Midnight (1982)

Teenage girl runs away from home because police officer/stepfather puts the moves on her. Hitchhiking to California, she gets picked up by two guys who are also traveling cross-country. Along the way, they decide to camp out in the woods and run across a family of Satanists who keep their dead mother in the attic

A good book made for a bad movie.

Midnight (John Russo, 1982)

Oh, John Russo. I loved your novels when I was a teenager. I had every one of them. (In fact, I had them all up until a few years ago, and even now, I've only sold one.) When I first heard that two of them, Midnight and The Majorettes, had been turned into films, I champed at the bit to see them; after all, they're two of my three favorites. Let me ask you something. No, let me plead with you. If you ever decide that Black Cat needs a film adaptation-- and it surely does-- can you please, please allow an indie company with a proven track record to do it? Because I'm sorry, but your movies are nowhere near as good as your novels, no matter how many Night of the Living Dead alumni you rope in to help.

The story: after an opening scene that will make no sense to you until we're long into spoiler territory, we are introduced to Nancy Johnson (Melanie Verlin), a teen who's finally had more than enough of home life after her constantly-drunk stepfather puts the moves on her (again, we are led to infer). She runs away, gets picked up by a couple of college boys headed for Florida, and goes along for the ride. All goes well until the teen trio decide to stop and heist groceries in the wrong small town, running afoul of local law enforcement and a deranged family of Satan-worshippers. (Yes, there's a connection, but how, I can't tell you.) Meanwhile, the stepfather (Lawrence Tierney, surely in the nadir of his career), having sobered up and realized what a donkey he's been, sets off to find his stepdaughter, beg her forgiveness, and get her to come home.

It really is a good book. Yeah, it's cheesy as all get-out, but hey, it's an eighties horror novel, what do you expect? It's got all the trappings you need for a good, quick read, doesn't require any mental effort, and is as predictable and oddly satisfying as any Harlequin romance, just with a lot more blood. But you take a genre potboiler and add a film crew for whom "amateur" would be putting it mildly, and you've got something... well, awful. The acting is atrocious, even from the legendary Tierney. The direction is about what you'd expect from a guy working on no budget and doing his second feature, but without any of the zeal that has been so thankfully present in many of today's microbudget horror flicks. (Okay, "many" may be pushing it, but there have certainly been a few.) The soundtrack, well, it must be heard to be believed.

I can't even consider recommending this to anyone but the most rabid John Russo completist. And that would be me. I assume, since you're reading this, that you're probably #2 or #3 on the list (how many of us can there possibly be?). Trust me-- I watched this so you don't have to. *
April 1, 2008

The Worst!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

John Russo wrote co-wrote a little chiller called "Night Of The Living Dead" and then turned to writing books. Among them a novelization of that movie and then he wrote several good "pulp" horror novels that were gory and always ended very bleakly. I read them all(and past them on to friends in school,yes in the 80's we did read books that weren't on a list of "have to" by the school system) and I thought that "Midnight" was one of the better ones he wrote. It was dark , scary, and had one scene in it that chilled me to the 13 year old bones when I read it. So watch this movie was a slam dunk,I mean the Author wrote and Directed it, what could go wrong? EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The plot was hacked to pieces(yes I know , the pun was meant), and in it's place was put a basic slasher movie. What's that smell it's this movie on the bottom of my shoe! Just awful!!!!!!!!!!!
If you can find it at a used book store somewhere,get the book and see what this could have been. Really , READ THE BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!! March 29, 2007

Classic Russo solo effort has its ups and downs

This is one of those movies that gets reviews from various ends of the spectrum from love to hate. Most movie/video guides rate it pretty low. Fangoria magazine would probably give it a rave review if were gorier. For myself, I fall in between. 'Midnight' was made for a paltry budget of $35,000 by 'Night of the Living Dead' co-writer/producer John Russo and is probably his best solo effort. I found the movie to be enjoyable but not great. The plot involves a high school girl, Nancy, who runs away from home after an encounter with her drunken stepfather (played by Lawrence Tierney) who wants to be more than friends. Nancy plans (rather abruptly) to hitchhike to California to stay with her sister in college (this story takes place in Pennsylvania). She is given a lift by a pair of college buddies heading to Florida. Disagreement does arise among the buddies as one of them likes her while the other does not care to be transporting jailbait; neither is aware that she is a runaway. None of them will expect the chain of events one of their actions sets off. This is just a setup for the movie. Rather than spoil it for you, I will just tell you that it involves a backwoods family, satanists, kidnappings, some bad acting, and a few shocking scenes. I saw it when it came out at the theatre and own a copy on VHS. When it came out a movie critic picked this as his stinker of the week. One criticism of his was without merit involving a bar scene in the movie. In the scene several of the occupants of the bar are openly racist toward one of the college buddies who is black; as a matter of fact most of the residents of this small community are backward racists. He felt that the racism was overblown for the time because we as a people had grown past that type of behavior (this movie was released in the early 80's when a lot of people liked to believe racism was a thing of the past). I did agree with his other criticism; there is quite a bit of duplication in this movie. If you have seen a lot of horror movies (let's be blunt; 'Psycho', 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre') then you have seen some of this before. If you fall into this category, then you will not find too much originality here. And even though I fall into this category, I still find it entertaining; just not great. 'Midnight' has been unavailable for some time as it was previously only released on VHS, and to video stores only. The old VHS copy would command quite a price, and was frankly not worth it. Now that it is available on DVD, it is much more affordable.--Bob October 15, 2006

A Bad Movie

What I originally sought out to get when I rented this was the 1981 slasher "Midnight Evil", which is what I thought this was. When I read the synopsis on the back of the box, however, I saw that this was an entirely different movie. But it sounded so exciting, I decided to get it anyway. I was expecting a raw, brutal Hills Have Eyes/Texas Chainsaw Massacre type thing. In alot of ways, it is, buts its totally devoid of scares. There is a family of giggly crazy, satanic kooks who terroize and murder innocent people in the muddy backwoods of Pennsylvania to please thier dead mother. The main victims are a group of "teens"--2 guys and a girl--traveling around in a blue van who shoplift groceries on thier way to Florida. The girl Nancy, who we are soppoused to believe is 17 years but looks like a 35 year old housewife, is running away from her stepfather who tried to rape her. It's a confused, dim, very poorly made piece of trash free of any scares with unimpressive though bloody kills. It literally looks as if a young college film student assembled a bunch of friends and family members together and pieced together a project in his spare time using a cheap camera with alot of cherry Kool-Aid on hand (though the special effects are soppousedly Tom Savaini's doing. He should be ashamed). The climatic satanic ritual scene looks like it was taken right out of an Ed Wood film. All this is soppoused to be taking place around Easter, but this was obviously shot in the middle of fall. I could go on and on about this films ineptness, but all I really have to tell you is that it's a waste of time. June 25, 2006

"Midnight" had potential, but is poorly executed resulting in a garbage product.

"Midnight" is a movie about a girl who runs away from home to escape her stepfather who tried to have his way with her one night. She catches a ride with a couple of losers and some of the worst music ever created ensues as the trio goes from place to place stealing groceries on their way to Fort Lauderdale. Well, they never get there because along the way, they camp out in the wrong place. At this point, it appears that this movie is going to try and rip-off "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and in a sense, it does. We have the weird clan out in the middle of nowhere, a mother's corpse and a bunch of redneck-killers. However, there is a slight twist to this plot...these people are not just killers, but they are satanists as well. Sounds like a decent movie, huh? Unfortunately, it is not because the acting is absolutely horrendous. The direction and production values are of the poorest quality I've ever seen.

Basically, "Midnight" just comes across as artificial as the acting is wooden and completely without spirit or charisma, and the result is a very lackluster and uncompelling viewing experience. The sad thing about this movie is that the special effects by Tom Savini are very good and the plot is good too, but the script is poorly executed. You have to have competent actors to make a decent movie...I am not talking about Lawrence Olivier talent here, but you just can't throw in some talentless people expect to make a good movie...I don't care how good the plot is. This movie would be a good candidate for a remake because you cannot execute this script any worse than it was done in this movie.

If you decide to watch "Midnight", please be advised that the first thirty minutes of this movie is absolute garbage...the music is enough to make you want to take the DVD out and break it into a thousand pieces. Eventually, however, you see some good kills in this movie as a result of the brilliance of Tom Savini. Still, that's not enough to carry this movie to respectability because of the atrocious acting, direction and production values that are so clearly evident as the viewer watches this movie. The really sad thing about "Midnight" is that the movie could have been pulled off with the right cast, direction and a little more time, money and effort put into it. June 25, 2006

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