DVD Review: Midnight Movies: From The Margin To The Mainstream

This came a day earlier than I was expecting so here we go...

DVD Review: Midnight Movies: From The Margin To The Mainstream (Stuart Samuels, 2005, USA).

I was going to see this at the Watershed last week as a precursor to El Topo. Then I found out that it was pretty much day-and-date with the DVD release. Which one to go for A tenner for the bus fare and cinema ticket or 15 quid to own it? Think I'll buy it thanks!
The midnight movies movement was something born out of a cultural shift in American life in the late 1960's. The hippy movement was dying out and the death's of JFK and Martin Luther King combined with the start of the Vietnam conflict was leading to a large series of riots between the authorities and the liberal sections of society. Midnight movies represented this counter-culture, the films that became synomonous with the feeling of the time amongst the marginalised sections of society. The most famous of these films are the one's featured on this film, El Topo, Night Of The Living Dead, Pink Flamingoes, Reefer Madness, The Harder They Come, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Eraserhead.
The Midnight Movies phenomena is an odd one to be sure. No matter how much they try within the documentary, the films examined have very little links between them. Many have common threads, that the films seem to be best enjoyed when under the influence of some sort of substance. I can confess that The Rocky Horror Picture Show is much better when enjoyed under the haziness of weed. However, this thread and the one they try to establish most when it comes to the prople who viewed these films cannot be used for, at the very least, Night Of The Living Dead or Eraserhead. Eraserhead in particular is something that I feel you have to have a clear mind just to tolerate, I cannot imagine how terrifying it could be if you were not fully mentally awake. Eraserhead is the one that signals the end of the movement and is the most strikingly different; the audiences were smaller and it was not a particpatory event and through this, its addition is somewhat puzzling. I would go so far to say that its inclusion is simply to give the documentary more credibility and with the prescence of David Lynch in the piece, I am sure it gained more viewers for this alone.
It may sound like I did not enjoy this documentary based on what I have said. That is not the case. The odd inclusion of Eraserhead aside, the content is both interesting and illuminating and strikes a very comfortable balance between information on the films themselves and their effects on the people showing them. These films provided what many felt was a refuge, a place where they could come together and experience something that cannot be possible in life. The interviewees they got for this is also impressive. The directors of all the films featured, Reefer Madness aside, are all present and correct as are the operators of the two foremost Midnight Movie cinemas, the Elgin and the Orson Welles. I say foremost, but I don't really know. And here we come to my second problem with the documentary. I cannot truly say I know that the films featured and the people interviewed are those that were truly the forerunners and the filmmakers who made this whole thing happen. Could it not be that they were just the people they could get? The film does not provide a lot of basis on which to belive that the films were such crossover hits as we are led to believe at the start of the piece. The sub-title "From The Margin To The Mainstream" is painfully misleading. El Topo, The Harder They Come (which I had not even heard of before watching this) and Eraserhead cannot ever be considered something the mainstream will recieve. That is the true flaw with the piece, it never gets to the heart of what the film is obstensibly about.
It's a short review, but I think I can't review too much when as a documentary, its job is to tell you things. I shouldn't tell them. What I will say is that it is well worth a watch but its not as illuminating as you may expect.

Video & Audio: It's a documentary so standard stuff. Good quality video with the interviews, varying quality with the clips.

Extras: You get 2 Midnight Movies in the package, Night Of The Living Dead and Reefer Madness. Both are here purely because they have no copyright, are public domain and if I wanted, I could show both on this website with no comeback. NOTLD is a classic movie and is as chilling and creepy tody as then, Reefer Madness I have not seen, but apparently its very funny.

Have not watched the other features, may do in the future.

Well worth watching if on TV, I will watch it again but I am a full blown geek.

Was my first day off in a while today, and quite crappy outside so I have been catching up on some movies. As well as this, I managed to watch John Carpenter's Assault On Precinct 13 for the first time and thoroughly enjoyed it. The child killing was shocking in its coldness and seemed to be an oddly explotative moment but that aside, a lean, mean, little number. I also watched Robert Wise's The Haunting, which really was as creepy as its reputation made out. Old-school frights and some crazy overacting and well worth a watch. Also watched the last third of The Pervert's Guide To Cinema, a very academic but visually arresting look at how our desires and fears are manifested on screen, something which I found engaging and a look at how Film Studies can be represented visually.
I'll be back probably tomorrow with a look at the apparently insane French black comedy Satan starring Vincent Cassell, star of such great works as La Haine, Le Appartment, and Doberman... and stinkers such as The Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions and Ocean's 12. Notice the difference between the great ones and the stinkers?