Midnight Movie Massacre

MIDNIGHT MOVIE MASSACRE (aka: ATTACK FROM MARS) is a cult movie wannabe that tries way too hard.

At some point in the 1950's an alien craft has landed behind a movie theater. The theater patrons include: 3 hoods, two geeks, an impossibly-endowed blonde and her boyfriend, A rotund woman and her pencil-necked date, a drunk, a hillbilly couple, and a girl who keeps pulling extremely long boogers out of her nose.

Sound exciting?

The "crowd" is there to see a fictional movie known as SPACE PATROL (with cameos from Bob Clarke and Ann Robinson). We are taken back and forth between the movie and those watching it, which is dull to the point of agony!

The alien monster is of little help, since the death rate is intolerably low. Not even "principal" players! Nope, booger woman isn't harmed!

This is a severe exercise in tedium, where time actually warps. You'll age 10 years in 90 minutes! Watch at your own peril...

My review was written in May 1988 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.

The potential of a knowing homage to '50 sci-fi is wasted in "Midnight Movie Massacre", a poorly scripted pastiche film. Even midnight bookings will be hard to come by for this one, which bears a 1986 copyright.

Pic actually is two films (often at odds) in one: the gory horror story of folks at the Granada Theater in 1956 being killed by a yucky, tentacled monster, and the movie serial "Space Patrol" (inspired by the actua tv series) that' playing there. An immediate problem in tone and style is that the horror footage combines idiotic slapstick with latter-day gross-out effects, while "Patrol" is a benign recreation of old sci-fi films. The two don't mix well.

Genre faves Robert Clarke and Ann ("War of the Worlds") Robinson topline with smallish roles in "Patrol", the episode "Back from the Future" dealing with a mad scientist and time travel. The cliched dialog is merely boring, meant to be corny, but not sharp or clever enough to be funny. Best touches are the careful simulation of '50s matte shot, cheapo models and junky robots (which dance) plus too-fleeting cameos by Robby the Robot and his predecessor Gort.

Surrounding film is mainly running gags (each one extended past the breaking point) involving stereotyped audience members. Promising jokes like the fat wife (played by a thesp named Charity Case) who eats a ton start well but peter out, and others (particularly a girl who can't stop sneezing) prove to be mere time-killers.

Acting ensemble fits the lampooning roles, while tech credits capture the spirit of the cheesy originals. Unfortunately, the naivete of the 1950s that made the sci-fi B's campy eludes this studied concoction.

I first saw this film on TV when i was about 10. I was watching it with some friends in a tent, and we had a huge extension cable running out the TV in the tent. oh we had such a cool night, eating biscuits, drinking coke, being scared of this film. Come to think of it, i dont think any of us were scared, but we were entertained. Doubtlessly if i watched this film now, 10 years later i would probably switch it off. But when i was 10, after that night, this film became only spoken of in whispers. This is how i want to remember it.

In this film you get two films for the price of one - neither of them particularly good. The film-within-a-film, "Space Patrol", is a mildly amusing (if not particularly well thought out) parody of vintage sci-fi serials. That in itself would be reason enough to avoid this trainwreck, but that's not the worst of it.

The wrap around film, "Midnight Movie Massacre", is a collection of ancient gags that would bore a fan of Mad Magazine. Imagine the lowest common denominator for film comedy, then take that down a notch or two, and you've got the level of humor in this putrid little pic. Everyone associated with this part of the movie, up to and including the clapper loader and craft service people, should be beaten unconscious with crowbars and never ever allowed to be within the vicinity of a movie set ever again. Ever.

I'm a huge fan of bad movies, b-movies, and spoofs of the above. Keep that in mind when I say; I found watching this movie to be *painful*. The level of humor is on a child's level, but I wouldn't show this movie to a child who's therapy I had to pay for. Worse; this is literally two bad movies in one...

There is the main story which attempts to be a "spoof" of a horror movie, and the film-within-film which is allegedly a spoof and/or reprise of the 50's classic TV serial "Space Patrol". Both fail miserably. The Space Patrol "homage" IN NO WAY evokes the old TV show, aside from lifting some of the character's names. Ann Robinson and Robert Clarke deserved better than this. I'll say this for it; it actually attempts to spoof of SF genre here and there. The killer robot's weakness was the only gag I laughed at in the entire movie. Still; it completely misses relating to Space Patrol or 50s TV SF.

The wrap-around horror movie "spoof" is so juvenile, the humor so pitiful; it's embarrassing just to watch... and I mean I *actually* felt embarrassed while watching it all by myself. Yeah, THAT embarrassing. Little or no thought to actually spoofing the genre, just a bad horror movie with a bunch of random gags tossed in. (I suspect the reason it was made was they probably couldn't complete the "space-patrol" film, and the rest was essentially padding.)

I was bored throughout. I have a collection of bad b-movies which I love like crazy, but you couldn't pay me to watch this again. Well... OK you *could*, but we're talking three figures at least.