Midnight movie

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the film genre. For the screwball comedy starring Claudette Colbert, see Midnight (1939 film). For the Los Angeles–based band, see Midnight Movies. For the 2008 horror film, see Midnight Movie (film).
Tod Browning's Freaks (1932) can be considered an example of the sort of (then) obscure horror film shown on late-night TV beginning in the 1950s; in the 1970s and early 1980s it was a staple of midnight screenings at theaters around the U.S.[1]

The term midnight movie is rooted in the practice that emerged in the 1950s of local television stations around the United States airing low-budget genre films as late-night programming, often with a host delivering ironic asides. As a cinematic phenomenon, the midnight screening of offbeat movies began in the early 1970s in a few urban centers, particularly in New York City with screenings of El Topo at the Elgin Theater, eventually spreading across the country. The screening of non-mainstream pictures at midnight was aimed at building a cult film audience, encouraging repeat viewing and social interaction in what was originally a countercultural setting.

The national success of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the changing economics of the film exhibition industry altered the nature of the midnight movie phenomenon; as its association with broader trends of cultural and political opposition dwindled in the 1980s, the midnight movie became a more purely camp experience—in effect, bringing it closer to the television form that shares its name. The term midnight movie is now often used in two different, though related, ways: as a synonym for B movie, reflecting the relative cheapness characteristic of late-night movies both theatrically and on TV, and as a synonym for cult film.[2]

History

On television

In 1953, the Screen Actors Guild agreed to a residuals payment plan that greatly facilitated the distribution of B movies to television.[3] A number of local television stations around the United States soon began showing inexpensive genre films in late-night slots; these late-night slots were after the safe-harbor time, meaning they were largely exempt from Federal Communications Commission regulations on indecent content. In the spring of 1954, Los Angeles TV station KABC expanded on the concept by having an appropriately offbeat host introduce the films: for a year on Saturday nights, The Vampira Show, with Maila Nurmi in her newly adopted persona of a sexy bloodsucker ("Your pin-down girl"), presented low-budget movies with black humor and a low-cut black dress. The show—which ran at midnight for four weeks before shifting to 11 p.m. and, later, 10:30 p.m.—aired horror pictures like Devil Bat's Daughter and Strangler of the Swamp and suspense films such as Murder by Invitation, The Charge Is Murder, and Apology for Murder.[4] The format was echoed by stations across the country, who began showing their late-night B movies with in-character hosts such as Zacherley and Morgus the Magnificent offering ironic interjections.

As Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, Cassandra Peterson presented late-night movies on the Movie Macabre series.

A quarter-century later,

Retro Television Network) and, as of 2013, originates from WBBZ-TV. In the 2000s, horror-oriented late-night movie programming has disappeared from many broadcast stations, though B pictures, mostly of a melodramatic nature, are still widely used in post–prime time slots. The small America One broadcast network distributes the Macabre Theatre movie package hosted by Butch Patrick, known for his portrayal of Eddie Munster on the 1960s show The Munsters. In 2006, Turner Classic Movies began airing cult films as part of its new late-night series, TCM Underground.[7]

In the United Kingdom, the BBC launched a regular late night movie slot on Saturday nights on BBC Two. From Saturday August 20, 1966, BBC Two started to air a "Midnight Movie" every Saturday night on the channel. The first "Midnight Movie" was "Blind Date" starring Hardy Krüger. The Midnight Movie would air every Saturday night on BBC Two, and would continue through the 1970s. The Midnight Movie was an attempt by the BBC to provide a late night alternative, when the two other channels BBC One and ITV would normally end their Saturday programming at around 12-midnight. This was partly due to the restrictions imposed on the broadcasting hours of both BBC and ITV by the British government, normally no more than 8 hours in a given day. As BBC Two did not broadcast a large amount of daytime programming, they had plenty of hours to spare to remain on the air late into the night, especially on a Saturday, thus the creation of the "Midnight Movie" strand was started. Most of the films aired were at least a decade old, but from 1967 nearly all of the films broadcast were made in color, as BBC Two became the first UK channel in 1967 to transmit color television. It is also noted however, that the "Midnight Movie" never actually started at Midnight. The movie was designed to air "through" the midnight hour, and could start as early as 11.15pm. By 1983 the "Midnight Movie" strand was abandoned by BBC Two, with BBC One airing a late night movie on a Friday night instead, usually a horror film. The "Midnight Movie" slot on BBC Two would be replaced with late night sporting coverage or different genre of films on occasions, which would not use the "Midnight Movie" strand.

In the cinema

Midnight screening from 1958 for the double-feature, Giant from the Unknown and She Demons.

Since at least as far back as the 1930s,

Rolling Stones concert, "inaugurat[ed] the midnight movie cult at the Elgin Theatre."[11] The Elgin, in New York City's Chelsea
neighborhood, would soon become famous as a midnight venue when it gave the U.S. premiere of a very unusual Mexican movie directed and written by a rather Dalí-esque Chilean.

The movie generally recognized as igniting the theatrical midnight film movement is

industrial films in Pittsburgh at the time.[16]

Trailer for Pink Flamingos (1972), showing testimonials from the film after a midnight screening.

Shot over the winter of 1971–72,

John Waters's "filth epic" Pink Flamingos, featuring incest and coprophagia, became the best known of a group of campy midnight films focusing on sexual perversions and fetishism.[17] Filmed on weekends in Waters's hometown of Baltimore, with a mile-long extension cord as a power conduit, it was also crucial in inspiring the growth of the independent film movement.[18] In 1973, the Elgin Theater started midnight screenings of both Pink Flamingos and a crime drama from Jamaica with a remarkable soundtrack. In its mainstream release, The Harder They Come (1972) had been a flop, panned by critics after its U.S. distributor, Roger Corman's New World Pictures, marketed it as a blaxploitation picture. Rereleased as a midnight film, it screened around the country for six years, helping spur the popularity of reggae in the United States. While the midnight-movie potential of certain films was recognized only some time after they opened, a number during this period were distributed to take advantage of the market from the beginning—in 1973, for instance, Broken Goddess, Dragula, The White Whore and the Bit Player, and Elevator Girls in Bondage (as well as Pink Flamingos) had their New York premieres at midnight screenings.[19] Other examples (albeit animated) during this time were Ralph Bakshi's 1972 debut feature Fritz the Cat based on the Robert Crumb comic of the same name and Sally Cruikshank's 1975 experimental short Quasi at the Quackadero.[20][21][22][23]

Around this time, the black comedy

Boxoffice reported, "as do those dealing with outer space and fantasy". The trade paper noted one popular midnight film by name: Alice's Restaurant (1969), a comedy with political overtones starring folk singer Arlo Guthrie.[25]

David Lynch's 1977 feature debut Eraserhead found an audience through midnight screenings.

On the midnight following April Fool's Day 1976,

20th Century Fox had approximately two hundred prints of the movie in circulation for midnight shows around the country.[19] Beginning in 1978, the Waverly developed another midnight success that was much smaller commercially, but more significant artistically: Eraserhead, originally distributed the previous year. A model of shoestring surrealism, David Lynch's feature debut (which played alongside Susan Pitt's 1979 animated short Asparagus)[27][28][29]
reaffirmed the midnight movie's most central traditions.

Decline

The commercial viability of the sort of big-city arthouse cinemas that launched outsider pictures for the midnight movie circuit began to decrease in the late 1970s, as broad social and economic shifts weakened their countercultural base. Leading midnight movie venues were beginning to fold as early as 1977—that year, New York's Bijou switched back permanently to the live entertainment for which it had been built, and the Elgin, after a brief run with gay porn, shut down completely.

VCR and the expansion of movieviewing possibilities on cable television meant the death of many additional independent theaters. While Rocky Horror soldiered on, by then a phenomenon unto itself, and new films like House (1977),[31] Up in Smoke (1978),[31] The Warriors (1979),[20] Altered States (1980),[20] Forbidden Zone (1980, released 1982),[32] The Evil Dead (1981),[20] Heavy Metal (1981),[20] Mommie Dearest (1981),[33] Liquid Sky (1982), Pink Floyd – The Wall (1982),[14] Repo Man (1984),[20] Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)[31] and Akira (1988)[20]—all from mainstream distributors—were picked up by the midnight movie circuit, the core of exhibitors that energized the movement was disappearing. By the time the fabled Orson Welles Cinema in Cambridge, Massachusetts, shut its doors after a fire in 1986,[34]
the days of the theatrical midnight movie as a significant countercultural phenomenon were already past.

Legacy

In 1983, film critics J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum released a book about midnight movies simply titled Midnight Movies.[31]

In 1988, the midnight movie experience was institutionalized in a new manner with the introduction of the Toronto International Film Festival's nightly Midnight Madness section.[35] In the years since, new or recent films still occasionally emerge as midnight movie "hits" on the circuit of theaters that continue to show them. The most successful of the 1990s generation were the Oscar-winning Australian drag queen road saga The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) and the 1995 Razzie-winning stripper drama Showgirls.[20] One of the theaters to show it regularly at midnight was New York's Waverly (also now closed), where Rocky Horror had played for a house record ninety-five weeks. A celebrated episode of television's The Drew Carey Show features a song-and-dance battle between Rocky Horror fans (led by Drew Carey) and Priscilla fans (led by Mimi Bobeck).

Since the turn of the millennium, the most notable successes among newly minted midnight movies have been Donnie Darko (2001)[36] and The Room (2003).[14] Older films are also popular on the circuit, appreciated largely in an imposed camp fashion—a midnight movie tradition that goes back to the 1972 revival of the hectoring anti-drug movie Reefer Madness (1936).[37] (Tod Browning's 1932 horror classic Freaks, the original midnight movie revival, is both too dark and too sociologically acute to readily consume as camp.) Where the irony with which Reefer Madness was adopted as a midnight favorite had its roots in a countercultural sensibility, in the latter's place there is now the paradoxical element of nostalgia: the leading revivals on the circuit currently include the crème de la crème of the John Hughes oeuvre—The Breakfast Club (1985), Pretty in Pink (1986), and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)—and the preteen adventure film The Goonies (1985).[38] As of late 2006, Rocky Horror itself continues to play on a weekly basis at thirty-two venues around the country, and at least once a month at about two dozen others.[39]

Two popular midnight movies made during the phenomenon's heyday have been selected to the National Film Registry: Eraserhead (inducted 2004) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (inducted 2005). Midnight movie staples Freaks (1932) and Night of the Living Dead (1968) were inducted in 1994 and 1999 respectively. Harold and Maude, a cult film before it was adopted as a midnight movie, was also inducted in 1997. Also in the mix are Quasi at the Quackadero (inducted 2009) and Pink Flamingos (inducted 2022).[40]

See also

References

  1. ^ Patterson (2007).
  2. ^ See, e.g., Conrich (2006).
  3. ^ Heffernan (2004), p. 161.
  4. ^ The Vampira Show Archived 2006-08-18 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 11/14/06.
  5. ^ See Gibron (2006) for a detailed analysis of the Elvira persona and Movie Macabre.
  6. ^ See, e.g., Elvira's Movie Macabre Archived 2006-11-12 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 11/14/06.
  7. ^ See TCM Underground: Films—Archive Archived 2007-04-10 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 12/19/06.
  8. ^ Schaefer (1999), pp. 124–125.
  9. ^ Heffernan (2004), p. 61.
  10. ^ Wood (2004).
  11. ^ Lachman (2001), p. 305.
  12. ^ Greenspun (1971).
  13. ^ Hoberman and Rosenbaum (1983), pp. 80, 95. For a detailed synopsis of the film, see El Topo Archived 2006-04-27 at the Wayback Machine (note the film's Elgin premiere is misdated).
  14. ^ a b c The 15 Best Midnight Movies of All Time - Taste of Cinema
  15. ^ Hoberman and Rosenbaum (1983), p. 95.
  16. ^ Klawans, Stuart (13 February 2018). "Night of the Living Dead: Mere Anarchy Is Loosed". The Criterion Collection.
  17. ^ Waters (2006).
  18. ^ Pink Flamingos Production Notes. Retrieved 11/15/06.
  19. ^ a b Hoberman and Rosenbaum (1983), p. 13.
  20. ^ a b c d e f g h The 50 Greatest Midnight Movies of All Time - Flavorwire
  21. ^ Midnight Movies (trailer) on Vimeo
  22. ^ Sally Cruikshank - Lambiek Comiclopedia
  23. ^ Sally Cruikshank: A Career Retrospective, Part 1 — Art of the Title
  24. ^ See Hoberman and Rosenbaum (1983), p. 298.
  25. ^ "Midnight Shows a Big Success in Milwaukee." Boxoffice Feb. 3, 1975, p. NC-3
  26. ^ See History of the Rocky Horror Picture Show and Rocky Horror Timeline. Retrieved 11/14/06.
  27. ^ Fever Dreamer: Susan Pitt's Feminist Fantasies|The Current|The Criterion Collection
  28. ^ Suzan Pitt Collection - Collection - Harvard Film Archive
  29. ^ MUBI Collection: SUZAN PITT: HER FEMINIST DREAMHOUSE|MUBI
  30. ^ Bijou Theatre; Elgin Theatre. Retrieved 11/15/06.
  31. ^ a b c d In the Midnight Hour: A History of Late-Night Movies - Academy Museum
  32. ^ Forbidden Zone|AV Club
  33. ^ How ‘Mommie Dearest’ Went From Oscar Bait to Cult Classic|Collider
  34. ^ Remembering the Orson Welles Cinema, 50 years later - The Boston Globe
  35. ^ Corliss and Catto (2007).
  36. ^ The New Cult Canon: Donnie Darko|AV Club
  37. ^ See Hoberman and Rosenbaum (1983), pp. 261–262. For their consideration of Freaks as part of the early midnight movie phenomenon, see pp. 3, 95, 99, 295–297.
  38. ^ Beale (2005).
  39. ^ Rocky Horror Showings List. Retrieved 06/27/08.
  40. ^ Brief Descriptions and Expanded Essays of National Film Registry Titles|Film Registry|Library of Congress

Sources

Published
Online—Authored
Online—Archival

External links

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