Very well executed

A different way of telling a story

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

A teenager hitchhiking her way to freedom from her lecherous stepfather ends up catching a ride with two benevolent young men. Circumstances have them camping out overnight in a rural town, where they wind up in the clutches of a psychotic family of Satanists who sacrifice young women in hopes of resurrecting their dead mother.George A. Romero collaborator and writer John Russo wrote and directed this film, based on a novel of the same name, which he also penned. "Midnight" is unfortunately scarcely talked about in horror circles, and I had certainly never heard of it until stumbling across a DVD copy in a thrift store. The film is something of a riff on "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" with pronounced elements of Satanism present (this was shot in 1980 at the beginnings of the "Satanic panic" era). While technically a sloppy film, I found "Midnight" to be surprisingly ominous in mood and atmosphere-while a lot of the proceedings are routine (or backed by an absurdly hokey original soundtrack), there is a layer of grit and grime to the picture that leaves it feeling inexplicably eerie at times. The cinematography is probably key here, and the brown, autumnal Pennsylvania landscapes are atmospheric and chilling in and of themselves. The interior scenes are poorly-shot but still disturbing, bathed in darkness and shadows.Narratively, the Satanic elements of the plot are overblown, and there is a religious sort of redemption story shoehorned in, which doesn't quite work; also stuffed into the mix is racial commentary and even some irony in the end, as the protagonist's sleazy stepfather (and reason she ran away in the first place) goes on a mission to saving her. In short, there is a lot happening here, and there is a fairly large cast of characters who fade in and out of what is a fairly simple plot, structurally speaking. The last quarter of the film largely consists of a barrage of human sacrifices which are shockingly disturbing even by today's standards. The performances are ho-hum, with Lawrence Tierney as the smarmy stepfather, and John Amplas (who some may recognize from Romero's "Martin") as one of the twisted family members.Overall, I was really taken aback by how much I enjoyed "Midnight." It is a routine low-budget horror film in just about every sense of the word, but it also shows Russo as an ambitious filmmaker who perhaps had his plate too full. The "Texas Chainsaw" influence is obvious of course, and the Satanism rings a bit contrived, but there is still a cold, gross underbelly to the film that is as unsettling as it is ridiculous. Not a great film, but an effective one that is not quite the sum of its parts. 7/10.

Midnight (1982) BOMB (out of 4) John Russo will always be remembered for co-writing NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD with George Romero but Romero's career has been full of highs while Russo has never came close to recapturing the magic of that movie. MIDNIGHT is his attempt to enter the gory, slasher type cinema but the end result is just a horrid film with elements borrowed from THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and MOTHER'S DAY. A drunken cop (Lawrence Tierney) tries to molest his stepdaughter Nancy (Melanie Verlin) so she knocks him out with a radio. She then takes off hitchhiking when she's picked up by a couple guys (John Hall, Charles Jackson). The trio eventually stop in a small town where a group of rednecks are killing off people for Satan. MIDNIGHT is a low-budget movie that starts off laughably bad and just continues to get worse as it goes along. Being a low-budget movie should never be an excuse for bad filmmaking so I'm not going to cut this film any slack. Just check out the sequence where Tierney tries to come onto his daughter. The performances by the two are so bad that you can't help but laugh. Just check out when she hits her stepdad over the head with the radio. The slow motion effect is so laughable that you just know you're in trouble. The screenplay, from Russo adapted by his novel (WTF?) is really bad. Just check out the middle portion of the film with our trio. For one, they are told that this small town has had dozens of people murdered. For two, one of the guys is black and he's ran off by gunpoint by the locals. Third is the fact that the three rob a grocery store and have the police looking for them. With these three things happening the trio still decide to camp out? The story is a bore, the direction horrid and the performances are all pretty bad. Even Tom Savini's special effects are poor and without question the worst of his career. You can't blame Savini too much I guess since the budget is low. There are a few others credited with some of the effects so I wonder how much Savini actually is. Either way, this is a good candidate for one of the worst horror films of the decade.

When drunken cop Bert Johnson (Lawrence Tierney) makes sexual advances towards his teenage stepdaughter Nancy (the rather boyish Melanie Verlin), she packs her bags and sets off to see her sister in California, hitching a ride with Tom and Hank (John Hall and Charles Jackson), two college students on their way to Florida (!?!?). After a night camping out under the stars, the trio fall foul of a family of redneck Satanists who are ritually sacrificing young women to try and resurrect their dead mother.With a screenplay and direction from John A. Russo, writer of seminal horror classic Night of the Living Dead, and make-up effects from genre legend Tom Savini, one might reasonably expect Midnight to deliver the goods in terms of terror and gore, but sadly it fails to deliver on both counts: Russo's script, based on his own novel, suffers from a dreadfully dull first half and the guy is clearly no Romero when calling the shots behind the camera, consistently failing to deliver the requisite chills; Savini also disappoints, his gore FX on this project being far from his best work (I can only presume that he knocked them out on the cheap as a favour to Russo).It's not all a total loss though: the film's pace picks up considerably once Nancy and pals meet the devil-worshipping backwoods clan (a memorable group consisting of two nutters posing as cops, a demented babe, and a fat guy in dungarees who can't stop laughing), and bonus points are scored for a willingness to tackle the taboo, a few surprisingly brutal deaths, and a cool grind-house vibe achieved through cruddy picture quality and a menacing, lo-fi synthesiser score (the horribly dated theme song, on the other hand, is simply atrocious and only serves to irritate).5.5 out of 10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

Plot = Nancy runs away from home after her stepfather tries to rape her. She hitch-hikes with two nice boys who are headed for Florida and they get along really well right from the start. However, Nancy will soon regret her decision to run away from home as a satanic family kidnaps her in order to sacrifice her to the devil.Midnight is a wannabe slasher from the early 80s but with more of a 70s feel due to the poor condition of the film and plus it's just another bad "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" clone. I read some mixed reviews about this flick, but I've read mixed reviews for other slasher movies before and I was pleased with some of them, unfortunately not in this case. Don't get me wrong the storyline sounded really good but once Nancy gets kidnapped the movie slows down and we are left with an unoriginal "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" rip off. The beginning of the movie was quite interesting and I was even willing to pass the terrible acting but when Nancy's friends gets killed off that's when the movie starts to go downhill.All in all "Midnight" is a really terrible backwoods slasher, the beginning showed potential but the last half is rushed so I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.