The Midnight Hour

 

I'm trying to wrap things up because I have a post for every day in October and I really wanted to talk about The Midnight Hour before then because to me, this movie is everything that fall, October and Halloween should be. There will be all kinds of spoilers, I'm going to do a complete plot summary and then talk about my thoughts at the end, so I'll make note of where the spoilers begin and end. As far as I know, this movie is not currently being sold on DVD, unless you purchase a bootleg copy, but you can watch it in its entirety on YouTube.

The Midnight Hour was released in 1985 as a TV movie. I remember watching it with my mom when I was a kid, she had it recorded on a VHS tape. Like everything else back in the day. And it was a movie that always stuck with me. You feel happy when you're watching it, you know? It's nostalgic. Without further ado, let's get started.

SPOILERS

The Midnight Hour begins with a closeup of a street sign reading "Elm Street." Outside, we see trees with beautiful fall leaves, as a paperboy wearing a skeleton mask bikes along his route (to the tune of a very light, innocent instrumental track). Everyone is dressed in sweaters and light jackets, indicating that the crisp, autumn air is present. The title credits are in beautiful pumpkin orange. Everyone is pulling silly pranks on each other, and inside a classroom, students are playing hangman using spooky puns, before getting a lesson on the origins of Halloween and the history of their town. This is a great start to any Halloween movie, it immediately evoked every memory I have of the entire fall season.

We're introduced to Phil, Mary, Melissa, Vinnie and Mitch, briefly, before learning about the history of the town they live in. Pitchford Cove, aka "Pitchfork Cove," has a history of witches, most notably a woman named Lucinda, the ancestor of Melissa. Lucinda cursed the town, unleashing the dead upon it. At midnight on Halloween, a witch hunter (Phil's ancestor) put an end to Lucinda's curse, and the town has been at peace ever since then. Lucinda was then hanged, but she's immortalized in wax at the town's Witchcraft Museum.

The friends decide to sneak into the wax museum and obtain some very special costumes for the Halloween party they're attending that night. Melissa, of course, chooses to wear Lucinda's garb, while Mitch takes the witch hunter's clothing, telling Phil it wouldn't fit him anyway. In a scene that must have been an inspiration for Cabin in the Woods, everyone sneaks down into the basement archives and begins messing around with the artifacts being stored there. Hearing dogs barking outside (alerting the guard of intruders), the group grabs an old trunk and makes their escape. Their next stop? The cemetery, to try on their new costumes and investigate the contents of the trunk! Inside, Phil finds a ring and a scroll (with a seal that matches the ring of the witch hunter, that Mitch takes for himself). Phil is visibly stressed as Vinnie decides to break the seal on the scroll and Melissa begins reading the words, written in blood. (Where is Marty to tell these kids not to read the Latin??) The scroll is meant to raise the dead, just as Lucinda did exactly 300 years ago. What a mood killer. Time to leave the cemetery before any corpses crawl out of their graves. Oops. Too late. Welcome home, Lucinda! (Can anyone tell me why all of these corpses look so horrific, as if they'd been decaying for years, yet the cheerleader looks like she just stepped out of a sock hop 5 minutes ago?)

Back at home, Phil dresses up as a disco vampire...Or werewolf (he has sparkly, silver tinsel hair) and then makes his way over to the party (he runs into Sandy, the undead cheerleader, attempts to awkwardly flirt with her and tells her she should stop by the party later), as Mitch argues with his father (a judge) about his stolen costumer, yelling, "It's not Watergate! I'm gonna bring it back!" before storming out of the house.

At this point, the zombies go on a killing spree and all hell begins to break loose, while our protagonists are completely unaware of the danger they're in. For some reason, the substitute teacher from the beginning of the movie is at this high school party and she wants to know where the wine is. Melissa offers to go get some from the cellar and that is the beginning of the end for this town, because Lucinda follows her down there and she has plans for her (and apparently she's a vampire witch, like in Black Sunday).

Phil is absolutely fed up with all the "happy couples" at the party (and his wig) and decides to leave, ditching the silver tinsel and taking off his makeup. Again, he runs into Sandy, who is busy pouting over how different everything is since she died 30 years ago.(Phil has no idea what she's on about, of course.) She asks Phil to give her a ride, where she badgers him into drag racing, going to a non-existent malt shop, dancing on the street and, finally, heading to Lookout Point. Sandy kisses him and it looks like maybe Phil won't die alone after all, until a werewolf jumps on top of his car and he has to speed off. They report the attack at the police station, but the cops are busy with riots and cases of vandalism all over town, not that they believe them anyway.

Phil comes clean to Sandy, telling her that he and his friends broke into the museum, stealing the costumes and trunk before reading the scroll at the cemetery. Sandy says the ritual worked and the dead are coming back to life, but not all of them are out to kill (he's still not catching on). She tells him they need to reseal the scroll, by midnight (did she do this back in the 50's?), but unfortunately, Mitch still has the ring from earlier and he's at the monster bash where everyone is having a good time doing a choreographed dance along with vampire Melissa.

Phil stops at home first to melt down some of his dad's dental supplies into silver bullets, in case he runs into any more werewolves. He's got bigger problems now because his dad is still exhibiting questionable habits and goes after him with a drill.

Back at the party, Mitch's demon dad literally crashes it, with his car, and then strangles Mitch to death (he must still be mad about the costumes), which means Phil is going to have a hell of a time getting that ring back from him now. Following this, in the creepiest scene in the movie (I remember being afraid of it as a child), Phil drives slowly through the town, now overrun with monsters. The zombie milkman is pouring milk out on the ground while the undead mailman is throwing letters into a fire. The cops are dead, too, and it seems as if there's no one left to rely on for help (not that the cops were helpful before they were dead).

When Phil and Sandy arrive at the party, the house looks deserted, but it's actually turned into a surprise party! His friends, now all demons, appear on the stairs when he's about to leave. Mitch tries to grab Phil through the door that leads into the kitchen, and Phil takes the opportunity to try to grab the ring from his hand, only it's stuck! Sandy is about to hand him a cleaver, to which Phil exclaims "No!" because he's a good guy, and opts for syrup instead, making it easy to slide the ring off Mitch's finger. Afterwards, the pair make their escape while the partygoers chase after them. In the car, there's a stowaway, a very lively-looking substitute teacher. Except that when they reach the cemetery, she bares her fangs.

In the car, Phil melts down the bones of the witch hunter to make the wax to seal the parchment, as the demons descend on his car. When it looks like he's out of time, Sandy tells Phil she loves him and says goodbye, before an explosion of bright light casts away all the dead, including her. (Looks like he's alone after all.) Stepping out of his car, all the damage done to it throughout the night is gone, implying that everything is back to normal and he's saved the town and his friends. He notices Sandy's grave, and written on it in her lipstick are their initials. He says he loves her, too, like they didn't just meet a few hours ago and he wasn't trying to hook up with Mary most of the night. On the radio, a dedication comes through from Sandy to Phil. Halloween is a magical night!

END OF SPOILERS.

I swear to God, after watching this movie, I was obsessed with Tutti Frutti lollipops. Whenever I would spend the night with my grandparents, my grandmother would take me to Friendly's and they always had these big, round lollipops. And that was always the flavor I chose, because of The Midnight Hour.

If you're looking for a Halloween playlist, but you don't want the same songs that are always played, download this movie's entire soundtrack. Seriously. It's perfect.

This is some good old 80's fun. Not 80's in the same way as The Monster Squad is, where it's offensive, but 80's in the way that it's kind of corny and innocent. There's no gore, you barely see any of the attacks and I genuinely appreciate that. It's a lovely, nostalgic, family-friendly Halloween film that everyone can enjoy together. All the characters are extremely likable (except maybe Sandy, she was sweet, but loud and pushy), with Mitch being the most interesting character because he actually seems like a pretty nice, harmless guy, but if he were written today, a jock with a nasty alcoholic for a father, I feel like he would be exactly the same as Tyler from The Vampire Diaries was (in its first season, but truthfully, I never liked him even after that), an equally nasty, obnoxious bully with a chip on his shoulder. Not in The Midnight Hour though! This is good, wholesome entertainment...Where half the town turns into vicious murderers, but it's fine because the movie's overall tone is still fun and lighthearted.