The Return Of 31 Days Of Horror #27 The Midnight Hour

Friends in my years as a horror movie fan I’ve seen some pretty bad ideas fall flat. I’ve seen a naked druid nanny get caressed by an evil tree after sacrificing a baby to it. I’ve seen a man stammer out the immortal line “THEY’RE EATING THEM AND NOW THEY’RE GOING TO EAT ME!”. I’ve witnessed Bela Lugosi whip Tor Johnson while screaming “I COMMAND YOU” I’ve seen a town menaced by giant bunnies and I’ve seen a movie whose climax is built around the fact that giant grasshoppers are really horny.

But I have never scene anything fall flat quite like The Midnight Hour, a movie in which after The Zombie Vampire Wiccan Ghost of a slave succeeds in transforming everyone into Zombies she celebrates them by commanding them to do a righteous version of the electric slide. A Movie in which such Peter Jackson worthy concepts as an angry midget Zombie and a Eight Foot former mass murderer stand around glowering. A movie with the most passive aggressive brood of Zombies to ever moan and stagger across the screen, Zombies whose most villainous acts involve them drinking straight from a punch bowl and waving their fists at those damn kids. Causing me to whine "WHEN ARE THEY GONNA GET TO THE FIREWORKS FACTORY!"

I kept expecting one to drink the milk straight from the carton, or leave the toilet seat up. The Midnight Hour stars a group of startlingly dense teenagers who accidentally raise an army of the dead during a Halloween prank. Oh Kids today and their hijinks. The combined forces of a graveyard full of Zombies and “ALL THE DEMONS OF HELL” run rampant through the town causing what can only be described as mild annoyance. Guided by the voice of Wolfman Jack the kids stumble around not noticing the apocalypse until an extremely rushed finale. I love movies like The Midnight Hour. True it’s awful, and squanders every opportunity it has, but it’s awfulness is organic and spontaneous not test screen driven slick awful. It’s the type of movie that for better or for worse could never be made again.