Midnight movie: History and Key Facts

A midnight movie is a low-budget genre picture or distinctly nonmainstream film programmed for late-night screening or broadcast. The term is rooted in the practice that emerged in the 1950s of local television stations around the United States airing cheap genre films late at night, often with a host delivering ironic asides. As a cinematic phenomenon, the midnight presentation of offbeat movies started toward the end of the following decade in a few urban centers, particularly New York City. The midnight run of El Topo at New York's Elgin Theater that began in December 1970 sparked a trend that eventually spread across the country. The screening of nonmainstream pictures at midnight was aimed at building a cult film audience, encouraging repeat viewing and social interaction in what was originally a countercultural setting.

The national after-hours success of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in the late 1970s and the changing economics of the film exhibition industry altered the nature of the midnight movie phenomenon; as its association with broader currents of cultural and political opposition dwindled in the 1980s, the midnight movie became a more purely camp experience—in effect, bringing it closer to the television form that shares its name. The term midnight movie is now often used in two different, though related, ways: as a synonym for B movie, reflecting the relative cheapness characteristic of late-night movies both theatrically and on TV, and as a synonym for cult film.

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