THE MIDNIGHT HOUR (1985)
Tagline: Ghouls just want to have fun!
(Horror, Dumb Teenagers,Thriller, It’s Thriller Night…) [PG]
Note – this is a made for TV movie that probably would have landed at a TV-14. The fact that it got on regular TV at that time though, probably meant it would have been a PG rated movie.
Yeah it's the Wolfman and it's Halloween! So we goin' be rocking to the midnight hour with the weird tunes!
In this one dumb teenagers hear a haunting past regarding the town from a school mate in class and immediately decide it’s time to go out and steal stuff then read a curse that awakens the dead. Oh, and to top it all off…it’s Halloween night…
First off growing up I remember hearing about Wolfman Jack, but don’t recall listening to his radio show, just references after the fact in movies and perhaps from my father. His voice however is iconic and I loved that he was in this movie because for me, he personifies spooky fun. Given that tidbit, it probably goes without saying that his movie is loaded with great music.
Acting wise there are a lot of well –known talents in this. Everyone from Reading Rainbows LeVar Burton to Dick Van Patten (best known for SPACEBALLS). It also has Kurtwood Smith who was the crazy villain in ROBOCOP and Dedee Pfeiffer (Michelle Pfeiffer’s sister) who is still getting plenty of roles. This movie also features the first time Macaulay Culkin was in anything. He plays a trick-or-treater. For a TV movie, the performances all around are pretty good even as dumb as some of the characters are.
Regarding the production, it does feel like everyone in this movie just stepped out of the “Thriller” video or a costume party. After checking into it, it turns out some of the producers of the “Thriller” video by Michael Jackson were also involved in this movie’s “Get Dead” random song from out of nowhere segment. We aren’t really given an explanation why a cheerleader came back from the dead looking like she just died yesterday but no one knows who she is. And in the same graveyard we have the wolfman, a bunch of vampires, and a host of other ghouls. It’s like Universal Studios buried their entire monster catalog in that town and no one thought anything of it.
This story line feels a bit like a cracked out HOCUS POCUS plot. So it’s not entirely original, but there is a lot of crazy stuff in it, mass hysteria, dogs and cats living together. For a Halloween movie this is probably going to be on a lot of people’s watch lists, but for me, a lot like HOCUS POCUS it’s just middle of the road and isn’t as fun as it could have been. I would have gone with less weird, “that guy is in love with a dead girl” and more scenes involving how the cops and others got turned into ghouls. Also if you were going to do a dance number, why not throw 2 or 3 in there, because as it is, that scene feels extremely out of place.
Overall this is a wild one but nothing mind-blowing. I give it a 4 out of 7.
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