Snifters and Tangy Fruits are gone, but we have to save the Midnight Movie

James Croot is the editor of Stuff to Watch.

OPINION: Fast X, Indiana Jones 5, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Mission: Impossible 7, Barbie.

While it’s great to finally have a winter of blockbusting movies to look forward to, something is missing.

It’s a cinematic tradition that I’ve enjoyed for more than three decades and one that I don’t think I’m quite ready to give up just yet.

Sure you can take away our Snifters boxes and our Tangy Fruit pottles (and those have been seriously big losses to the Kiwi movie-going experiences), but please don’t ditch the midnight movie preview.

In years past, at least a couple of those five Hollywood behemoths mentioned above would have launched on our shores with debuts in the dead of night, but barring a little Cruise control, it doesn’t look like any of them will follow in the great tradition that seemed to start with Tim Burton’s Batman at the end of the 1980s (at least that’s how I remember it, before then we used to have to wait weeks or even months after American audiences before a movie would unspool at our local Jaffa rollerdome).

Sure, you say, well actually the first screenings are starting earlier, at a more civilised hour of 7 or 8pm (just this week we’ve had early to mid-Wednesday-evening bows for both hotly anticipated horror The Boogeyman and the sequel to the mega-popular Spider-Verse animated movie), so we’re not only getting them sooner, everyone can get a good night’s sleep.

But there’s just not the same vibe, frisson or sense of excitement at 8.01pm as there is at 12.01am. Just as Marty McFly meeting Doc Brown in the car-park of the Twin Pines Mall at 8.15pm wouldn’t have come with quite the same thrill as 1.15am did. It just feels like an event, if everyone has decided to sacrifice their routine to come and congregate and share this audio-visual experience together.

I’ll admit it, I’m a midnight movie junkie. I loved helping organise our special witching hour screenings during my three years at a Dunedin multiplex (and still lament that they wouldn’t let us put up a wire across the Octagon for Batman Forever – instead we had a Bat-suited actor descend from our foyer’s ceiling) and delighted when my then American-based brother suggested we go see Independence Day on its opening night there (thus giving the film’s timeline extra resonance).

When it eventually arrived on our shores about two or three weeks later, I was the first to sign up to work a shift that started at 4am as part of the distributor and cinema chain’s mad plan to screen the alien invasion blockbuster around the clock for the first few days.

Of course, those were also the days of late-night Friday and Saturday night screenings, which would often draw massive crowds in student cities like Dunedin, all eager to enjoy edgy thrillers like Wild Things, crowd-pleasing comedies a la There’s Something About Mary, or all-action fests in the vein of Demolition Man or Sudden Death.

Sadly, those died out in the early noughties. While some may say they were a victim of changing times (young people delayed their trips into town until later in the evenings) and the rise of better quality home entertainment options and systems, I personally blame Vin Diesel and the early Fast and the Furious movies.

If those movies hadn’t been like a Bat-signal for boy racers (and caused ensuing mayhem in multiplex car parks before and after late-night screenings), I believe we’d still be able to watch flicks until 1am on Friday and Saturday nights today.

Their loss though is why I’m even more determined to continue to support and promote the existence of midnight screenings.

In more recent times, I’ve enjoyed seeing the eclectic crowds that turned out for the later Twilight movies (not quite sure how the eight-year-olds got their parents to let them out and pick them up at 2am though) and got a huge nostalgia hit in sitting in a packed house full of 40-somethings for Star Wars: The Force Awakens (in an example of how to treat your audience – and clear the congested foyers – the cinema I went to opened 45 minutes early and played a mega-compilation of trailers for upcoming films).

And, of course, there are some movie theatres (and festivals) who are experts at this stuff.

I made a pilgrimage in 2019 to Melbourne’s suburban picture palace The Astor to watch a Jeff Goldblum marathon as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival. They’d even got the man himself to record an intro.

Likewise, I’ve always made sure to include at least one midnight screening as part of my visits to the Toronto International Film Festival – 2017’s wild world premiere of The Disaster Artist (which included us being handed out mini-footballs to throw during this dramatisation of the making-of one of the most midnight movies ever – Tommy Wiseau’s The Room) topped this past year by seeing New Zealand on a big screen as the Whanganui-shot Pearl unfurled to a hooting and hollering Canadian audience.

Then there’s Auckland’s Timpson brothers and their Avondale “church” The Hollywood. Their annual 24-hour celebration of the holy and unholy of cinema past (and sometimes present) is the true mass and grail for the devout – even if you end up suffering severe sleep deprivation and true sensory overload.

So I make a plea to distributors and exhibitors (and Tom Cruise), if you want to save the cinema experience in New Zealand, then don’t let Jurassic World: Dominion be the last high-profile midnight debut.