Hacker Cinema
Midnight Express
1978 · Film · 121 min
Directed by Alan Parker
Billy Hayes is caught attempting to smuggle drugs out of a country. The courts decide to make an example of him, sentencing him to more than 30 years in prison. Hayes has two opportunities for release: the appeals made by his lawyer, his family, and the American government, or the "Midnight Express".
1 positive1 mixed7 neutralfrom 9 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
Videos commenters linked
From YouTube links in the comments below. Most are clips and trailers; “Full” means the uploader says so.
9 comments on Hacker News
The Midnight Express theme song is pinned on my "strutting" playlist.
It's a great story but if Moroder is your only interest in it, you're probably going to be disappointed (I like crime/thriller/escape movies myself). The song itself plays in an early scene and the rest of the movie is pretty bleak.
I always wanted to watch the movie, not because of the critical acclaim, not because I want to see graphic prison scenes, but because of the Giorgio Moroder score. The wrestling tag team Midnight Express, Dennis Condrey and Beautiful Bobby Eaton, managed by Jim Cornette used the main theme as their entrance music, and Art Bell used it to introduce his radio program. I figured if these guys, who I was a fan of, were so into it (whether they were actually into the movie, only wanted to piggyback off its success, or just liked the song, I don't actually know), I should check it out. The last straw that made me actually watch it was when my gf happened to live around the corner from an all night diner that we went to a lot named "Midnight Express".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD4Ks_EMQBY
I've been collecting movies for my Plex server for a few years, and I went through the phase where I was getting all the classic movies, all the Oscar-nominated movies for every calendar year, etc.
And I stumbled on a movie I would never have watched. But in reading the synopsis for it, I recognized a reference I had picked up as a small child from what was either the very late 1970s or maybe early 1980s. For less than a year (I'd imagine), everyone must have been making jokes about "Turkish prisons". The kind of thing that stand up comedias on Carson would have joked about, SNL, etc. And I overheard one of those jokes (or several), filed it away, and never figured it out.
Midnight Express (1978).
It's funny to me, there have been other such instances. Only took me 40-some years to solve.
I get what you're saying (I worked in fiom and tv for eons before switching out), but you can't really do it like that. Comparison needs to include both what the movie was built on, leading to it, and then also to consider directors own body of work leading to it. That takes into account period of work and release as well. What came after (not immediately) is not relevant to the work itself since it's out of period (in future). To even start talking in this direction you'd have to invoke, serially, works like Clockwork Orange, American Graffiti, Taxi Driver, and then Midnight Express to even start outlining the silhouette of what is to come.with Blade Runner.. and that's just a start since Ridley Scott's path is a bit unusual, and that movie's genesis especially so (see Legend he did sonce it's close to the period). That only covers the basics of the basics of discussing of what and specifically why this particular work is the way it is and why emulating the moves later (2049) didn't yield the same.
Edit: typing on mobile. Screw it, I hope it's at least somewhat readable.
Isn’t Midnight Express an English movie? I’m not sure it can be used as source for that.
Quite randomly, regarding Turkey, I just watched the movie Midnight Express. Then watched Midnight Return right after. Only because I saw someone on HN talking about how many cats there are in Istanbul, and name-dropping the movie. Now I really want to go there. Without smuggling any hash of course. Crypto hashes are okay right? ;-)
Knowingly being a drug mule, on the other hand, pays better.
Just be careful you don't wind up in a Turkish prison. Then, what you need to do to escape is to kill the chief guard and walk out the front door wearing his uniform: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Express_(film)
No thanks. Not the life for me.
> Small retail businesses selling spices in larger quantities may buy direct from their countries of origin — which provides another opening for organised criminals to penetrate supply chains that are not as heavily regulated, says Elliott.
I'm confused, is this about food or FUD?
Yeah, "their countries of origin" --- those damn crooked little stores run by colored folk!
Why, I'm running scared to the nearest SuperValu, Trader Joe's or Walmarts, who would never buy cases of stuff direct from suppliers in those same countries!
> Elliott says he declined through fear an invitation from a Turkish processor to fly over and tour its facilities. “I thought, ‘I don’t think I’ll do that, because I’ll probably never come home again.’”
Undoubtedly, Elliott once saw Midnight Express, and thought it was a travel documentary.
I went to a talk by Alan Parker (probably more than 20 years ago). In it he talked about watching a screening of his film Midnight Express. There is a scene in the film where Billy, the main character, bites out the tongue of another man at the end of a fight. He intended the scene to be tragic. It was supposed to show how prison had brought Billy to a place where he had completely lost everything he used to be. But, to Parker's dismay, some of the audience cheered because all they could see was the vengeance that Billy was taking on the other character.
Parker said that he resolved after that not to use violence in a film in that way again.