This film is brought to us by the mind of John Russo. Know who he is? If you do, then you can skip this paragraph, but if you don't then read on please. Russo is most famously known for writing Night of the Living Dead. Also, filmmakers might recognize him as the author of a great book on low-budget horror movie making called Scare Tactics. It was certainly one of my favorite how-to books and one that inspired me to finally make my first feature length film. Russo has gone on to write a ton of novels as well. Besides the Night novel, he's written The Majorettes, and gone on to direct the film version of that, and the novel version of this film, Midnight. Now that you've been schooled, let's take a look at John Russo's Midnight.

A backwoods family is killing the townspeople who they believe are demons. Years later, in another part of the country we meet the man-faced Nancy, who suffers the fires of hell because she let her boyfriend sleep with her and didn't confess it. She lives with her mom and lecherous, drunken stepfather who not only wants to get into her pants, but is also the town sheriff, so that's good. After a particularly sleazy attack from her stepfather, she decides to pack up and run away to California. She hitches a ride from Hank and Tom, two guys headed for Ft. Lauderdale (Florida) to get some poon in their fur-lined van. They tour the country, camp out, and steal food from grocery stores accompanied by the shittiest theme song anyone could ever imagine. One so terrible that it not only sounds like it belongs in a retarded soap opera, but it tops in crappiness the theme song for the masterfully retarded The Mutilator.

Meanwhile, the crazy family is killing people off. They capture girls in bear traps and smack them on the head till dead; they slice up friendly black priests who can't act; they drown a girl by running a faucet over her face. And boy does this make the lead crazy guy, a giant fat farmer dude named Cyrus, laugh. Killing people cracks him up, like he's watching a good Abbott and Costello movie! Anyway, a local girl goes missing and two cops stop by their campsite to rouse them while Nancy is in the woods taking a dump or something. The cops, who don't appear to be in control of all their marbles, accuse Hank and Tom of killing the girl. Despite their protests, the cops gun the boys down. Nancy watches the whole thing, then freaks out as anyone would and makes a run for it. The cops see her and chase after her. At this point both plots come together as Nancy runs toward the crazy family's home looking for help.

It turns out the cops were crazies too, which makes sense, and they capture Nancy and throw her in a dog cage next to another captive girl. Luckily, Nancy's sleazy stepfather shows up looking for her and he stumbles onto the crazy house by employing his keen detective sense. That evening the girls are to be bled dry in a ceremony so that the rotting corpse of the family's mother can drink their blood and come back to life. But, with the help of her horny stepfather, our man-ish heroine just may get a chance to escape and bring the film to a fiery conclusion.

If a family supposedly kills people because they believe they are demons in disguise, why would they perform black masses and worship the devil? Doesn't make a lot of sense does it? The main problem with the film is that it is unsure what it wants to be. Is it a slasher movie? Or would it be best described as a killer-hicks-in-the-woods opus? No doubt this film inspired the Bill Paxton film Frailty, what with the religious zealot family killing people they believe are demons, but not even that is a huge portion of the film and that's a bad thing.

The truth is that this is basically a Texas Chainsaw ripoff, plain and simple, and it's a suck-ass one, too. The most annoying thing is the constant use of their one and only bullshit garbage theme song. I mean, this is a terrible, horrible piece of music, and it just might find its way onto our Youtube page, so stay tuned to have a listen yourself. But the bad stuff doesn't end there. The film is slow, the acting is atrocious, the direction is lazy, and the script is boring. Midnight has remained forgotten and obscure for a reason, it isn't very good or notable in the least. Well, it's notable if you hate that fucking theme song as much as I do. Something else that bugs me is why would the daughter of the crazy family have a British accent if she lives in the South?

- Jose Prendes