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Thanks. RHPS is something I will probably watch at some point as a matter of due diligence; I have turned a new leaf and try not to ventilate my opinions with regard to movies I've not seen. I have started it a couple of times over the years but have always been put off by its celebration of insanity and moral chaos. If I were to watch it now, it would be in the spirit of opposition research. Joel Gray's turn as the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret is as far into that milieu as I want to venture, and I thought that was brilliantly done.

The movie Cabaret, of course, tidies things up considerably. There have been much darker treatments, not as easy a watch but truer to the realities of the debauched Weimar scene. This one is not as enjoyable -- it's not meant to be -- but it's more honest and is also brilliantly done: Jane Horrocks as Sally Bowles in stage adaptation of Cabaret

The inspiration for Christopher Isherwood's Sally Bowles was Jean Ross, a British girl from a wealthy family who rebelled against all conventions and moral codes, spent her youth in the Weimar sewers, and came back home to become a prominent member of the British communist party, so a Stalin worshiper. Pathways to hell .... Jean Ross apparently hated Sally Bowles' treatment in the play, and she hated the movie adaptation. I don't think she would have liked the Jane Horrocks interpretation either.

Liza Minnelli found a different path to hell (following her mother's example) and became a grotesque. I'll withhold comment on RHPS until I've seen it, but the glamorization of evil is not something that attracts me, even if it's done in the spirit of campy comedy because ... well, you know, liberation and all that stuff.