Midnight Movies - From the Margin to the Mainstream (2005)

Moderate horror violence, moderate drug references, moderate themes, moderate coarse language

This documentary tells the hidden story of the midnight movies - low budget films of the 70s, through interviews with directors, actors, critics, theatre owners and the all important fans who frequented darkened movie theatres at midnight, hoping to get their taste of the gruesome, the surreal and the nihilistic.

The films were originally cast into the outskirts of the cinematic circuit, but ironically their persistence in championing the grotesque, the diverse and the perverse eventually gained them a firm and irrevocable place in mainstream American popular culture.

Directors and films highlighted throughout the documentary include Alejandro Jodorowsky's surrealist western El Topo; George Romero's Night of the Living Dead; John Waters' scandalous Pink Flamingos; Jamaican Perry Henzell's outlaw reggae movie The Harder They Come; the legendary The Rocky Horror Picture Show; and the uniquely original work of David Lynch in Eraserhead.