The cradle of cult cinema

>> Midnight Movies: From the Margin
to the Mainstream examines the legacy of
the ’70s movie counter-culture

by MARK SLUTSKY

“I made bad taste 1 per cent more respectable, and that’s what I was put on this earth to do.” Who else could—or would—claim that, really, but the redoubtable John Waters, here talking about the legacy of his 1972 cult sensation Pink Flamingos. Waters is one of several legendary underground filmmakers to chime in on the impact of their work in Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream, a documentary by Stuart Samuels (Visions of Light) originally produced for Movie Central.

Not to totally sound like an old crank, but in the era of DVD, DivX, YouTube and all that easily-accessible home entertainment, it’s easy to forget the magically transgressive world of midnight cinema, where you could get stoned, watch something weird and funny and scary, and holler along with your friends and enthusiastic strangers. Samuels, who also wrote (back in 1983) a book on the subject, dates the beginning of the phenomenon to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s mystical, psychedelic western El Topo, which became a hit when programmed late at night at New York’s Elgin theatre.

The film serves as a primer on that and five other films representative of the midnight movie craze: Night of the Living Dead, Pink Flamingos, The Harder They Come, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Eraserhead. All of the films’ directors (including The Harder They Come’s Perry Henzell, who has since passed away) chime in on the strange experience of making their films to (mostly) see them fail commercially, and later be resurrected as cult successes when programmed in the wee hours.

They’re all insightful talkers, to one still inspiringly enthusiastic about their outside-the-system adventures in cinema. We hear from others involved as well: critics like Roger Ebert (who famously panned Night of the Living Dead for Reader’s Digest) and Jonathan Rosenbaum chime in, as do theatre owners and New Line’s Bob Shaye.

The Parc is screening Midnight Movies as part of its re-launching of its Midnight Madness program, which focuses more on recent (and Fantasia-friendly) stuff than these venerable classics. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it’s worth considering the cult cinema’s counter-cultural origins, which, if you believe John Waters (and the film’s title), have had a strong influence on the cultural mainstream as well.

Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the
Mainstream plays Friday, May 18 and Saturday,
May 19 at 11:45 p.m. at the Cinéma du Parc.

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