Home Before Midnight

Whether you're a fan of British director Pete Walker like I am or not, you have to admit his horror films are considerably better than all the other stuff he tried to do. Still I kind of enjoyed the soapy and preposterous melodrama of his swinging 60's flick "Cool It Carol", and films like "The Four Dimensions of Greta" certain succeed as ripe sexploitation if nothing else. This film though...well, I don't know. This is about an unbelievably naive and clean-cut British "rocker" who gets involved with an underage groupie. At first he doesn't know her age, but even after he finds out he can't give her up. Her parents are oblivious; even after they meet him, they assume(obviously confusing rock musicians with Catholic priests) that the relationship is platonic. But when the truth comes out, his career is ruined and he is charged with statutory rape.

Walker, never one to shy away from controversy, at best remains neutral here, but actually tends to sympathize with the guy. He also muddies the moral waters quite a bit. The girl (the never-to-be-heard-from-again Allison Eliot)and her best friend (Debbie Linder, who later died tragically of a drug overdose) do not look even remotely like fourteen-year-old girls, mostly because they definitely weren't. And as in any Walker film there's also plenty of gratuitous nudity (the two friends seem to have their most intimate conversations during full-frontal shower scenes after gym class). It's hard to defend, especially today, the position on statutory rape Walker takes here. But he's right in that it is a more complicated issue then it's often made out to be, especially when the guy in question is handsome and young himself (not to mention impossibly naive) and not some dirty old rotter trying to rub up against a school girl at a bus stop.

The bigger problem though is Walker's shaky grasp on the rock and roll milieu of the time (also a problem in his previous horror film "The Comeback" where he laughably cast the very washed-up singer Jack Jones as someone who had a proverbial snowball's chance of mounting a comeback in the late 70's music industry). The aptly-named band in this movie "Bad Accident" (featuring Mick Jagger's wholly untalented brother Chris, and lip-syncing to godawful British band Jigsaw) would no doubt have even the most desperate, skankiest, crab-ridden groupies screaming for the exit doors. And since when would having sex with underage girls ruin, as oppose to advance, a rock star's career. About the same time this movie came out the lead singer of a flash-in-the-pan American band called the Knack actually penned a raunchy song about his underage girlfriend, "My Cherona", which turned into a top-40 hit that has long outlived the band itself, and even in these slightly less libertine times one famous R and B star is still around making music even after videotaping himself urinating on a thirteen-year-old groupie. The biggest problem with this movie isn't that it's all that controversial, but that it is really pretty hard to swallow.

Mike Beresford, a handsome young songwriter, picks up an attractive brunette hitchhiker named Ginny who tells him that she is studying fashion design at art college. Before long romance blossoms between the two and they begin a relationship. That might sound like the beginning of a romantic comedy, but in fact "Home Before Midnight" is not a comedy of any sort.

It soon becomes apparent that Ginny was lying when she said that she was at art college. In reality she is still a schoolgirl and only 14 years old. Mike is initially horrified when he discovers the truth, but Ginny persuades him that she is in love with him and their relationship continues. When her parents find out, however, they inform the police, and Mike finds himself on trial charged with having sex with a minor. (Not, as some have written, "statutory rape"- there is no such offence under British law. Consensual sex with a minor is an offence, but a less serious one than rape unless the minor is aged under thirteen).

What follows is narrated in a semi-documentary style. Although this was a feature film- it was probably too sexually explicit to have been shown on British television in 1979- it reminded me of a "Play for Today" or other similar television dramas of the period, which often focused upon some topical social issue. It rather gives the lie to the currently fashionable idea that under-age sex was taken less seriously during the seventies and eighties than it would be today. There may have been a vocal minority calling for the lowering of the age of consent, especially the so-called Paedophile Information Exchange, but the great majority of the population were opposed to the idea and held the PIE and its activities in contempt. We see this attitude reflected in the film; as soon as people know what offence Mike has been charged with, his friends and even his own parents turn against him.

The film does, however, also highlight one of the drawbacks of the under-age sex laws. The laws exist in order to protect young people, yet they can often only be enforced by persuading, or even compelling, the young person to give evidence against someone they once loved- perhaps still do love- something which much be psychologically very damaging to them. This happens to Ginny in the film. She is at first unwilling to give evidence against Mike, but is forced to do so by pressure from her parents, her school and the authorities, with the threat that she will be taken into "care" if she does not.

Indeed, Ginny is forced to testify not only that she had sex with Mike (which is perfectly true) but also that she was forced to do so against her will (which is not), meaning that he can be charged with the more serious offence of rape. Both her headmistress and her parents feel that there will be less scandal and less reputational damage if it can be shown that she was not a willing participant.

Ginny's relationship with her parents is an odd one. At first they seem ultra-liberal to the point of reckless folly, allowing their fourteen-year-old daughter to go hitchhiking accompanied only by a classmate and to spend the weekend in the company of a man twice her age and complacently accepting her assurances that her relationship with Mike is non-sexual. Her father Harry comes across as particularly creepy, slapping his daughter on the bottom and calling her "sexy". As soon as they discover the truth, however, they switch virtually in an instant from ultra-liberal to ultra-protective.

"Home Before Midnight" is not a great film, and there are no acting performances that stand out. Alison Elliott who plays Ginny was making, at the age of twenty, the last of her three appearances in a feature film. Apart from Richard Todd, in his heyday a star of the British cinema, as Mike's lawyer, the only cast members I had previously heard of were Debbie Linden (better known as a glamour model) and Chris Jagger, brother of the more famous Mick. Yet it manages to ask some pertinent questions about the law and sexuality in seventies Britain. 6/10.

HOME BEFORE MIDNIGHT is an odd, one-of-a-kind type of kitchen-sink drama from cult British director Pete Walker, best known for making a series of grisly low-budget horror flicks. This sees a return of sorts to his old exploitation days, as the film is packed full of nudity from its young starlets, but nudity aside it actually turns out to be a decent little film.

The story is an interesting - and dare I say it, still timely - one. A twentysomething rock star meets a new groupie and is soon having it off with her, only for him to later discover that she's only fourteen. In due course the authorities become aware of the chain of events and the scene is set for a court-room showdown. The issue of underage sex remains a controversial one here in the UK with nary a week going by without the tabloid newspapers reporting on some former celebrity accused of unpleasant goings on in the 1970s.

As such, HOME BEFORE MIDNIGHT is an important film, and one which tells the story in a well-rounded way, I thought. There are no black and white characters here, just people who make mistakes and pay for them. It's a surprisingly mature production, well shot and never less than engaging. The acting isn't up to much and certain actresses only seem to be involved for the skin quotient (Debbie Linden in particular) but fans of 1970s British cinema will find much to interest them here.

London songwriter Mike (James Aubrey) picks up young female hitch-hiker Ginny (Alison Elliott) in his flashy Jensen Interceptor. As they used to say back then they are soon "at it", i.e having sex, however he did not know (or think to ask?) her age. Naturally he is shocked when he finds out that she is only 14 and that he is breaking the law by having sex with her but with emotions high between the couple they carry on regardless, When Ginny's parents find out they report it to the police. This is the penultimate movie of director Pete Walker, he specialised in making sexploitation and horror movies and I am a fan of his work. This was my first time viewing, it forms part of the 88 Films Pete Walker Sexploitation Collection Blu-ray box-set. The original artwork, with its X certificate, suggests a dark thriller and a Google search classes it as a thriller/mystery so, having read no reviews beforehand, I went into this expecting it to turn nasty, possibly violent but it doesn't. It all end up in court for the ending and I'd describe it as a drama. On the sex front there are a few mild scenes plus some brief full frontal female nudity but more of this can be found in any of the "Confessions of.." movies. The shocking thing is the plot of a 28 year old man knowingly have a sexual relationship with an underage girl, it is well executed, I couldn't help finding it very unsettling and I guess that is the whole point. At 111 minutes in length it felt overlong but Walker did tend to do this and I have mentioned it in reviews of his other films. It looks nice on restored Blu-ray and provides a wonderful look at England back in the late 1970's, the fashions, the cars etc. It also comes with language which was normal at the time but would now be condemned for being politically incorrect. Mick Jagger's younger brother Chris also appears in the cast as a rock star, busty glamour model Debbie Linden stars as Ginny's best friend Susan. She appeared in a number of British TV programmes before her tragic death at only 36. Well known radio DJ's Annie Nightingale and David Hamilton have cameos, the latter says something sexist as he lets an attractive young woman into his Rolls-Royce, but like I have already said that was seen as quite acceptable back then. Overall I found it to be a reasonably well made film, not as much sex as I expected and too long in running time, I doubt very much that, unlike Walker's horror movies, I'd watch it again though.