Midnight movie
The term midnight movie is rooted in the practice that emerged in the 1950s of local television stations around the United States airing low-budget genre films as late-night programming, often with a host delivering ironic asides.
The screening of non-mainstream pictures at midnight was aimed at building a cult film audience, encouraging repeat viewing and social interaction in what was originally a countercultural setting.
[4] The format was echoed by stations across the country, who began showing their late-night B movies with in-character hosts such as Zacherley and Morgus the Magnificent offering ironic interjections.
Starting at L.A.'s KHJ-TV in 1981, Elvira's Movie Macabre was soon being syndicated nationally; Peterson presented mostly cut-rate horror films, interrupted on a regular basis for tongue-in-cheek commentary.
Others showed it during prime time on weekend nights; after a break for the local news, another genre film—a literal midnight movie—might follow, resulting in such virtual double bills as Dr. Heckyl & Mr.
As BBC Two did not broadcast a large amount of daytime programming, they had plenty of hours to spare to remain on the air late into the night, especially on a Saturday, thus the creation of the "Midnight Movie" strand was started.
[10] Author Gary Lachman claims that Kenneth Anger's short Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969), a mélange of occult symbology intercut with and superimposed on images from a Rolling Stones concert, "inaugurat[ed] the midnight movie cult at the Elgin Theatre.
"[11] The Elgin, in New York City's Chelsea neighborhood, would soon become famous as a midnight venue when it gave the U.S. premiere of a very unusual Mexican movie directed and written by a rather Dalí-esque Chilean.
[13] The Elgin soon came up with another midnight hit in Peter Bogdanovich's spree-killer thriller Targets (1968), featuring one of the last performances by horror movie mainstay Boris Karloff and a tale that resonated with the assassinations and other political violence of that era.
[16] Shot over the winter of 1971–72, John Waters's "filth epic" Pink Flamingos, featuring incest and coprophagia, became the best known of a group of campy midnight films focusing on sexual perversions and fetishism.
While the midnight-movie potential of certain films was recognized only some time after they opened, a number during this period were distributed to take advantage of the market from the beginning—in 1973, for instance, Broken Goddess, Dragula, The White Whore and the Bit Player, and Elevator Girls in Bondage (as well as Pink Flamingos) had their New York premieres at midnight screenings.
[19] Other examples (albeit animated) during this time were Ralph Bakshi's 1972 debut feature Fritz the Cat based on the Robert Crumb comic of the same name and Sally Cruikshank's 1975 experimental short Quasi at the Quackadero.
A model of shoestring surrealism, David Lynch's feature debut (which played alongside Susan Pitt's 1979 animated short Asparagus)[27][28][29] reaffirmed the midnight movie's most central traditions.
The commercial viability of the sort of big-city arthouse cinemas that launched outsider pictures for the midnight movie circuit began to decrease in the late 1970s, as broad social and economic shifts weakened their countercultural base.
Leading midnight movie venues were beginning to fold as early as 1977—that year, New York's Bijou switched back permanently to the live entertainment for which it had been built, and the Elgin, after a brief run with gay porn, shut down completely.
While Rocky Horror soldiered on, by then a phenomenon unto itself, and new films like House (1977),[31] Up in Smoke (1978),[31] The Warriors (1979),[20] Altered States (1980),[20] Forbidden Zone (1980, released 1982),[32] The Evil Dead (1981),[20] Heavy Metal (1981),[20] Mommie Dearest (1981),[33] Liquid Sky (1982), Pink Floyd – The Wall (1982),[14] Repo Man (1984),[20] Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)[31] and Akira (1988)[20]—all from mainstream distributors—were picked up by the midnight movie circuit, the core of exhibitors that energized the movement was disappearing.
By the time the fabled Orson Welles Cinema in Cambridge, Massachusetts, shut its doors after a fire in 1986,[34] the days of the theatrical midnight movie as a significant countercultural phenomenon were already past.
