Midnight Express (film)

On vacation in Istanbul, Turkey in 1970, American college student Billy Hayes straps 2 kg (4.4 lb) of hashish bricks to his chest. As he and his girlfriend are about to board a plane back to the United States, Billy is detained by Turkish police, who are on high alert for terrorist attacks. Billy is strip-searched and arrested.

A shadowy American – whom Billy nicknames "Tex" for his thick Texan accent – arrives and accompanies Billy to a police station and translates for him. Billy claims he bought the hashish from a taxicab driver and offers to help police locate him in exchange for being released. At a nearby market, Billy points out the cab driver to police, who arrest him, but they have no intention of releasing Billy. He attempts to escape, only to be recaptured at gunpoint by Tex.

During his first night in Sultanahmet Jail, a freezing-cold Billy sneaks out of his cell and steals a blanket. He is later rousted from his cell, brutally beaten and raped by chief guard Hamidou for the theft. A few days later, Billy awakens in Sağmalcılar Prison, surrounded by fellow Western prisoners Jimmy (an American who stole two candlesticks from a mosque), Max (an English heroin addict), and Erich (a Swedish drug smuggler). Jimmy warns Billy that the prison is dangerous for foreigners and says no one can be trusted, not even young children.

Billy meets with his father, a U.S. representative, and a Turkish lawyer to discuss his situation. During Billy's trial, the prosecutor makes a case against him for drug smuggling. The lead judge is sympathetic to Billy and gives him a four-year sentence for drug possession. Billy and his father are devastated, but their Turkish lawyer insists it is a good result because the prosecutor wanted a life sentence.

Jimmy wants Billy to join an escape attempt through the prison's subterranean tunnels. Billy, due to be released soon, declines. Jimmy goes alone and is caught, then brutally beaten. Fifty-three days before his release, Billy learns the Turkish High Court in Ankara has overturned his sentence after an appeal by the prosecution. The prosecutor who originally wanted Billy convicted of smuggling rather than the lesser charge of possession finally had his way. Billy has been resentenced to serve 30 years.

In desperation, Billy accompanies Jimmy and Max to try to escape through the catacombs below the prison. They give up after running into endless dead-ends. A particularly sycophantic prisoner named Rifki, who routinely acts as an informant in exchange for favors, tips off the guards about the escape attempt. Billy's imprisonment becomes harsh and brutal: terrifying scenes of physical and mental torture follow one another, and Billy has a breakdown. He brutally beats Rifki, killing him. He is sent to the prison's ward for the insane, where he wanders about in a daze among the other disturbed and catatonic prisoners.

In 1975, Billy's girlfriend, Susan, visits him. Devastated by Billy's condition, she tells him he must get out or else die. She leaves him a scrapbook with money hidden inside to help Billy escape. Her visit strongly helps Billy regains his senses. He tries to bribe Hamidou to take him to the prison hospital, but instead Hamidou forces Billy to a room, then tries to rape him. They struggle until Hamidou is killed after being pushed into the wall, his head impaled upon a coat hook. Billy dons a guard's uniform and walks out the front door to freedom.

The epilogue shows that in October 1975, Billy crossed the border to Greece and arrived home three weeks later.

The film was mostly shot in the lower parts of Fort Saint Elmo in Valletta.

Although the story is set largely in Turkey, the movie was filmed almost entirely at Fort Saint Elmo in Valletta, Malta, after permission to film in Istanbul was denied.[5][6] The end credits state the movie was made entirely on location in Malta. However, background shots of Istanbul were taken by a small crew pretending to be making a cigarette commercial.

A made-for-television documentary about the film, I'm Healthy, I'm Alive, and I'm Free (alternative title: The Making of Midnight Express), was released on January 1, 1977. It is seven minutes long, and features commentary from the cast and crew on how they worked together during production, and the effort it took from beginning to completion. It also includes footage from the creation of the film, and Hayes's emotional first visit to the prison set.[7]

Various aspects of Billy Hayes's story were fictionalized or added for the movie:

• In the movie, Hayes is in Turkey with his girlfriend when he is arrested; in real life, he was travelling alone.
• Although Billy spent 17 days in the prison's psychiatric hospital in 1972 in the book, he never bites out anyone's tongue, which, in the film, leads to him being committed to the section for the criminally insane.
• The book ends with Hayes being moved to İmralı prison, on an island from which he eventually escapes by stealing a dinghy, rowing 17 miles (27 km) in a raging storm across the Sea of Marmara, traveling by foot and by bus to Istanbul, and then crossing the border into Greece.[8] In the film, that passage is replaced by a violent scene in which he unwittingly kills the head guard who is preparing to rape him. (In the book, Hamidou, the chief guard, was killed in 1973 by a recently paroled prisoner, who spotted him drinking tea at a café outside the prison, and shot him eight times.) The attempted rape scene itself was fictionalized; Billy never claimed in the book to have suffered any sexual violence at the hands of either his Turkish guards, wardens, or fellow inmates, but engaged in consensual homosexual activity while he was in prison. The film depicts Hayes gently rejecting the advances of a fellow prisoner (Erich the Swede).
• There is a fleeting reference to the popular restaurant The Pudding Shop, in the bazaar. It is actually on Divan Yolu, the main avenue through historic Old Istanbul.

The film screened at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival. It opened at the Odeon Haymarket in London on Thursday, 10 August 1978 grossing $3,472 in its opening day, a Columbia Pictures record in the UK.[9] It opened in New York on 6 October 1978 before opening nationwide in the United States on 27 October.[10]

According to the film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 28 reviews with an average rating of 7.6/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Raw and unrelenting, Midnight Express is riveting in its realistic depiction of incarceration -- mining pathos from the simple act of enduring hardship."[11] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 59 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[12]

Roger Ebert gave Midnight Express three stars out of four in a review that concluded, "The movie creates spellbinding terror, all right; my only objection is that it's so eager to have us sympathize with Billy Hayes."[13] Gene Siskel gave the film two and a half stars out of four and called it "a powerful film, but we leave the theater thinking it should have been more so. It was for that reason that I was persuaded to read the book, which is where I found the story I had been expecting to see on the screen." He also thought that Brad Davis "is simply not up to the lead role. He appears unsure of himself and, like the film itself, he overacts."[14] Arthur D. Murphy of Variety wrote, "Acceptance of the film depends a lot on forgetting several things," namely that Hayes was smuggling drugs. Nevertheless, he thought Davis gave "a strong performance" and that "Alan Parker's direction and other credits are also admirable, once you swallow the specious and hypocritical story."[15] Charles Champlin, of the Los Angeles Times, was positive, writing that the film "has a kind of wailing, arid authenticity and enormous power. It is strong and uncompromising stuff, made bearable by its artistry and the saving awareness that Hayes, at least, slipped free and lived to tell the tale."[16] Gary Arnold, of The Washington Post, described the film as "outrageously sensationalistic" and "loaded with show-stopping fabrications,” and wrote of the protagonist that "there's never a compelling reason for sympathizing with the callow boy he appears to be from start to finish."[17]

Released on October 6, 1978, by Casablanca Records, the soundtrack to Midnight Express was composed by Italian synth-pioneer Giorgio Moroder. The score won the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1979.

1. "Chase" – Giorgio Moroder (8:24)
2. "Love's Theme" – Giorgio Moroder (5:33)
3. "(Theme from) Midnight Express" (Instrumental) – Giorgio Moroder (4:39)
4. "Istanbul Blues" (Vocal) – David Castle (3:17)
5. "The Wheel" – Giorgio Moroder (2:24)
6. "Istanbul Opening" – Giorgio Moroder (4:43)
7. "Cacaphoney" – Giorgio Moroder (2:58)
8. "(Theme from) Midnight Express" (Vocal) – Chris Bennett (4:47)

The quote 'Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?', in the American comedy film Airplane! (1980), is a reference to Midnight Express.[35]

Susan's prison visit was spoofed in the 1996 film The Cable Guy, where Jim Carrey opens his shirt, presses his naked breast against the glass, and cries, 'Oh, Billy!'

An amateur interview with Billy Hayes appeared on YouTube,[36] recorded during the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. He describes his experiences and expresses his disappointment with the film adaptation.[37] In an article for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Hayes is reported as saying that the film 'depicts all Turks as monsters'.[38]

Giorgio Moroder's work "The Chase" is often used as bumper music on the American late-night radio talk show radio program Coast to Coast AM.

In pro wrestling, several tag teams were called The Midnight Express. Original member Dennis Condrey said the name reflected how they dressed in black, drove black cars and partied past midnight. The most popular iteration, Bobby Eaton and Stan Lane, used the film's theme, "Chase", as their entrance music.

When he visited Turkey in 2004, screenwriter Oliver Stone - who won an Academy Award for writing the screenplay for Midnight Express - apologized for the portrayal of the Turkish people in the film.[3] He "eventually apologized for tampering with the truth".[39]

"Theme from Midnight Express" is sampled on J Dilla's "Phantom of the Synths", which is prominently used on "Gazzillion Ear", produced by J Dilla and performed by MF Doom, released in 2005 and 2009 respectively.[40][41]

Hayes, Stone, and Alan Parker were invited to attend a special screening of Midnight Express, with prisoners in the garden of an L-type prison in Döşemealtı, Turkey, as part of the 47th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival in October 2010.[42]

Dialogue from Midnight Express was sampled in the song "Sanctified" on the original version of Pretty Hate Machine, the debut album from Nine Inch Nails; the sample was removed from the 2010 remaster, for copyright reasons.

In 2016, Parker returned to Malta as a special guest during the second edition of the Valletta Film Festival to attend a screening of the film on 4 June at Fort St Elmo, where many of the prison scenes were filmed.[6]

• Return to Paradise
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Wikiquote has quotations related to Midnight Express (film).

• Midnight Express at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Midnight Express at IMDb
• Midnight Express at Rotten Tomatoes
• Script of movie by Oliver Stone (PDF)