Midnight Movies: From The Margin to The Mainstream DVD
Special 20th Anniversary release of Stuart Samuels’ Classic Cinema History
“A MARVELOUS DOCUMENTARY…. A celebration of cinema-going as a communal adventure with no real equivalent in the YouTubeverse.” – TIME OUT
Six cult classics. One midnight revolution.
The wild films that changed cinema forever. Discover how six midnight movie sensations broke rules, built cult followings, and reshaped film history — told by the creators, stars, and fans who made it happen.
The allegorical freak-out EL TOPO, the graphic horror of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, the outrageous filth fest PINK FLAMINGOS, outlaw reggae’s THE HARDER THEY COME, the phenomenal ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW and the darkly disturbing ERASERHEAD.
In this acclaimed documentary, discover the surprising stories behind the movies that defied mainstream America to change the world of cinema forever.
Featuring startling clips, rare archival footage and revealing interviews with the films’ directors, distributors and supporters, including John Waters, David Lynch, Roger Ebert, George Romero, Richard O’Brien, Alejandro Jodorowsky and many more.
Why I made MIDNIGHT MOVIES: FROM THE MARGIN TO THE MAINSTREAM
Stuart Samuels, Director/ Producer/Writer
As Roger Ebert says in MIDNIGHT MOVIES, “sometime in the 60’s people became cynical and ironic…and “Midnight Movies” were the opening wedge in the birth of irony.”
That is what attracted me to these films in the first place. When between 1970 and 1977 a small cluster of films pushed the boundaries of “bad taste,” re-wrote the rules for social and sexual “taboos.” What made them unique, was the fact that you could only see them at midnight.,
In 1981, I wrote a book on this cinematic phenomena, now, 25 years later, I have made it into a documentary. Although my medium is different–the message is the same. These handful of low budget, intensely personal visions, almost handmade films transformed the way we make and watch movies.
From A. Jodorowsky’s surrealist western, EL TOPO to George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, John Waters’ scandalous PINK FLAMINGOS, Jamaican Perry Henzell’s outlaw reggae movie, THE HARDER THEY COME, to the legendary ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, and the uniquely original work of David Lynch in ERASERHEAD—these midnight movies changed the face of independent and now mainstream cinema.
MIDNIGHT MOVIES:FROM THE MARGIN TO THE MAINSTREAM tells the hidden history of these “classics,” —through original interviews with the directors and creators of the films; with first hand accounts from the theater owners who programmed them (Ben Barenholtz), and especially from the audiences of disaffected youth culture, seen through archive footage, who got their weekly dose of filmic nihilism inside these darkened moviehouses.
At midnight in the early 1970’s, week after week, young audiences went to see the same films over and over again. Going to a MIDNIGHT MOVIE became an act of rebellion, a rite of passage for a whole youth generation in time of crisis.
In the 1970’s these films were made at the very margin of traditional culture, beyond the fringe—today—their ironic sense of humor, their flaunting of bad taste, their celebration of the grotesque and the bizarre, their championing of sexual diversity—have all become firmly established in mainstream American popular culture.
The journey from the margin to the mainstream starts with these first film flashes flickering inside these art house cinemas –watching 1970’s versions of WIZARD OF OZ –after midnight. MIDNIGHT MOVIES: FROM THE MARGIN TO THE MASINSTREAM is my celebration of their liberating spirits.