A nostalgic trip into the realm of the cult, the trashy and the surreal, this documentary celebrates a unique cinema experiences offered by the midnight movie circuit of the 1970s. Director Stewart Samuels concentrates on Alejandro Todorowsky’s Mexican spaghetti western-mystic acid trip El Topo, George Romero’s ground breaking zombie horror The Night of the Living Dead, John Waters’ bad taste classic Pink Flamingos, the cult mega-hit The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Harder They Come with its hip Jamaican vibes, and David Lynch’s melancholy industrial nightmare Eraserhead. Besides interviews with directors and distributors, critics Roger Ebert, J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum recycle their widely-published ideas on the subject. Nowadays we can only imagine with a tinge of jealousy what it was like to sit in a pot-infused atmosphere breathing in countercultural ideas in an era of cultural excitement and transgression.

The film does not introduce much new material, but is content to reminisce about the time when the division between subcultural anarchy and conservative establishment (aka the mainstream) was clearly defined. The reliably eloquent Waters quips that although he does have a Broadway show now, his sense of humour hasn’t changed’it has just infected everything else. Midnight Movies is not quite as good as Divine Trash, which covers similar territory, but well worth a look, and hopefully bound to introduce a new generation to the perverse pleasures of outrageous cinema from the margins. ‘Midnight Movies II: From Blade Runner to Buffy and Beyond’ just begs to be made though.

A note for the morbidly inquisitive: yes, those poor dead bunnies in El Topo were indeed sacrificed for art’the film was made at a time when furry-friendly regulations were not yet introduced. Oh, and brace yourself’you get to see Tim Curry without his Frank’N'Furter get up.