Midnight Movies: From The Margin To The Mainstream
Re: The tradition carried on in the ever-popular Midnight Madness series
Posted by: Task, September 18, 2005 04:36 PM
Friday, September 16 2:45 PM CUMBERLAND 3
This was a "talking with pictures" entry and the main feature here is a documentary about how in the early 70's El Topo began the whole "midnight movies" thing. A good look at the six most influential/successful midnight movies and, more importantly, the audiences that attended them.
Filled with solid facts on the movies, the venues, the directors, and everything that went into creating both the movies and the special time slot, it's certainly an informative documentary. The focus point of the movie though is that it's the audiences that made the movies good. Unsurprisingly, the documentary itself had nothing amazing to it, but seeing it with that audience was quite the experience. Many of the Midnight Madness regulars were there, along with the guest speakers who (being knowledgeable people in this area) I found to be intelligent and quite entertaining. I would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in the phenomenon. The only thing that was missing was Colin Geddes. I really have no idea why he wasn't there.
If you missed it, then all is not lost! They recorded most of it. I assume it will be a special feature on one of the cable channels sometime soon.