#savina gersak

[draigviller]

[mariocki]

Curse II: The Bite (The Bite, 1989)

"I just ran over about a hundred snakes back down the road here. I mean, they were all grouped together on the road, like some kind of mass exodus or something."

"Ain't God punishing the desert. It's people. Tearing up the heaven and the earth, testing bombs beneath our feet, poisoning the air and the water. Turning this place into one big dumping ground."

"Well, I guess before too long everything's gonna be extinct."

"Almost everything."

[retro-vintage-time]

[cinemaquiles]

Um trem possuído pelo demônio! "Beyond the door III", 1989

[dare-g]

Sonny Boy (1989)

[theactioneer]

Midnight Ride (Bob Bralver, 1990)

[cultcelebrities]

Savina Gersak and Miles O’Keeffe in Iron Warrior (1987)

[trashvideofinland]

Keskiyön pako / Midnight Ride (1990) Warner Home Video / Warner Bros. Entertainment (leikattu 03 MIN 17) https://www.videospace.fi/release/midnight_ride_nauha_warner_home_video_warner_bros_entertainment_finland

[shisasan]

Smrt gospodina Goluze (1982), dir. Živko Nikolić

[draigviller]

[neon-green-reagent]

Savina Gersak as Sava in Beyond the Door III (1989)

[nitrateglow]

Halloween 2017 movie marathon: Midnight Ride (dir. Bob Bralver, 1990)

“Cut the crap, doc-- I’m still killing people!”

Russian immigrant Laura (Savina Gersak) takes off in the middle of the night to leave her workaholic cop husband Lawson (Michael Dudikoff), much to his chagrin. She plans on bunking with a friend until she can come to a final decision as to what to do about her miserable marriage, but unwisely picks up a seemingly innocuous hitch-hiker. His name is Justin McKay (Mark Hamill) and it turns out he’s recently escaped from a mental hospital where he was being treated for his erratic behavior and homicidal urges. Enamored with Laura because she reminds him of his dead sister, he kidnaps her and plans on taking her to his shrink Dr. Hardy (Robert Mitchum—yes THAT Robert Mitchum) so she can be “made better” via frying her brains out with electroshock equipment. However, Lawson is in pursuit of them all the while, intent on getting his wife back. Knife murders, car chases, bad dialogue, synthesizer music, and explosions ensue.

Why isn’t Midnight Ride a cult movie? I always ask myself this question when I watch this 1990 masterpiece of action-horror schlock. Goodness knows it has everything a so-bad-it���s-good cult classic should possess: over-the-top action scenes, cheesy but quotable dialogue, mostly terrible acting, and none other than Mark Hamill at his Mark Hammi-est playing a gleefully homicidal slasher villain on the lookout for love. How can you read that sentence and remain able to resist seeing this movie? HOW?

Midnight Ride can be viewed either as a genre-mash-up or as suffering from an identity crisis. Several action scenes are peppered throughout the movie, particularly car chases since the primary setting is the night road. Some might question my classification of Midnight Ride as a horror film, considering how enamored it is with action set-pieces, but there are tons of classic slasher elements at play here: the stalking, the murder sprees, the fact that no matter how many mortal blows you deal him Justin just won’t freaking die! To be fair, the horror scenes are far less scary than anything you could find in a darker Disney film like Pinocchio because they are so ineptly handled, but hell, you can tell the filmmakers were trying to frighten the audience. Take for example that glorious moment Justin kills a woman with a fake eye and steals said fake eye to give to Laura as a present. This should be pretty grisly, but all the murders are kept offscreen. And that is a trend here. For a slasher movie, we sure don’t get that much blood or gore or much explicit nastiness at all.

Don’t get me wrong: a movie does not need to have eye-gouging or much onscreen violence in order to be frightening: The Night of the Hunter never shows anyone being murdered onscreen, yet it is one of the scariest movies I have ever seen! The same could be said of several of the movies I’m reviewing this month, which often suggest the nastiness of their killings without showing much outright. But the thing is, in a slasher film, you expect a bit more, well, slashing. Or at the very least for the murders to appear like they were nasty or horrifying. But the thing is, a lot of the suspense should come from us fearing for Laura’s life, which might have happened were she likable and not a dim-witted non-entity with all the charisma of that plastic eyeball Justin pilfers. The only scary scene in the movie doesn’t involve Laura at all, but a young woman who hitches a ride with Laura and Justin after Justin defends her from an abusive boyfriend. When they drop her off at her house, Justin follows her inside, toys around with her, and then kills her in what is truly an uncomfortable scene. In the ten minutes or less this minor character is onscreen, we feel more sympathy for her and sorrier to see her get knifed than we ever feel for Laura. I imagine this has a lot to do with this scene perhaps feeling more realistic and less comic-book-ish than much of the other horror and action set pieces in the movie. Hamill is also truly frightening here, lending a disturbing sexual touch to the murder; after he flicks open his knife, Justin seems overcome with an agitated ecstasy.

Let’s be real, this movie is the Mark Hamill Show as the other characters are mostly morons, especially Laura and Dr. Hardy. At least Lawson has some enjoyably cheese-ball lines, like when he reprimands a trash-talking trucker by shouting, “Look man, I’m tired, I’m pissed, and I’m ready to kill!” in the most gloriously hammtastic manner. Dudikoff was a B-movie icon of the 1980s; however, I haven’t seen the American Ninja movies or other projects he was involved with, so I cannot comment if this is one of his better moments as a thespian. As it is, he makes the character more charming than he probably deserves. Lawson is ostensibly the hero of the piece, but he comes off as slightly less creepy than Justin. At the beginning of the movie, his wife is unhappy and begs him to leave her alone, at least to give her time to cool down, but nope! Lawson cares not a bit about her boundaries and appears insensitive as hell. Then again, if he wasn’t following her around, I guess no one would have saved Laura from certain death. Hooray?

Needless to say, Dudikoff and Hamill are Olivier and DeNiro compared to everyone else in the cast list. Poor Laura can’t seem to make a rational decision to save her life (literally); her demeanor is that of a total ditz. Her dialogue recitation straddles this strange gap between flat and laughably melodramatic, making an act as simple as tearfully begging for her life unintentionally funny since she seems to not care that much whether she gets away from crazy old Justin or not. She is so annoying that this is one case where you root for the heroine to get blown up.

And what can I say about Dr. Hardy? Oh man, does Robert Mitchum not give a damn in this movie. He looks bored and like he wants to pass out. Not a single line of his is read with even an ounce of what you might call conviction or enthusiasm. Case in point, when Justin ties Hardy to a chair and tries frying Laura in front of him, he looks at the horrific turn of events the way one might look at a screening of The Last Airbender: slightly surprised at how terrible it all is, but mostly bored and wondering when it’ll be over. If the characters in a movie don’t seem that affected by the crazy horror stuff, then why should the audience be?

Midnight Ride is saved from being an irritating experience by Mark Hamill as Justin McKay, the sociopathic photographer with sister issues. I once came across a review that claimed Hamill’s performance isn’t that wonderful because “playing a crazy person isn’t hard.” What inane logic! While I’m not so sure if Hamill’s performance is “realistic,” it is very entertaining and a lot of that entertainment value comes from Hamill. Some of the time, he feels like he’s doing a campy impersonation of Norman Bates with his puppy-dog look and incestuous fixation on a female family member. The other part of the time, he’s straight-up Joker, cackling madly and enjoying the mischief he causes. Hamill’s line readings of choice dialogue like the sing-songy, “I’m not goin’ till I get a pic-ture!” when he insists Laura let him take photos of her while she drives or “Don’t you ever run away from me!” are so deliciously over-the-top that if you re-watch this movie as I do, you’ll be reciting them as they come up. (My favorite Mark moment is when Laura offers herself to Justin in exchange for her freedom and Hamill just says in the most disappointed tone possible, “You’re acting like a slut!”) And as I mentioned previously, there is that one fleeting scene in which he is allowed to be scary. So, Hamill definitely wasn’t phoning this one in and he is a joy to watch throughout.

And in no scene is Hamill a greater joy to watch than in the film’s insane climax. I cannot do this climax justice with mere words and I won’t dare give any of its pleasures away to those who have not experienced this classic. Let’s just say Justin somehow gets hold of a four-wheeler and chases Lawson around. In a hospital. There is much punching and appropriation of scary surgical instruments. And the film’s final scare is pure magic. Also notice how seconds after that last horrific moment, the credits come up accompanied by smooth, cheesy jazz music.

Since the film is only available on VHS, the image quality isn’t so good. Everything is smudgy and the already dark look of the movie can sometimes make it hard to see what’s happening. Even with a better transfer, I’m not so sure this movie’s look would rank among the likes of Kubrick or Kurosawa. Being that deadly combination of extremely low budget and incompetent on a technical level, Midnight Ride is not exactly a cinematic feast. The editing in particular is BAD, particularly during the action scenes, where the editor chose to cut to things that only disrupt the kinetic energy that should be building, like when Justin has Lawson tied down to the front of a vehicle and he’s driving like hell. On more than one occasion, the editing is so amateurish that you have to wonder if the editor was trying to sabotage the movie. It’s kind of impressive.

If this movie sounds like your idea of a good time, then I want you to do something: watch it with as many people as possible. Share it with your family. Tell all your friends too! Among my admittedly limited social circle are people with varying tastes in cinema; they do not always dig the movies I recommend and vice versa. But Midnight Ride is one movie that unites people regardless of taste, creed, race, sexual orientation, gender, or where you fall on the Marvel versus DC debate. You might not laugh at Some Like It Hot or Blazing Saddles, but you will laugh your ass off at Midnight Ride. Forrest Gump or Brokeback Mountain might not make you cry, but you’ll cry with laughter at Midnight Ride. This movie unites us, binds us, could be the path to world peace. No one will fight any longer, because we can all agree that Mark Hamill chasing Michael Dudikoff on a four-wheeler while Robert Mitchum in a doctor’s coat looks on with disinterest is the height of cinematic absurdism. God bless all the people involved in the making of this gem.

[vhs-ninja]

Midnight Ride (1990) by Bob Bralver. 

[90smovies]

Midnight Ride

[cultcelebrities]

Savina Gersak