MIDNIGHT - A bad, but somehow hypnotic movie. Teen on run from perv-copper father hits on unrealistic grocery thief duo, then ends up in a stew of satanic shit via TCM-style family doing bad things to women in cages. Although its myriad flaws should be obvious, there are a number of points in its favour. The grim, ever-brown landscape. The whacky music, which moves from anodyne (but haunting?) eighties synth to broiling industrial electro-psyche. An atmosphere that forever portends dread, almost held at bay by rubbish filmaking, but which manages to seep through in a few vicious scenes. Bad acting, sagging pace, but then just a sense of otherness, a creepiness that draws you in (if you're like me, in which case, I pity you). Bad picture quality, from Arrow. But even this adds to something that works. Despite its lopsidedness and poor dynamics, it hits a nerve buried deep within the infected tissue of late seventies / early eighties nihilism. If Russo had enough $ to make this for real, it probably would've been simply bland. As it stands, this is trance inducing garbage.
ALONE WITH HER - I've heard quite mixed opinions on this low-end camcorder voyage into covert surveillance and stalkerish obsession. A lonely guy picks a victim, infiltrates her home with cheap video devices and insinuates his way into her life. For me, it's not very good, but not bad either. As in, not good, but neither simply rubbish nor inspiringly awful. And yet, not quite mediocre. There was something about it that kept me watching, a tension which I guess followed the creepy premise. The acting was quite good, and the unravelling of the stalker's fixation was handled well (and painfully). The found-film subgenre awaits a truly sophisticated piece of work - there's a lot of potential in the idea of footage-as-material-for film. But, barring TBWP, no-one's managed to get beyond 'Cannibal Holocaust', which weirdly enough appears now as almost a PHD thesis on media deconstruction wrapped in the bad wardrobe of exploitation cinema.
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