movie madness
by Joseph Patton
In 1968, George Romero made a low
budget, explicit shocker called Night of
the Urtng Dead The dead, revived by
an intease dose of radiation, roam the
countryside, automatoas with one mo
live attack and devour the living Even
the dead' mast eat to stay alive ” Ijv
mg Dead opened in drive-ins, where
most films wind up, but tt was soon
revived at the Elgin Theatre in New
York, where It played to young en
thusiastic viewers Fridays and Saturdays
at midnight Audiences went repeatedly
to scream with delight as cannibalistic
cadavers munched on bones and
gorged on intestines and livers
Night of the IJtmg Dead pioneered
the phenomenon of "midnights" —
special midnight showings of films too
excessive, too outrageous, too weird'
to be shown at any other time Ben
Barcnholtz, who owned the Elgin
when Living Dead was unleashed, has
compared midnights to paiatna parties
where all the rules are broken
They're not just movies, but events, and
thrill-seeking spectators frequently dress
in costume, talk bade to the screen,
roar, boo, cheer, clap, whistle and
shout At midnights, restraint is out of
place Every midnight is Halloween
Films dial attract late night dubs are
as dose to comic strips as live action
can be, with something crazed and ir
reverent about them Take Martin, for
instance When Romero's sly, spooky
debunking of the Dracula legend sur
faced at midnights in 1978, it was obvi
ous that he had scored again Martin is
a shy, attractive 17-year-old who looks
like the boy nexi door, but he has a
freakish fixation: bloodsucking Mar
tin's ancestors emigrated to Pittsburgh
from Transylvania, but since he is fang
less, Martin uses a hypodermic to
knock out his victims and hacks at
their wrists with a razor blade to drink
their spurting blood Viewers leave
Martin unsure whether he is a victim
of the vampire inheritance running in
the family, or a psychotic delinquent
with a horrible habit
Not much later Romero's Dawn of
the Dead was sneaked at midnights,
played briefly in regular runs, and
then settled in few long runs exclu
sively at midnight. Dawn is a sicker,
slicker Living Dead Three men and a
woman seek shelter from swarms erf
marauding cadavers inside a shopping
mall "Instinct brings them back here,"
one of the survivors says "This place
was a very important pan of their
lives!" All of Romero's films are awash
with gore, but Dawn proves, once and
for all, nothing succeeds like excess A
ghoul stumbles into the path of a
whirring helicopter blade, and the top
of its head is sliced off. A corpse bites
a chunk from a victim’s neck, and
blood gushes like water from a fire
hydrant Spectators are open-mouthed
in horror when the carnage begins;
gradually, their screams dissolve into
raucous laughter; eventually they
break into wild applause, cheering on
the last of the survivors as they escape
scores of stalking goons in the best
cliff-hanger tradition of vintage Satur
day matinee serials For Romero's fans,
though, too much is not enough: Day
of the Dead is in the works, complet
ing the Zombie trilogy
John Waters uses Romero’s favorite
device—shock—with gleeful abandon
in Pink Flamingos When it came out
in 1972, Flamingos provoked howls of
disgust, acquired a rowdy cult follow
ing, and made its leading actor, Divine
— a 300-pound female impersonator
billed as “the greatest ®rossout of all
time" — the first superstar of the mid
night circuit. Divine lives in a bumt
out trailer with her son, a longhaired
punk with a chicken fetish, and her
mother, who has a thing for eggs. They
enter a contest sponsored by the Na
tional Enquirer to find “the filthiest
people alive." Tacky, sleazy, berserk,
Flamingos is rated X, but viewers who
expea hard-core sex are disappointed;
all they get to witness is incest, fellatio,
castration and exhibitionism. “To me,
bad taste is what enteii?>nment is all
about,” Waters writes in Shock Value
If someone vomits watching one of my
films, it’s like getting a standing ova
tion." Flamingos' climactic scene —
Divine scoops up a fresh pile of
French poodle excrement and eats it,
lickety-split — is one of the most
talked-about in the history of mid
nights. The strong of stomach are out
raged and amused at the same time,
while the squeamish look in vain on
the back of the seat in front of them
for an emergency bag.
David Lynch's Eraserhead rivals and,
quite possibly, surpasses Pink Flamin
gos in sheer grossness It combines
elements of science-fiction and fantasy,
but it's impossible to categorize, let
alone explain. Eraserhead concerns
Henry, a simpleton with a bouffant
hairdo that resembles a fright wig;
Mary X, his moronic wife; and their
offspring, a cross between a human
and a dinosaur. Baby's crying sends
Mary home to Mother. Henry feeds
Baby a worm, and Baby grows ... and
Grows .. and GROWS!! Poor, startled
Henry retreats into a sordid dream
world, tom between the Beautifjl Girl
Across the Hall, a hooker who pouts
prettily, and the Lady in the Radiator,
who sings sweetly while worms fall
around her and squish underfoot In
the end Henry loses his head, and it is
turned into an eraser. Eraserhead fans,
who roar with satisfaction during its
grosser scenes, believe that a truer pic
ture of the mind of middle-class
America would be hard to find, except
maybe at a K-Mart checkout lane.
Lynch, of course, went on to fame di
recting Elephant Man.
Jim Sharman’s Rocky Horror Picture
Show — an outrageous melange of
cliches from monster epics. Marvel
comics, beach-blanket frolics and Fif
ties and Sixties rock n' roll — is the
quintessential fluke. It bombed in
1975, but not long after that it resur
faced at midnights and mushroomed
into a national phenomenon. Brad and
Janet, two dean-cut kids, get mixed up
in the weird antics at a castle where
Frank N Furter, a transvestite scientist
from outer space, is conducting mani
acal experiments, creating drag revues
and a blond stud he plans to put to
good use — his own
Audiences turn Rocky Horror into a
midnight masquerade, dressing as
members of the mad doctor’s kinky
household: Riff Raff, the hunchback
henchman; Magenta, his sister; the
tap-dancing Little Nell; and Frank N
Furter himself, in black corset and
high heels. Audiences dance the Time
Warp in the aisles, throw rice, spray
water, flick cigarette lighters and sing
along with the soundtrack: “Toucha,
toucha, toucha, toudh me/I wanna be
dirty/Thrill me, fill me, fulfill me/
Creature of the night” Rocky Horror is
the most popular midnight so far,
perhaps because it catches the confu
sion of two aii-American kids agape at
the sexual permissiveness of the
Seventies.
Shock Treatment, a sequel from the
makers of Rocky Horror, opened at the
Waverly Theatre in New York last Oc
tober, but it hasn’t caught fire the way
Rocky Horror did. Since they’re aber
rations, it's hard to predict what films
will inspire midnight madness, but
Frank Perry’s Mommie Dearest, with
Faye Dunaway in a monstrous carica
ture of Joan Crawford, has the stuff
midnights are made of: outrageous
humor, shocking behavior, topsy-turvy
morality. Audiences have mimicked
Crawford’s abuse of her daughter,
Christina, and her obsession with
cleanliness, mode-strangling people sit
ting next to them with wire hangers
and attacking gummy theatre floors
with scrub brushes and Bon Ami.
Midnight movie fans often dream up
their own bizarre scenarios. Here’s
mine: a solitary figure toners in high
heels down Hollywood Bivd. Whatever
it is, it looks like Joan Crawford in the
last stages of leprosy, with the blank
stare of the "living dead.” Rolling her
eyes, twisting her Dps grotesquely, she
cries “Chr — ist — in — aah!”
Outside the theatre, a poster reads:
“The Maddest Mother of All Time Is
Back — And This Time She’s Really A
Monster!! With apologies to George
Romero, Wire Hanger Productions
presents Divine in a film by John Wat
ers, Afternoon of the Living Dead
(NOT a Soap Opera). The Abuse Con
tinues ...”
Tickets, anyone!?
Joseph Patton lives in Charlottesville,
Virginia; for the past three years or so
he’s managed a company that rents
theaters in college towns to exhibit mid
night movies. He knows whereof he
speaks.
ERASERHEAD
•ttbtttn*
A new n»S'”
George A."
^ director
LIVING Dt£
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