Midnight Movies

334 Pages·1983·31.248 MB·English

by  J. Hoberman, Jonathan Rosenbaum

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint their
copyrighted materials: pp. 2, 9, 10, 183f 254, 269, 271: © 20th Century-Fox Film
Corp，All rights reserved./ pp, 7r 27, 22i, 249: Paramount Pictures Corp./ p, 29:
Jacques Prayer./ pp. 33, 35: lack Smith,/ p. 41: Jonas Mekas./ pp. 45, 57, 66, 67,
71: Anthology Film Archives./ pp. 47, 56: Film Department, American Federation
of the Arts./ pp, 49, 54: Film Culture*/ pp. Ill, 117r 123: Image Ten, Inc./ pp.
128, 129: ◎ 1978 Dawn Associates, photos by Katherine Kolbert./ pp, 131, 133,
134: © 1977 Braddock Associates,/ p. 137: © Charm City Productions, photo by
Steve Yeager./ p. 142: © Dreamland Productions./ pp. 146, 149, 151, 158, 159,
162, 164, 166, 168, 169, 172, 26L 305, 308, 317: © 1973, 1975, 1980, and 1981
New Line Cinema Corp. All rights reserved./ pp. 175, 189, 253: Photos by Lisa
Costello./ p. 180： Photo by Fredda Tone./ pp. 196f 197, 296: M-G-M/United Artists
Film Corp./ p. 206: Photo by Lou Gonzalez./ pp. 216, 217, 218, 233, 238, 241 r 243,
245, 281: Libra Films Corp./ p. 264: Andy Warhol Productions./ p. 284: © 1979
Photo B- .
Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the ownership of all copyrighted
materials included in this volume* Any errors which may have occurred are inad­
vertent and will be corrected in subsequent editions provided notification is sent to
the publisher.
midnight movies. Copyright © 1983 by James Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book
may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For
information address Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc,r 10 East 53rd Street, New York,
NT. 10022. Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited,
Toronto.
FIRST EDITION
Designer: Ronald E Shey
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Hoberman, J.
Midnight movies.
Includes index.
L Moving-picture plays—History and criticism.
2, Moving-pictures—United States. I, Rosenbaum,
lonathan. II. Title.
PN1995.H58 1983 791,43'0973 82-47526
ISBN 0-06-015052-1 83 84 85 86 87 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN 0-06-090990-0 (pbk〇____________83 84 85 86 87 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
AUTHORS， NOTE vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
1 THE BIRTH OF ROCKY HORROR 1
2 CULTS, FETISHES, AND FREAKS: Sex and
Salvation at the Movies 15
3 THE UNDERGROUND 39
4 EL TOPO： Through the Wasteland of
the Counterculture 77
5 GEORGE ROMERO AND THE RETURN
OF THE REPRESSED 110
6 JOHN WATERS PRESENTS "THE
FILTHIEST PEOPLE ALIVE" 136
7 ROCKY HORROR MADNESS 174
8 ERASERHEAD 214
9 HOCK, DRUGS, DRAG, CAMP, PUNK,
GORE, AND AGIT-PROP 252
10 RETHINKING MIDNIGHT MOVIES:
A Dialogue 301
BIBLIOGRAPHY 321
INDEX 329
AUTHORS， NOTE
A collaboration involves mutual discussion, criticism, rewriting, and
research, and both of us worked, in various capacities, on all the
chapters of Midnight Movies. However, apart from the second and
fifth chapters, which were literally co-authored, we tended to con­
centrate on different sections of the book. The chapters on the Un­
derground, El Topo, and John Waters were primarily written by J.
Hoberman; those on The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Eraser-
head by Jonathan Rosenbaum. Our separate contributions to Chap­
ters 9 and 10 (as well as various footnotes throughout) are signed.
J.H./J.R.
Vll
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to acknowledge the special assistance of Tom Al­
len, Bruce A. Austin, Henry Baker, Ben Barenholtz, David Bartholo­
mew, Robert Beers, Alain Berger, Noel Carroll, Karen Durbin, Ray-
mond Durgnat, David Ehrenstein, Mary Evans, Sandy Flittermarx,
Mike Getz, Peter Gidal, Steve Hirsch, Shelley Hoberman, Mark Ja­
cobson, Iris Keitel, Sam Kitt, Allen Klein, David Lynch, Adrienne
Mancia, Lee Mantleman, Bob Martin, Jonas Mekas, Craig Nelson,
Walker Pearce, Sal Piro( Bill Reed, Sara Risher, Paul Schmidt,
Charles Silver, P. Adams Sitney, Elliott Stein, Amy Taubin, Amos
Vogel, and John Waters.
IX
Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself
breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink
hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on.
—Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 3, scene 2
Fly not,——'tis just the hour,
When pleasure, like the midnight flower
That scorns the eye of vulgar light,
Begins to bloom for sons of night,
And maids who love the moon.
—Sir Thomas More, ''Fly Not Yet(
THE BIRTH OF
R O C K Y HORROR
It started out as an affectionate homage to late-night movies, and
ended up being an affectionately embraced late-night movie/' di-
rector Jim Sharman would say of that thing called Ho/ror. A
decade ago, when The Rocky Horror Show—later to be filmed as
The Rocky Horror Picture Show—was little more than a perverse
gleam in the eye of one ''Ritz" Obrien, it could be said that the
phenomenon virtually began with something that had already be­
come a cliche and a commonplace: the late-night picture show.
Ever since theater exhibitors got the idea of putting on special pro-
grams at midnight—mainly diverse kinds of marginal exploitation
fare, ideal for Halloween spook-a-thons or rowdy New Year’s Eve
bacchanals, but also suitable for certain minority tastes on ordinary
weekend and weekday nights—a distinctive strain of subterranean
moviegoing had developed, after hours and under wraps.
Occasionally, some presentation (a magic show, a sex educa-
tion lecture, or a discussion of the evils of marijuana) would accom­
pany the feature. But most often it was just the low-budget film pro­
gram, booked on a ''flat/1 nonpercentage basis, that attracted the
denizens of the night. Embroidering on the basic pattern, drive-ins
across the United States would offer delirious all-night programs de­
voted to horror, sex, rock, motorcycles, or some other form of
youthful outrage. By 1972, in large American cities, oddball horror
films like George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Tod
2