MIDNIGHT MATNIEE
"Even though a devastating murder took place during a small town's horror film festival two years earlier, the townspeople want another festival."
In the small Canadian town of Holsten, a horrible crime occurred at the Paramount theatre one fateful night in 1987. A poor girl's boyfriend was murdered as he sat right next to her while they were watching a late-night horror film, and her reaction to realizing her beau has a giant knife protruding from his neck was naturally to scream hysterically, but the other patrons in the auditorium ignored her cries, assuming she was merely reacting (quite loudly) to the events onscreen.
Two years later, the girl, Kelly has relocated to Los Angeles to live with her sleazy b-movie producer father, and she's pretty fucked up psychologically, suffering from some pretty serious emotional issues, as well as recurring problems with drug and alcohol addiction. Of course, her father is William B. Davis, also known as the "Cigarette Smoking Man" from The X-Files, so it's no surprise to learn that he's not exactly "Father of the Year" material.
Kelly's younger sister Sherri is hooking up with local bad boy Lawrence, who fancies himself a regular rebel without a cause, committing acts of petty vandalism, flouting authority, and generally acting like an asshole to pretty much everybody he interacts with. But Sherri has been talking with her father, and is seriously considering moving out to California to start a new life with her old man and her broken sister, away from boring old Holsten and its boring old people and its boring old stuff. But Lawrence is also making plans to leave town, hopefully with his best girl by his side. Which man will she choose to run away with?
Meanwhile, the Paramount theatre is gearing up for another late-night horror double feature, to be attended by Heath Harris, the aforementioned sleazy b-movie producer and father to Sherri and Kelly. Theatre manager Earl Gardner (the late Don S. Davis, my beloved Major Garland Briggs) is trying to keep his sanity while his employees act increasingly bizarre as they prepare for the screening, while also dealing with a series of complaints from concerned citizens who fear the upcoming event will reopen not-so-old wounds in the community. Not to mention his complicated semi-romantic relationship with his melodramatic assistant Warren, who has a penchant for stalking the darkened halls of the theatre wearing a ski-mask, frightening patrons and employees alike for the sheer joy of it.
Sherri's mother Marilyn, who works as a projectionist at the Paramount, is juggling her work with her troublesome, rebellious daughter, as well as her visiting ex-husband and his attempts to entice Sherri away to California, all while being courted by the new police detective, Al. And Al, recently transferred from the big city (Vancouver), can't shake the feeling that something terrible is coming to sleepy little Holsten, and that blood will soon run down the aisles of the Paramount theatre once again...
Midnight Matinee features some above-average performance from several cast members, including Don S. Davis as the beleaguered theatre manager dealing with a possibly insane former lover in his employee Warren. I was honestly surprised that the movie included this sub-plot, and didn't turn either Mr. Gardner or Warren into homosexual caricatures, which often occurred in genre films of the era. It's all played very subtly, with the nature of their relationship left vague enough that many viewers might not even notice it the first time they watch the film. The characters remain firmly in the closet throughout the narrative, only alluding to the truth of their liaison while in each other's company. I appreciated this subtlety, and wish it were more prevalent in the genre.
I also have to point out my enjoyment of the film's often creative and clever cinematography and editing. More often that not, slasher films are made by people who don't particularly give much of a shit about their craft, because they see the end product as nothing more than simple, disposable entertainment at best, and they're only really concerned about their paycheck. As a result, the vast majority of films in this genre are photographed very quickly and simply, with very little room for creativity or innovation. But every now and then, you'll come across a movie that's actually trying, and it's very heartening to see when it finally happens.
Let me show you an example:
That's a shot of bad boy Lawrence, who is at this point in the narrative a person of interest in the murder of Sherri's spurned ex-lover, being pulled over by the local police as he attempts to flee town with his girlfriend. Look at that composition. Isn't that great? It's clever, it's cool, and it couldn't have taken a great deal of time to set up. It's a simple shot, yet a very memorable shot, and it's merely one example of a film crew who were actually making an effort to do something interesting with their "disposable entertainment".
There's also a moment when Lawrence is driving around with Sherri, and he tells his girlfriend that he feels like doing something reckless, and as he tears ass down the road, the film cross-dissolves to a very similar stretch of road, being the scene of an automobile accident. This provides a momentary sense of disorientation as the viewer is led to believe that Lawrence's "reckless" behavior has gotten both him and Sherri killed, before it is quickly revealed to be a different automobile on a different stretch of road. Once again, a small effort was made to do things a little different, and it was appreciated.
Here's more evidence that Midnight Matinee actually had a little thought put into it at some point before the cameras rolled: all of the murder sequences in the film are juxtaposed with violent imagery being presented either on the Paramount theatre's silver screen or (in one instance) on an old television set. This metafictional approach to the film's own events was almost unheard of in 1989, and I applaud writer/director Richard Martin for being engaged in the material and delivering a product that really stands out from the pack.
And the reveal of the killer's identity works very well. As it turns out, the culprit behind the series of grisly murders that terrorized the community was Marilyn, who committed all of these crimes in an insanely misguided effort to protect her daughter Sherri. She murdered her daughter's ex-lover for being a lowlife piece of shit who could only seem to show his love via attempted rape, she murdered Heath because he was threatening to steal Sherri away to California, where she feared Sherri would end up just like poor Kelly, and she murdered Mr. Gardner because he was the man who gave Kelly the money to travel to L.A. to be with her father in the first place, and he had recently been encouraging Sherri to get out of the "dead-end town" of Holsten, as well.
Marilyn felt responsible for Kelly's woes (which she was, since killing her boyfriend in that movie theatre started her downward spiral) and wanted to protect her daughter Sherri from turning out the same way. So Marilyn killed anybody who threatened to take her away from Holsten and away from her, because she cared just a little too much. This really grounded the whole movie for me, once again serving to separate it from so many lesser genre efforts of the era.
But every lead actor in this movie is terrible.
Ron White's portrayal of Al, perhaps the most ineffectual police detective in slasher movie history, is borderline comatose. He wears the exact same expression on his face in every scene, regardless of what's happening around him. And that face resembles a heap of dried oatmeal wearing a stupid wig.
What about Gillian Barber, who played the mad projectionist Marilyn? If White's performance was borderline comatose, then I'm convinced Barber was comatose, and was in fact being manipulated by a system of strings and pulleys by off-screen crewmembers, Weekend At Bernie's style. She never provides any effort in her performance, not even after she's been unmasked as the killer.
At the point of her reveal, I began to wonder if perhaps her incredibly subdued performance was just part of the character, being a mask of demure repression, and now that the mask has fallen away she would inject a little energy into the proceedings, but that didn't happen. Instead nothing happened. She just kept mumbling through her dialogue, business as usual.
Jeff Schultz tries to channel James Dean and early Marlon Brando as the misunderstood bad boy Lawrence, but he just exudes this amateur vibe, trying way too hard to convey every emotion, never managing to actually sell any emotion. He's on the opposite end of the spectrum from Gillian Barber in that regard. Too much as opposed to too little.
Beatrice Beopple's portrayal of Sherri just does nothing for me. She's not exactly bad in her role, she just fails to connect with me. Her line readings sound mechanical and lifeless, and because of this I never gave a damn about her plight. She was just there, like a photograph hanging on a wall. In fact, the producers could have saved some money by just casting her 8 x 10 headshot for the role of Sherri, because it would have delivered the same performance.
YOUR TIME IS RUNNING OUT!
I saw this movie back in the 90s, but I think it was called just MATINEE. Did they change the title? I remember it being a little boring.
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