Word: midnight
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...Midnight screenings of outré films had been a staple of independent movie theaters since the early '70s, when the Elgin in New York City unearthed Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo and John Waters' Pink Flamingos. Late-night showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show evolved into their own audience-participation phenomenon. But no international festival had set up a midnight menu of genre films until Handling unleashed his staff on the project in 1988. Among the premier offerings were Frank Henenlotter's horror film Brain Damaged and the rock doc Decline of Western Civilization Part Two: The Metal Years...
...Belgian film Man Bites Dog was a brutally dark fakeumentary; Tokyo Decadence from the same year was a study of degenerate Japanese sex. But they were peculiar and edgy enough to build a base of acolytes. One of these was Geddes, who can be seen on the TIFF Midnight Madness blog in video footage of the audience from 1990; he's the one with the gothic cross. In 1992 he published a Hong Kong fanzine called Asian Eye, concentrating on action movies by the likes of Jackie Chan and John Woo, which were still found mainly in specialty video stores...
...Geddes, who assumed the Midnight Madness mantle in 1998, has midwifed the program to further éclat. "The films in earlier days were probably more transgressive," he says, "but now this part of the fest is an acquisition hotbed." Being the hot kid on the block brings its own pressures. As Cowan notes, "Colin is contending with a more difficult situation than I ever did: dealing with major Hollywood studios, major European companies. The richest people in Asia are producing big genre movies and he's got to bat them off with a stick. He probably gets more calls from...
...that.' I saw it at Cannes, where a quarter of the audience walked out and the rest gave it a standing ovation. When we play the movie I actually want to have a camera on the audience so I can film them freaking out." That makes Geddes the perfect Midnight Madness programmer: he's a voyeur of his own audience...
...another for 1,200 Madness minions to sing Happy Birthday to Italian horror auteur Dario Argento, as they did this year. Or, in 2005, to rise and cheer for Hong Kong martial-arts star Sammo Hung. When he strode onstage the people at the Ryerson practically levitated. Ambitiously titled, Midnight Madness is now an annual ritual that always lives up to its name...