| There’s something indescribably different about Midnight Movies. Any film can be screened at midnight, of course; that’s not what I mean. I’m referring to the shows that get huge lineups of dedicated fans and confused newcomers, all strangely wired with anticipation, whenever such shows are revived.
Classic examples include Freaks (1932), El Topo (1970), The Harder They Come (1972), Eraserhead (1977), Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), Pink Flamingos (1972), and, naturally, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). A lot of these films date from the 1970s and earlier – this is the era when Midnight Movies hit their peak, as theatres put their edgier, riskier films on the late bill with less advertising, and then sat back and let word-of-mouth do its thing. The phenomenon is much rarer now, perhaps another casualty of the video age. Enjoyable flicks like The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2001) and Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter (2001) probably would have been great Midnight Movies back in 1983 or so. Today, if one hears about these bizarre gems, it’s much simpler just to rent them.
A movie audience behaves much differently after midnight, particularly if the crowd is big and excited. I suspect that the main difference between a midnight audience and a "normal" one is that a midnight audience seems less in control of its reactions. Late at night, you’re more likely to laugh, shriek, groan, snort, cheer, boo, fall asleep or talk back to the screen than you ordinarily would. An example from my past: back in the early ‘90s, I spent eight months living in Banff, where midnight screenings at the Lux Cinema occurred every long weekend. Everybody went. (That’s barely an exaggeration – the whole town would squeeze into the Lux and have a great time.) The place filled up quickly, and latecomers sat on the floor.
The first movie I saw there was Misery (1990), and when Oscar winner Kathy Bates hefted that sledgehammer to "hobble" James Caan, the entire audience made a noise of shock and horror the likes of which I’d never heard before. I made the sound too – I was part of this group, and it wasn’t something I was in control of. Later, I saw The Silence of the Lambs (1991) under the same circumstances, with the same results. The entire cinematic experience just seemed magnified.
I returned to Calgary with a taste for Midnight Movies, which the local art houses were happy to accommodate. The Plaza, Uptown and Globe provided me with such genuine midnight fare as The Holy Mountain (1973), A Clockwork Orange (1971), and Destroy All Monsters (1968), and I loved every minute.
Apart from "special advance screenings" of stuff like Batman Begins and Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, midnight screenings are a bit thin these days. Fortunately, they’re not extinct yet. On June 24, the Plaza theatre held a midnight screening of Turkish Star Wars (a.k.a. The Man Who Saves the World) (1982) that was an absolute triumph. With barely any advertising at all, this film managed to fill the Plaza almost to capacity. Turkish Star Wars isn’t widely available on video, so the audience was composed of fans who’d downloaded it, cineastes who had heard of it but could never find it, curious Star Wars fans, and lots of unsuspecting friends dragged along for the ride. Since the film makes no sense whatsoever, and all of the dialogue is in Turkish (with hilarious English subtitles), the audience felt free to chat, and a steady murmur of appreciative voices was heard throughout the screening. Bursts of uncontrollable laughter were pretty much nonstop, and when the curtain finally fell, there was a round of heartfelt applause. At two in the morning, much of the crowd was still on the sidewalk in front of the theatre, happily chatting about the bizarre spectacle they’d just witnessed.
Theatres are still willing to screen cult movies at midnight, and there seems to be an audience for them – it just has to be the right movie. In order to drag people away from their DVD players and keep them up so late, a film has to be hard to find on video, but should possess a considerable cult following or reputation so it’s something that is fun to see with a large crowd. How about Infra-Man (1975)? |
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