1973 stage incarnation
The Rocky Horror Show, the song is performed by the character Magenta doubling as the credited role of "Usherette". This character took on the unofficial names of "Miss Strawberry Time", "Trixie" and the "Belasco Popcorn Girl" from props carried onstage during the number. The song's lyrics are composed of fragments from 1950s subgenre horror and science fiction films, and likened to that of
avant-garde artist
Tristan Tzara by author Vera Dika in her book,
Recycled Culture in Contemporary Art and Film. Tzara would construct poems by taking snippets of words from newspapers and placing them into a bag to randomly draw from and arrange. Instead, the words in "Science Fiction/Double Feature" are purposely made to rhyme with a set structure and set with phrases that create cohesion. The original concept for the feature film as indicated in the original script was to have clips of each film shown with a scratched aged effect overlay during the song and opening credits. This was scrapped when it became apparent that the cost of acquiring the rights to these clips in 1974 was far too prohibitive. The song is in the key of
A major, and the end reprise is in the key of
B♭ major. == Musical number ==