Midnight

A young girl who has just ran away from her stepfather after he attempts to force himself onto her runs into a family of backwoods crazies after she hitches a ride from two guys. Better acted then you would expect, with some good scare scenes and some exciting moments, still it suffers from an extremely low budget and starts to run out of steam in the second half. By the time it has reached the finale, it feels cold and by the numbers.

Rated R; Nudity, Graphic Violence, and Profanity.

(**1/2 out of *****) Actually, I'm not quite sure what to think about this movie -- it's very cheap-looking, the original songs have that terrible '70s/'80s cheesiness, it's cruel and sadistic (in the opening, pre-credits scene, for instance, a young girl is caught in a bear trap and beaten to death with a stick!), the acting's mostly pretty weak, and the dialogue is awful (honestly, it couldn't be more stiff if you added heavy starch.) Just the same, there's something so luridly compelling and skin-crawlingly depraved about the whole thing (particularly the second half) that I guess I can understand why it has become something of an underground cult favorite among people like -- well, hell -- among people like me. Nancy Johnson plays a teenager who, after almost getting raped by her alcoholic stepfather (Lawrence Tierney, who ends up being the hero!), runs away from home and is picked up by a couple of young shoplifters (John Hall and Charles Jackson) on their way to Daytona. Unfortunately for them, they get sidetracked along the way in the typical, backwoods, deep-South `town from Hell,' where racist townsfolk, murderous psychopaths and satanic hillbillies (including horror movie vet John Amplas) abound. There are disturbing religious undertones (the movie opens with Johnson, a lapsed Catholic, giving her confessions to a priest) that don't exactly sit well alongside graphic scenes of throats being sliced open and blood being drank at a black mass. Still, there's just enough of a creepy, claustrophobic sort of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" atmosphere to make this one worth sticking out to the grisly finale. The always-resourceful Tom Savini provided the bloody effects (mostly involving long butcher knives and gunshots to heads). Russo also wrote the book (and the screenplay) on which this movie is based, so he has no one to blame for the crummy, stilted dialogue but himself.

HIGHLIGHT: After a so-so first half, the movie takes a nightmarish turn as Johnson finds herself locked up in a dog cage with another girl, waiting to be sacrificed to Satan at midnight on Easter Sunday. Hey, that deserves half a star for some kind of originality.

My review was written in January 1983 after a screening at Liberty theater on Manhattan's 42nd St.

"Midnight" is a 1980 Pittsburgh-made horror thriller which, while lacking the scares of its many competitors, at least varies from the rigid format of recent shockers. Horror novelist John Russo, who scripted the Pittsburgh classic "Night of the Living Dead", develops enough twist on traditional Satanism and road movie formulae to keep the fans interested.

Heroine Nancy Johnson (Melanie Verliin) runs away from home when her cop stepdad (Lawrence Tierney) tries to rape her. Diverted from her goal of joining a sister in California by two young men who pick her up hitchhiking, she becomes a captive of a local family of devil worshipers who slate her for human sacrifice on midnight, Easter Sunday.

Familiar elements herfe include the devil cultist retaining their clan matriarch in mummified form (a la "Psycho") and the usual gimmick of a backwoods family preying on unsuspecting travelers. One switch is the emphasis upon the story's racial angles, with several black victims and local prejudice surfacing against the racially mixed trio on the road.

Special makeup effects by a top artist in the field Tom Savini are effective (particularly a realistic decapitation simulation), but the picture's low budget shows in unatmospheric, routine visuals, amateurish performance in small roles and a 1960s-style music track. Though the premise has heroine and her road buddies headed south, autumn locations (belying Easter Sunday premise) all look similar, evidently filmed within shouting distance of the Pittsburgh home base.

Forties star Lawrence Tierney has fun as the heroine's stepdad, veering from initial comical villainy to a stalwart protector in the final reel. Other leads, many of whom are familiar faces from George A. Romero films, perform functionally.

When drunken cop Bert Johnson (Lawrence Tierney) makes sexual advances towards his teenage stepdaughter Nancy (the rather boyish Melanie Verlin), she packs her bags and sets off to see her sister in California, hitching a ride with Tom and Hank (John Hall and Charles Jackson), two college students on their way to Florida (!?!?). After a night camping out under the stars, the trio fall foul of a family of redneck Satanists who are ritually sacrificing young women to try and resurrect their dead mother.

With a screenplay and direction from John A. Russo, writer of seminal horror classic Night of the Living Dead, and make-up effects from genre legend Tom Savini, one might reasonably expect Midnight to deliver the goods in terms of terror and gore, but sadly it fails to deliver on both counts: Russo's script, based on his own novel, suffers from a dreadfully dull first half and the guy is clearly no Romero when calling the shots behind the camera, consistently failing to deliver the requisite chills; Savini also disappoints, his gore FX on this project being far from his best work (I can only presume that he knocked them out on the cheap as a favour to Russo).

It's not all a total loss though: the film's pace picks up considerably once Nancy and pals meet the devil-worshipping backwoods clan (a memorable group consisting of two nutters posing as cops, a demented babe, and a fat guy in dungarees who can't stop laughing), and bonus points are scored for a willingness to tackle the taboo, a few surprisingly brutal deaths, and a cool grind-house vibe achieved through cruddy picture quality and a menacing, lo-fi synthesiser score (the horribly dated theme song, on the other hand, is simply atrocious and only serves to irritate).

5.5 out of 10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

The book of John Russo's 'Midnight' is a very taught, brief little thriller. The premise is an exciting one though. A young runaway, whom takes up with two college frat boys travelling cross country, runs into trouble with a satanic batch of siblings. This one line premise has all the makings of an excellent drive-in spectacular in the vain of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Race With the Devil, and The Last House on the Left. Not so surprising that it falls in line with such films as Russo was a co-writer of Night of the Living Dead, which set many genre standards in that period of time. Thus it further exemplifies the promise it does NOT add up to.

Sometimes the author has no business taking his material to a new medium, in this case novel to screen. Stephen King fared none to well with 'Maximum Overdrive' as well. 'Midnight' was probably around the time when producers were managing to get their hands back on final cut after the paramount decree, and with this film in particular, it's not hard to see why. The budget here is so non existent that it looks to have been filmed in someone's garage, and I guarantee you some of it probably, quite literally was. With more money, and some bigger producers putting some elbow grease into it, this could have worked much better. The novel wins you over right away, but here, Russo has no creative aspect to his direction. Just setting up a camera and filming. No tension to build up on, and without that, the shock moments are just as dull as the rest of the film. Also, he sets up a very poor and ineffective atmosphere. There is a total lack of vision for what the novel provides as an after school special gone to hell. This needed someone to oversee it on a more end-result basis to assure it was delivered properly and to the completed satisfaction of all parties involved.

The casting is WAY off save for Robin Walsh to rises emotionally AND physically to Cynthia as we are introduced to her in the book. Everyone else, including Romero alumni John Amplas, are simply thrown in and directed to move about as they're told, but with no clear motivation or actions driving what they're doing onscreen. The direction with them is totally uninspired and everyone looks like they'd rather be reading the original novel at the beach instead. Two or three of them (Ellie Wyler as Gwen) are downright horrendous to watch as they clearly have NO talent in this regard. I point out Ms. Wyler in specific because her character is supposed to be defiant and strong willed against the tormentors (Think Phyllis Stone in Wes Craven's 'The Last House on the Left). Here, the uncharacteristic Wyler is simply in a cage saying her lines to no distinction or direction. Very bland and embarrassingly cheap. More so obvious than anything else.

The film DOES have ONE thing going for it, the soundtrack! It features eerie organ music and a soft dark vocal Mass for the satanic rituals that fit quite properly. There is also a fun chirpy pop tune used repeatedly throughout as the theme, known as "Midnight Again". It is VERY addictive to hear and suits the novel much better than the film. Almost too good a thing to be heard here. Alas, moments with the score in tow are actually arousing and engaging enough but they are far and few in between the bad bland acting the the overall lack of proper direction.

It says, here , that a remake is in the works. It's definitely in need of one, but better yet...GO OUT AND READ THE DARN BOOK INSTEAD! The movie in your mind will far outweigh what has been provided here, and what might ever be provided again, if it is to be provided again.