Doc Till You Drop

The grieving father of a dead girl wants to know why he can't see his daughter's body. He's also compelled to ask if she was raped. "In a certain sense," replies the police detective, "yes." That's slightly too cryptic for the concerned father. More detail is needed. The sympathetic detective takes Dad into the next room, flicks a switch to reveal a large X-ray of a machete stuck between the dead girl's legs.

I'd only seen What Have You Done To Solange? on commercial television. That part was cut back then. Now, I'm sitting at home, watching the DVD and staring in happy amazement. Not just at this incredibly inappropriate scene, but also at my renewed understanding of why I watched two lesser Italian thrillers earlier in the day. It's a perfect reminder of the cheap thrills that I was seeking throughout an adolescence spent in dusk-till-dawn drive-ins. This is what bizarre filmmaking is all about-a complete departure in which you realize you're watching a document that barely counts as being part of the planet.

This leaves me in the proper mood to enjoy a documentary entitled Midnight Movies. The films invoked on the promo flyer are a reminder of nice alien worlds: El Topo, Pink Flamingos, Eraserhead. My only concern is that the sheet outlines an effort that more resembles a documentary about popular campus film bookings of the 70s. At least the invitation doesn't sport Jimmy Page from The Song Remains The Same.

It's a nice touch to hold the film's party at The Fat Black Pussycat on West 3rd, itself once the title of baffling schlock filmed amongst a long-gone world of beatnik weirdness. Too bad that what was once a great performance space has now been turned into yet another NYC lounge. The deejay is certainly keeping things dull with a mix of classic rock and bad UK dance vibes. I've got the soundtrack to Barbarella in my bag. I'm tempted to hand it over to help the poor guy out, but I'm obviously too drunk to remember to get it back.

I'm mainly getting drunk because I don't know anyone here. It's an older crowd, which is typical of what kind of people would even take an interest in midnight movies. The folks at the Starz Encore channel-where the documentary debuts August 3rd-have still put out an impressive spread. It almost makes up for the gimmick of screening the documentary at midnight on a Saturday night.

I could be enjoying The Ubangis over at Otto's Shrunken Head. Others seem to have had the same idea, since it's a pretty sparse crowd that's walked the few blocks over to Film Forum. They were even smart enough to shut down the open bar at 11:45. The vomit bag motif on each chair is nice, though-if a bit puzzling. I'm hoping it means Mark of the Devil rates a mention in the documentary.

Instead, the film centers on the midnight movies that took off in the 70s at the Elgin Cinema here in Manhattan. This gives the film a solid angle, in a square couldn't-get-into-Studio-54-that-night way. Personally, I would've been miserable stuck with a bunch of stoned hippies hooting over the vision of Alejandro Jodorowsky.

You know, crack hadn't started screwing up the 42nd Street theaters back then. There were plenty of insane 2 a.m. movies for New Yorkers to be enjoying at the time. Some people were better catered to by that guy who managed the Elgin-who still seems like a very nice man, in a kind of mild patches-on-the-backpack way.

John Waters keeps the focus on midnight movies while reminiscing about Pink Flamingos. The documentary mainly stalls with oft-told tales about the making of Night of the Living Dead, The Harder They Fall, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That last one doesn't even support the documentary's vision of outsider cinema.

Any film fan would rather be hearing about misfired midnight films such as Zachariah. Nobody bothers to mention Ralph Bakshi or Robert Downey, Sr., either. And who buys the notion that Eraserhead was the end of midnight movies? Maybe it was in Manhattan. Others will wonder what the hell happened to Forbidden Zone or The Evil Dead-although the latter gets one second of fleeting screen time.

You know who wouldn't have forgotten those movies? Danny Peary. He remains the pioneering authority on cult movies. Peary's not in this film. Instead, we get Midnight Movies authors Hoberman and Rosenbaum sounding exactly like guys you don't want to be sitting near at a midnight movie. The film's director, Stewart Samuels, also wrote a book of the same name several years ago. You'd think that'd be a clue that this is a pretty tired topic. But, you know, it's an insular world when you're really excited about long-ago nights spent in the dark with smug fellow hipsters.