midnight movie memories

as in, movies you actually saw as MIDNIGHT MOVIES. i think the only ones for me were rocky horror, which i went to a few times in high school, and the wall. the latter i felt sort of left out of, not having chemically prepared the way most of the audience seemed to have.

and do they still run "midnight movies" in suburban mall theaters and the like? or do they just now do extra late shows of avatar? the last thing i heard of becoming sort of a midnight standard was donnie darko, but i don't know how widespread even that was.

How about seeing a film on opening night? Cause I've been to a bunch of those at midnight (most recently Avatar).

yeah i've done that too. it seems like that's the kind of thing they use the midnight slot for more these days. but i'm thinking of the old-fashioned cult-movie thing. i wonder how many places even show rocky horror anymore.

i did this a lot when i first moved to nyc but haven't really been to one in years. i always had a hard time convincing ppl to join me.

my favorite was 2004: six-film john waters marathon at the pioneer theater (RIP). free to get in, but you had to pay to exit ($5 deducted for each film you sat through; if you made it thru all six films it was free). the man himself intro'ed one of the screenings (i forget which, it might have been pink flamingos, which screened at about 1am iirc - close enough to midnight) and also hosted a lookalike contest. my friend and i made it through the entire evening. i got back to my dorm room at about 6:30am, only to find myself locked out.

Am seeing The Room as a midnite movie tonight!

oh right, the room is the other big one of recent years. still haven't seen it.

So direct-to-video terrible. I understand part of the reason it became a midnight movie was Tommy Wiseau's insistence on running it in some LA theater instead of just dumping it onto a few thousand DVD-Rs.

the wikipedia entry is actually pretty interesting. i didn't know el topo sort of invented the idea, tho it makes sense. but when it talks about a "circuit," i wonder what that includes these days.

I did this once and the film was The Goonies

I think afterwards we visited an IHOP that said open til three but the owner wouldn't serve us cause it was 2:30 and they had to "get ready to close"

so we went to a 24 hour diner instead. good times...?

i didn't know el topo sort of invented the idea, tho it makes sense.

I think that's more or less the conclusion Rosenbaum/Hoberman came to in their book about midnight movies, as well.

As for The Room experience, I can't speak for how polished it is in L.A., but I can say Minneapolis' first week with it demonstrates the cult script needs a little bit of work. Way too many dead spots left open for audiences to lapse into "WHORE!" "BITCH!" et al.

Which didn't really annoy me per se while watching The Room, but it did also show up a lot when I saw The Warriors at a midnight show. Has misogyny become part of the draw?

Can't speak for LA, but SF's crowd was pretty sharp.

Yeah, I'm hoping I can just write this one off to first-week jitters.

Or maybe we really are just all cavemen up here.

Also, Lisa is clearly a bitch/whore.

The faces she makes at the party, serious.

What's showing at my local midnight movie houses for the next couple of months:

Reservoir Dogs, Dread, Happy Birthday to Me, Inglourious Basterds, Running Scared, The Last American Virgin, Razorback, Videodrome (at the New Beverly)

Black Dynamite, The Goonies, Dead Birds, Antichrist, The Evil Dead, The Big Lebowski, Labyrinth, Pulp Fiction, The Princess Bride, The Warriors (at the Nuart)

There is a theater in Boston that does this weekly but I've never gone. They do a lot of sing along crap at midnight there too.

I saw RHPS once at midnight when I was in HS, I think.

double feature: Creature From The Black Lagoon & House of Wax in 3-D! clasicc but the glasses gave me one hellfire headache

(at the New Beverly)
(at the Nuart)

yeah so maybe it's become mostly an arthouse/repertory thing. in the '80s there were corporate multiplexes that would do at least one camp/cult midnight movie on weekends, but that may have gone by the wayside?

(for one thing those multiplexes may have had more control over their own programming then.)

in the '80s there were corporate multiplexes that would do at least one camp/cult midnight movie on weekends, but that may have gone by the wayside?

Pretty much... Some of the Edwards multiplexes in OC would show midnight movies (Road Warrior and The Song Remains The Same were common), but normally it's the territory of the revival theaters.

maybe it's become mostly an arthouse/repertory thing. in the '80s there were corporate multiplexes that would do at least one camp/cult midnight movie on weekends

I'd argue that Landmark Theatres picking up the baton on midnight movies splits the difference between arthouse and corporate.

Saw The Exorcist as a midnight movie and then got freaked out by some nutjob who followed me back towards my flat. The block had a lift that took you to the 3rd floor then you had to walk up a couple of flights of stairs, and as the lift door opened at the top he was stood right in front of me and yelled boo.

Saw Ghost World like this and it was wonderful, actually - came out blinking into a London that seemed really rife with possibilities. Being 17 probably helped.