... aka: In the Midnight Hour
... aka: Notte di Halloween, La (Halloween Night)
Directed by:
Jack Bender
It's Halloween in the small town of Pitchford
Cove, Massachusetts. According to local legend, three-hundred years earlier, Lucinda Cavender, "one of
the most powerful witches who ever lived," supposedly set free all of the demons
from hell and awoke the dead in the process... until she was put in her place by "witchhunter
general" Nathaniel Grenville. A group of high school students, among them Phil
Grenville (Lee Montgomery), the great great great grandson of Nathaniel
(and perhaps the hairiest-chested high school student ever to have lived) and Melissa Cavender (Shari
Belafonte), the great great great granddaughter of Lucinda, decide to
break into the town's witchcraft museum to steal vintage costumes for Melissa's
party later that night. They, along with Melissa's boyfriend Vinnie (LeVar
Burton), jock Mitch (Peter DeLuise, son of Dom) and Mary (Dedee Pfeiffer, sister of Michelle),
who Phil has a major unrequited crush on, load up a bunch of stuff and take it
to a cemetery. Inside a trunk they swiped, they find a ring and a parchment that
appears to be written in blood. Lucinda reads it, and soon after they leave a curse is unleashed as all the denizens of the cemetery rise from their graves.
Among the resurrected creatures are a former serial killer, a werewolf, a
slew of zombies and, of course, Lucinda herself (Jonelle Allen), a
vampire-witch who can't wait to pick up right where she left off. Caught up in
the mix is Sandy Matthews (Jonna Lee), the ghost of a cheerleader who
died in 1959 and - dressed for the times and with lingo to match - now just
wants to live free and fall in love while she still has a chance. Meanwhile, at
Melissa's Halloween party, some of the zombies show and blend right in eating
popcorn, laughing, dancing, drinking punch and even necking. Lucinda shows up,
gets Melissa alone in the cellar and bites her while bottles spurt red wine in slow motion and "How Soon Is Now" plays on the soundtrack. Now a vampire herself, Melissa
transforms Vinnie and so on until everyone at the party has joined the undead
and are breaking out into a choreographed musical number ("Let's Get Dead")
celebrating that fact. Thankfully for Phil, he left the party early on after being
rejected by Mary and can avoid all that. He's even more fortunate to run across Sandy, who's not only good for a little back seat romance but also knows just
what to do to save the town before the evil can completely take over.
The Midnight Hour made its prime time debut on ABC on November 1st
with the tagline "Caution: Halloween didn't end last night!" I remember seeing
it one time as a kid (in the early 90s) and loving it. That by itself was enough
to make me go into this second viewing with apprehensions. After all, as adults
we'll often re-visit the things we loved when we were younger just for the
nostalgia factor only to ultimately walk away disappointed, scratching our heads
and thinking, "I can't believe I used to like that." I figured this would
be another of those cases. Surprisingly, it was not. This movie is still an absolute blast
to watch, and with an HD transfer now on the market, the movie looks better than
ever before. The makeups (from Tom Burman, Steve LaPorte and
others) are actually quite outstanding for a TV movie, the acting is good, the
plot is fun, the music is great and the movie affectionately captures the spirit
of All Hallow's Eve, with trick-or-treaters running the streets, foggy
cemeteries and even Wolfman Jack on the radio playing songs like Wilson
Pickett's "The Midnight Hour" (of course), CCR's "Bad Moon Rising" and Sam the
Sham and the Pharaohs' "Li'l Red Riding Hood." This is one of those rare genre
movie with plenty for both parents and kids to enjoy, without the former having to worry about too much objectionable material.
Most of the cast is very good, but the standouts for me were Lee and
Belafonte. Lee is highly amusing and quite wonderful in her role as the transported 50s
teen out of her element and she and Montgomery even manage to make the doomed
romance subplot - which really should have been extremely corny - oddly
charming. Belafonte was 30 or 31 years old at the time she played this role of a
high school student, but she certainly doesn't look it. Not only is she nice on the eyes, but she also sinks her teeth into her newly-transformed vampiress
character; playing it with sultry enthusiasm to spare. Unfortunately, neither
actress' career really amounted to much over the years.
There are numerous other familiar faces on hand. Cindy Morgan (from
the 80s favorites Caddyshack and TRON) plays a hottie substitute
teacher and the party chaperon. Kevin McCarthy, as a mean drunk judge, and Dick Van Patten, as a goofy dentist who doesn't like to
administer Novocain before drilling, both get turned into zombies. Dennis
Redfield is a tobacco-chewing hick who gets transformed into a werewolf,
Kurtwood Smith and Hank Garrett are cops and comedian Mark
Blankfield plays the main ghoul. This was also supposedly the film debut of
Macaulay Culkin, though I don't recall seeing him anywhere (IMDb lists
him as playing "Halloween Kid"). Director Bender also made Deadly Messages
(1985), another made-for-TV horror film about a OUIJA board (which is seen on a
theater marquee here) and Child's Play 3 (1991). He'd become better-known
later on for his work on the hit TV show "Lost" (2004-2010).
Midnight received a video release from Vidmark and was later
distributed on VHS and DVD by Anchor Bay here in America. In Germany it was
called either Creeps or Halloween - Besuch aus dem Jenseits
("Halloween: Visitor from Beyond the Grave") and in Spain it was released as
La noche del baile de medianoche ("Midnight Prom Night").
★★★