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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Pretty Good

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Midnight was in some respects a much easier film to watch than Darkness. While Darkness utilized professional actors and better cameramen and directors, Midnight had a more coherent plot. Few could watch Darkness and then describe to somebody what happened in that movie and why it happened. Whereas, because John Russo adopted the screen play for Midnight from his own already published novel and then directed the movie himself, John Russo's story was successfully conveyed to the audience. Russo's novel, "Midnight" told a bigger story about a national syndicate of Satanists that controlled all the political offices of the small Pennsylvania town which was the setting for the novel. Russo's novel also had a much more grim ending as nobody came to save poor Nancy. In the book, Nancy's policeman-step-father drove home after hearing that the satanists would kill Nancy on Easter night. The step father character in the novel left Nancy to die in an effort to conceal his attempted rape of her. While Midnight the movie tells a slightly smaller story than "Midnight" the novel, Russo manages to force feed some pretty heavy themes to his audience: (1)Racial tension- Russo really places a lot of emphasis on the issue of racial disharmony. (2)The archaic and useless nature of religion- Russo devotes more time to this theme in his novel, but its hard not to notice Russo's opinion that Catholic dogma is just as archaic and useless as the satanic rituals being performed by his villains. The Catholic Priest taking Nancy's confession is portrayed as vindictive and unnecessarily ritualistic. Late in the film, the camera pans back and forth between Nancy praying for salvation while locked in a dog cage and at the same time the satanists chant their prayers hoping to resurrect their mummified mother. Russo seems to suggest that both prayers are equally outdated, ineffective and useless. (3) Men as predators- Russo does not think very highly of the fellow members of his gender. Literally every man that Russo's main character, underage Nancy, meets wants to have sex with her. Her stepfather drunkenly tries to rape her, The first driver that attempts to pick her up hitchhiking specifically states that she has to have sex with him for every 300 miles that he drives her. The two college aged boys discuss that she is jail bait and then still pick her up hitchhiking because the one boy thinks she is likely to sleep with him. The satanist brothers try and strip her naked and rape her until their satanist sister reminds them that they need a virgin sacrifice. (4) The danger of rural areas- Many of the victims of the satanist killers were either killed or kidnapped right from their own homes and backyards. This was only possible because of the rural area that these people lived in. The "dangerous" woods reached right up into the victims back door. The satanists needed only step out of the dangerous woods attack their victims and then disappear back into the woods. Russo's story was interesting but his themes were misguided and heavy handed

Contains a smattering of blood. A young girl on the run from her pervert father meets up with two traveling losers. They make the mistake of trying to shoplift and end up stumbling into a cult of freaks that captures and kills girls. - - - John Russo must've had a lucky fluke when he contributed to "Night of the Living Dead" because he has since proved that he's not exactly a movie genius. Still, he crafted a film that, while not enjoyable, is certainly an amusing expose of bad taste. There are a ton of taboo subjects floating around and almost achieves a "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" quality with grainy footage, off performances, and extreme low budget. Of course, none of this saves the movie from being muddled and featuring a plot that is too fractured for its own good. It has some value for cult fans, but anyone with a taste for the highbrow or tactful should just stay away.* * out of 4

Thoroughly unoriginal, primitive and nasty, yet compelling and strangely unsettling, "Midnight" truly is the masterwork of novelist John A. Russo. The co-writer of the legendary horror classic "Night of the Living Dead" always somewhat stood in the shadow of George A. Romero, but "Midnight" is his very own and personalized venture into the depths of grisly backwoods-horror and uncanny rednecks. Russo clearly didn't have much of a budget to work with, yet he manages to create a gripping atmosphere through eerily isolated locations, appalling characters and moody music. And even though you've endured the routine story - centering on a family of demented social outcasts terrorizing travelers - at least a dozen times before, Russo's screenplay still manages to deliver a handful of efficient frights and shocking moments. The great (late) Lawrence Tierney stars as an aggressive drunken pervert, and yet his character is one of the good guys, since the others are inbred Satanists, hoodlum teenagers and unfriendly hillbillies. When Bert Johnson once again attempts to rape his under-aged stepdaughter, the girl flees and hitchhikes her way down South. She fetches a ride in the van of two young boys, who rob grocery stores for fun, and together they end up in a little town where none of the inhabitants have any of their original teeth left. Deeply hidden in the woods surrounding this town, there lives a crazed family of devil-worshipers who're collecting female virgins to sacrifice to our Lord Satan on Easter Sunday. Why? Because their late mother taught them to do this, of course! "Midnight" is derivative of "Psycho", "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Deliverance" and a truckload of other grindhouse 70's flicks. So much even that it feels like you're watching a genuine 70's drive-in feature! Despite released during the early 80's, "Midnight" features the soundtrack, photography and narrative style of a typically trashy 70's horror cinema. John Russo implements a raw and brutal filming style, with disturbing images of country folks and graphic violence. Tom Savini (old friends with Russo and Romero) was in charge of the make-up effects, so you just know there will be some deliciously succulent massacres on display. In one particularly nasty scene, the camera zooms in on one of the depraved hicks slicing a young girl's throat with a rusty saw. How can any fan of horror cinema resist that? By no means "Midnight" will ever be considered a classic, but it's tremendous fun none the less.

How they got Lawrence Tierney (well-known 1950s film noir thug and later Quentin Tarentino's main man in RESERVOIR DOGS) to play a central role in this little sickie is a wonder. Fans of 70s/80s horror cheese (and students of Ed Gein cinema) are advised that this is one of the good ones: The claustrophobic atmosphere, shockingly cruel and sudden amounts of shock and not-quite-gore, and low budget yet creative mise en scene put this one up there with the LAST HOUSE and Texas CHAINSAW. While I'm plugging indie shockers of this type, I ought to mention DERANGED. MIDNIGHT and DERANGED would make a great double bill. You'd really need a shower afterwards.