Overview
The movie version of the song is performed by Richard O'Brien and lip synced, as the now-iconic pair of red lips, by co-star Patricia Quinn. In its original incarnation, The Rocky Horror Show, the song was 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 on stage during the number. For the filming of the opening sequence, Quinn's head had to be strapped to a board to keep it stationary for filming.
The song is made up of fragments from 1950s sub-genre 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 of the song for the feature film as indicated in the original script was to have film clips of each movie shown with a scratched aged effect overlay during the song and opening credits. The idea was dropped when it became apparent that the cost of acquiring the rights to these clips in 1974 was far too prohibitive.
Read more about this topic: Science Fiction/Double Feature