Midnight Express is a 1978 prison drama film directed by Alan Parker and adapted by Oliver Stone from Billy Hayes's 1977 memoir of the same name.

The film centers on Hayes (played by Brad Davis), a young American student, who is sent to a Turkish prison for trying to smuggle hashish out of the country.

[3][4] The film was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director for Parker at the 51st Academy Awards in 1979, and won Best Adapted Screenplay for Stone and Best Original Score for Moroder.

It also won six Golden Globes, including Best Motion Picture – Drama and BAFTA Awards for Best Direction, Best Editing and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (for Hurt).

On vacation in Istanbul, Turkey, on 6 October 1970, American college student Billy Hayes straps 2 kg (4.4 lb) of hashish bricks to his chest.

As he and his girlfriend Susan are about to board a plane back to the US, Billy is frisked by soldiers (who are on high alert for terrorist attacks) who discover the drug.

Fifty-three days before his release, Billy learns the Turkish High Court in Ankara has overturned his sentence after an appeal by the prosecution.

A made-for-television documentary about the film, I'm Healthy, I'm Alive, and I'm Free (alternative title: The Making of Midnight Express), was released on 1 January 1978.

The website's critics consensus reads: "Raw and unrelenting, Midnight Express is riveting in its realistic depiction of incarceration -- mining pathos from the simple act of enduring hardship.

[12] Roger Ebert gave Midnight Express three stars out of four in a review that concluded, "The movie creates spellbinding terror, all right; my only objection is that it's so eager to have us sympathize with Billy Hayes.

"[14] Arthur D. Murphy of Variety wrote, "Acceptance of the film depends a lot on forgetting several things," namely that Hayes was smuggling drugs.

Nevertheless, he thought Davis gave "a strong performance" and that "Alan Parker's direction and other credits are also admirable, once you swallow the specious and hypocritical story.

"[15] Charles Champlin, of the Los Angeles Times, was positive, writing that the film "has a kind of wailing, arid authenticity and enormous power.

It is strong and uncompromising stuff, made bearable by its artistry and the saving awareness that Hayes, at least, slipped free and lived to tell the tale.

"[16] Gary Arnold, of The Washington Post, described the film as "outrageously sensationalistic" and "loaded with show-stopping fabrications," and wrote of the protagonist that "there's never a compelling reason for sympathizing with the callow boy he appears to be from start to finish.

In her 1991 book Turkish Reflections: A Biography of Place, Mary Lee Settle wrote: "The Turks I saw in Lawrence of Arabia and Midnight Express were like cartoon caricatures, compared to the people I had known and lived among for three of the happiest years of my life.

"[18] Pauline Kael, in reviewing the film for The New Yorker, commented, "This story could have happened in almost any country, but if Billy Hayes had planned to be arrested to get the maximum commercial benefit from it, where else could he get the advantages of a Turkish jail?

)"[19] One reviewer, writing for World Film Directors, wrote: "Midnight Express is 'more violent, as a national hate-film than anything I can remember', 'a cultural form that narrows horizons, confirming the audience's meanest fears and prejudices and resentments'.

[21] The well-known Spanish film magazine Fotogramas had this to say: "One of the most sibylline exercises in racism ever produced, and one peddled under a progressive label to boot.

The true story of an American arrested in Turkey for drug trafficking becomes a nightmare resolved with a sensationalism that is impactful yet worthy of a better cause, as is always the case in its director's career".

[35] Susan's prison visit was spoofed in the 1996 film The Cable Guy, where Jim Carrey opens his shirt, presses his naked breast against the glass, and cries, 'Oh, Billy!'

When he visited Turkey in 2004, screenwriter Oliver Stone - who won an Academy Award for writing the screenplay for Midnight Express - apologized for the portrayal of the Turkish people in the film.