MIDNIGHT MOVIES:
FROM THE MARGIN TO THE MAINSTREAM

Is it a midnight movie if it starts at 8 o'clock? The answer is revealed in this lively, fun and at times raunchy look at the work of several filmmakers whose films are especially suited to nocturnal audiences. The cult film phenomenon started in the 1970s when filmmakers, frustrated with conventional modes of cinematic storytelling, experimented with shock value to invent a genre that was not steeped in formulas and rules.

Based on Stuart Samuels' 1983 book of the same name, MIDNIGHT MOVIES features the preeminent filmmakers of this genre talking about their small, independent films that broke all kinds of box-office records--but only when screened at midnight. Interviews with David Lynch (ERASERHEAD), Perry Henzell (THE HARDER THEY COME), George Romero (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD), John Waters (PINK FLAMINGOS), Richard O'Brien (THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW) and Alejandro Jodorowsky (EL TOPO) reveal the impulses that guided these filmmakers to create the works that would make their names. Perhaps just as important is the story of the man who gave the films a chance to build an audience week after week, Ben Barenholtz, founder of the now-defunct Elgin Cinema in New York City, home to the first screening of a midnight movie.

There is no better proof of how energized audiences were than the vintage footage Samuels uses that shows fans lined up around the block to see a film they've already seen dozens of times. Friends were made, drugs were shared and unique rituals were created for each individual film. That time cannot be recaptured, as films like these are now accepted as a norm.

Post-screening discussion moderated by GOOD MORNING AMERICA's Joel Siegel with director Stuart Samuels, Perry Henzell (director, THE HARDER THEY COME) and Ben Barenholtz (independent producer and owner of the Elgin Cinema).

Mary Kerr

Stuart Samuels produced and co-directed the award-winning documentary VISIONS OF LIGHT: THE ART OF CINEMATOGRAPHY, which was named the "Best Documentary" of 1993 by The New York Film Critics, The National Film Critics and The Boston Film Critics. Samuels has a Ph.D. from Stanford in history. He was a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania from 1967 to 1981 and a founding member of the Society of Cinema Studies, and he is an expert consultant in film history, film archives and academic libraries.

Print Source:
SEG
8900 Liberty Circle
Englewood, CA 90112

Tuesday 6/14 at 7:00 p.m.
Tickets: $45

This film also screens on Sunday 6/19 at 12:45 p.m.

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