Before 'indie' became a meaningless brand, renegade filmmakers such as Alejandro Jodorowsky, John Waters, George A Romero and David Lynch lived and breathed true independent spirit.
These directors crawled out of the shadows with confrontational and deeply personal films which mainstream distributors didn't know what to do with. This nascent breed of cinema needed a fresh approach. Enter Ben Barenholtz. He owned a 600-seat cinema in downtown New York called The Elgin. At one o'clock in the morning on December 18 1970 The Elgin premiered an unknown film called El Topo by Chilean-born director Alejandro Jodorowsky. Barenholtz's idea was simple: scrap all formal advertising and rely on word of mouth promotion. His plan worked. Soon stoned hipsters were queuing round the block. And many of them were returning week after week. The 'midnight movie' was born.
Barenholtz's savvy formula spread like wildfire. Across the US cult films started screening in the midnight hour to packed houses of wild-eyed students, artists and insomniacs. Droves of degenerates came out to witness the shit-eating denouement of John Waters' infamous Pink Flamingos. They danced in the aisles to Perry Henzell's reggae-gangster film The Harder They Come . And they sat scratching their heads through David Lynch's mind-melter Eraserhead.
Without this fertile midnight slot these films and their directors would have disappeared without a trace. But it didn't just give undiscovered talent a much-needed arena. It also resurrected long-forgotten gems like Tod Browning's sideshow fable Freaks and Ed Wood's gender-bender Glen Or Glenda and even gave mainstream flops like The Rocky Horror Picture Show a second life.
These directors crawled out of the shadows with confrontational and deeply personal films which mainstream distributors didn't know what to do with. This nascent breed of cinema needed a fresh approach. Enter Ben Barenholtz. He owned a 600-seat cinema in downtown New York called The Elgin. At one o'clock in the morning on December 18 1970 The Elgin premiered an unknown film called El Topo by Chilean-born director Alejandro Jodorowsky. Barenholtz's idea was simple: scrap all formal advertising and rely on word of mouth promotion. His plan worked. Soon stoned hipsters were queuing round the block. And many of them were returning week after week. The 'midnight movie' was born.
Barenholtz's savvy formula spread like wildfire. Across the US cult films started screening in the midnight hour to packed houses of wild-eyed students, artists and insomniacs. Droves of degenerates came out to witness the shit-eating denouement of John Waters' infamous Pink Flamingos. They danced in the aisles to Perry Henzell's reggae-gangster film The Harder They Come . And they sat scratching their heads through David Lynch's mind-melter Eraserhead.
Without this fertile midnight slot these films and their directors would have disappeared without a trace. But it didn't just give undiscovered talent a much-needed arena. It also resurrected long-forgotten gems like Tod Browning's sideshow fable Freaks and Ed Wood's gender-bender Glen Or Glenda and even gave mainstream flops like The Rocky Horror Picture Show a second life.
Director Stuart Samuels brings his 1983 book 'Midnight Movies: From The Margin To The Mainstream' to vivid life in this film. His written account was a detailed firsthand despatch from the smoky aisles of midnight screenings and here, in front of the camera, he gathers all the scene's movers and shakers to discuss their personal contributions and relive the experience.
Jodorowsky still seems genuinely bemused by the popularity of El Topo: "There were a lot of people who came to see El Topo 30 times! It's incredible, no? Really incredible." Romero comes across as having lost none of the revolutionary chutzpah that drove him to make Night Of The Living Dead in 1968. Lynch is, well, Lynch, but it is interesting to hear him acknowledge John Waters' support of Eraserhead. And Waters himself proves a perceptive commentator. "Midnight movies were about marijuana."
Critics and distributors are called on to flesh out the story with wider-themed ideas about the social and political atmosphere of the time. Roger Ebert of the 'Chicago Sun-Times' explains that, "at some point in the 1960s people became cynical. Midnight movies were the opening wedge in the birth of irony."
The Boston distributor Larry Jackson describes the reaction of students to The Harder They Come as something "like catching lightning in a jar." The most succinct point, however, comes from an excitable audience member leaving a Pink Flamingos screening: "John Waters has his finger on the pulse of America. He has his thumb up America's ass!" And that, in a nutshell, is why midnight movies became the phenomenon they did.
Jodorowsky still seems genuinely bemused by the popularity of El Topo: "There were a lot of people who came to see El Topo 30 times! It's incredible, no? Really incredible." Romero comes across as having lost none of the revolutionary chutzpah that drove him to make Night Of The Living Dead in 1968. Lynch is, well, Lynch, but it is interesting to hear him acknowledge John Waters' support of Eraserhead. And Waters himself proves a perceptive commentator. "Midnight movies were about marijuana."
Critics and distributors are called on to flesh out the story with wider-themed ideas about the social and political atmosphere of the time. Roger Ebert of the 'Chicago Sun-Times' explains that, "at some point in the 1960s people became cynical. Midnight movies were the opening wedge in the birth of irony."
The Boston distributor Larry Jackson describes the reaction of students to The Harder They Come as something "like catching lightning in a jar." The most succinct point, however, comes from an excitable audience member leaving a Pink Flamingos screening: "John Waters has his finger on the pulse of America. He has his thumb up America's ass!" And that, in a nutshell, is why midnight movies became the phenomenon they did.
Samuels' film successfully charts the midnight trend: from its shabby make-do origins to its full-blown counter-cultural heyday. It also documents its demise. The definition of mainstream shifted and Hollywood absorbed the midnight movie ethos: Jaws was a commercial reinvention of Night Of The Living Dead; big-event films like Star Wars fed into the fertile cult audience that midnight movies had created. The cross-pollination worked the other way as well: Lynch went on to studio projects like The Elephant Man and Waters is now a bankable and almost respectable name. Without doubt, though, VHS was the final nail in the midnight movie coffin.
The only real problem with this documentary is not the fault of the director. Since the publication of Samuel's book almost 25 years ago anyone with even a passing interest in cult films has been deluged with fanzines, books and articles devoted to the midnight movie genre and its key players. As a result, the film Midnight Movies: From The Margin To The Mainstream fails to say anything that hasn't already been said many times before. It is just as well that it never gets boring hearing it
The only real problem with this documentary is not the fault of the director. Since the publication of Samuel's book almost 25 years ago anyone with even a passing interest in cult films has been deluged with fanzines, books and articles devoted to the midnight movie genre and its key players. As a result, the film Midnight Movies: From The Margin To The Mainstream fails to say anything that hasn't already been said many times before. It is just as well that it never gets boring hearing it
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