Midnight Express DVD Review

Midnight Express was made during a time when independent films were not quite so prevalent. Instead Midnight Express was given a meager allowance that might normally be seen only in independent budgets these days, as well as many notes that asked for a great deal more action than eventually ended up in the film. The studio heads thought that they were making an escape film, but when their short shoot and meager budget ran too short for sequences involving tanks and chases. Instead what was offered to the studio was a stark and realistic prison film in a foreign country.

Midnight Express is based on the true experiences of an American tourist named Billy Hayes who was arrested for drug smuggling and eventually escaped. The film opens with Billy (Brad Davis) as he is strapping hash to his body in anticipation of boarding a plane at the Turkish border. Almost out of coincidence and bad luck they discover the drugs and Billy is sentenced to four years, which later grows to thirty with a smuggling charge. Determined to escape when his family and the U.S. Embassy is not able to help him, Billy begins making plans to escape. Eventually his attempt to escape only sends him deeper into the prison depths in a brutal detention center for the mentally unstable.

Every aspect of the production of this film is about as interesting as the adapted true story in the film, including a frighteningly realistic and rough actor playing the brutal prison guard, even to the point where he was pulling John hurt’s facial hair off during one take. Even the writing of the script is a story, as it was written in London by a reluctant but talented Oliver Stone, who would receive an Oscar for his screenplay, which was also the first script of his to be made. Unknown Brad Davis provided plenty of entertainment as well, with his methods that include a series of headstands and urinating into a bucket before each take and a bad day in which he was too drunk from nervousness about a scene to complete the day of filming.

All of these fascinating elements are included in the new 30th Anniversary Edition of Midnight Express, but they can tend to repeat several times if all of the special features are viewed. The DVD comes with a great booklet that has production photos along with director Alan Parker’s recounting of the filming, which he again repeats in his commentary track on the DVD and in the featurette “The Production”. The other key figures are just as bad, producers and Stone alike all seem to tell the same stories in the three featurettes that are essentially just interviews intermixed with still shots of the production. There is also a photo gallery of additional photos.