Midnight [Import]

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. 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. [A note on the price of this tape. This tape is out of print and was never released as other than a video store copy (meaning the price was kept high). This is a difficult tape to find. If you look at the auction sites and are patient, you may be able to find one for $10.00 or less (if you pay any more than that, you are paying too much). To keep you from getting a thousand hits by searching for 'midnight' in VHS, use the search words 'midnight' and 'russo' in an item description search. Keep in mind Amazon.com does have an auction area.]-Bob

I own this movie and loved it. It was definitely something unique and different. It was even a little more gorier than I expected it. I was glad when this classic was released on DVD. The only thing I don't like about the DVD release is that it is in Full Screen format. A Widescreen format of this movie would have been alot nicer. I can't imagine that the movie was filled in Full Screen.

In typical Lionsgate fashion, the movie is full screen unfortunately, but the transfer is decent, though somewhat grainy due to it being dated, but it actually adds to the experience. Special features? None. Movie any good? Kinda. Fans of John Amplas (from George Romero's 'Martin') would probably like it, though don't expect anything exceptional. It really does seem like a midnight movie to watch when you're bored enough.