“I made bad taste one percent more respectable and that was what I was put on this earth to do.” - John Waters
Before VCRs were readily available, midnight movies were the holy grail of ravenous film nuts. These low budget diamonds-in-the-rough traditionally screened at midnight sessions and existed outside the Hollywood mainstream. Attending a midnight movie became a social identifier, a mark of a person's cinematic sensibilities and cultural allegiance.
In this ode to classic midnight movies, Stuart Samuels brings to the screen his book of the same name.
Between 1970 and 1977, Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo, John Waters' Pink Flamingos, Perry Henzell's The Harder They Come, Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Picture Show, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and David Lynch's Eraserhead became synonymous with a new movement in filmmaking. Through interviews with these filmmakers, Samuels elucidates the hidden history behind films that pushed social boundaries and gave credence to poor taste.