Cleveronix
A different way of telling a story
SpunkySelfTwitter
It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.
Tobias Burrows
It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.
Coventry
Right from the opening sequences already, depicting a hunting "accident" where a guy gets shots in the face, you can tell that this movie played with ideas that were far ahead of their time. Not only the plot is ambitious and progressive, but you can also clearly tell that the makers wanted to show more bloodshed and nudity, but couldn't because the year was … well … 1963! Elliot Freeman is a wealthy but slightly eccentric painter in a small countryside town. His father got killed in a hunting accident and he has the notorious reputation of losing his mind from time to time. It's a little side-effect from fighting in the Korean War. Elliot's half-sister is visiting, but she stays in the nearby girl academy where all the girls have a thing for Elliot. There's also a vicious knife murderer on the loose in town and the body of Elliot's last nude model is found dead. Obviously all suspicion is drawn to him, and even he himself wonders if he's guilty or not, but there are multiple other potential culprits as well, like the sleazy ex-boyfriend, the slightly perverted biology teacher, Elliot's slick attorney and his creepy mute chauffeur. "Violent Midnight" is a strange movie with a bizarrely evolving plot, incoherent plot twists and peculiar characters. The killer always appears to show up at the utmost convenient times to make a new victim, like when all the suspects are nearby and without alibis. It's not exactly plausible, of course, but effective enough to keep the film suspenseful and compelling. None of the murders are committed around midnight, however, and the denouement is quite senseless, but you have to appreciate a low-budgeted production for trying to cash-in on "Psycho" with a much more brutal approach.
sol
****SPOILERS**** Suffering from a sever case of post-traumatic shock syndrome due to his experiences in the Korean War Elliot Freeman, Lee Philips, took up painting to calm his already shattered nerves. Becoming a hermit Elliot saw no one but those young and shapely women who posed for him at his out of the way home in the wilds of Connecticut.One of Elliot's models Delores Martello, Kaye Elhardt, got a lot more intimate with Elliot then posing for him in the nude. Delores had a one night stand with the highly sensitive and high strung artist and accused him of knocking her up. Elliot knowing that Delores was full of it, she had a number of boyfriends on the side, refused t marry her and threw Delores out of his studio. It's not that long after Delores was given the heave ho by Elliot that she was found brutally murdered in her furnished apartment.A prime suspect in Delores' murder Elliot is not the only person who suspected in killing her. Delores' ex-boyfriend leather-jacket biker and collage laundry boy Charlie Perone, James Farentino, is also a person of interest in Delores' death. It seems that Charlie had it in for both Delores and Elliot since she dumped him for the great painter. It was just a few days before her death that Charlie confronted Elliot and Delores at the Pine Tree Inn where Elliot almost killed him.With Charlie having an air-tight alibi his girlfriend Slivia, Silvia Miles, who swears that he spent the night with her at the time that Delores was murdered it's now Elliot who has a lot of explaining to do to the police. While all this is going on another young woman who had the hots for the handsome and sensitive, as well as troubled, artist Alice St. Clair, Lorraine Rogers, is found murdered in a nearby lake! In this case Elliot & Charlie both prime suspects in Alices death can't come up with any alibi's to where they were at the time of her murder!The movie "Midnight Violence" keeps you guessing to who the killer really is always showing him from the neck on down. wearing a Bogie-like trench-coat and paratrooper combat boots the killer is always stalking women who have anything romantically to do with Elliot. It's when Elliot's sept-sister Lynn, Margot Hartmen, who together with the Freeman family attorney Adrian Benedict, Shepperd Strudwick, want to get Elliot badly needed psychiatric treatment that the killer goes into overdrive and thus overplays his hand.psycho-like slasher film with the killer so obsessed in his fascination with Elliot that he was actually the reason for Elliot's mental breakdown. This happened at the beginning of the movie in a quail hunt that Elliot participated in after he came back from Korea. Charlie for his part turned out to be not only a man who couldn't, despite his animal-like Stanley Kowalski persona, hold on to his women but who disrespect the only one, Silvia, who could keep him from being arrested by the cops by sticking to his hair-brained alibi. There's also, in a rare dramatic Dirty Harry-like role, future comedian Dick Van Patten as the tough as nails and no BS police detective Lt. Palmer. Lt. Plamer despite his great dislike of that macho swaggering creep Charlie Perone risked his life in saving Perone's neck when he, trying to escape from the law, jumped into the lake with a bullet lodged in his leg.We finally get to see who the killer really is but it's done in such a confusing style, with a double-twist ending, with him going into a whole song and dance routine that you soon lose interest in him together with his confusing movie ending cock & bull story.
gftbiloxi
When Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO opened the door, many other films followed, and the early 1960s saw a glut of low-budget, black and white thrillers that held scantily clad women at the point of a knife. Released in 1964, VIOLENT MIDNIGHT (also known as PSYCHOMANIA or BLACK AUTUMN) is fairly typical of the genre but better than most.When Delores is found stabbed to death in her rooms there are two very obvious suspects: Elliot, the reclusive artist who has employed her as a model, and Charlie, her tough-guy boyfriend. After all, the two men had a bar room knife fight over her the night before! Fortunately Elliot has his half-sister, who has just arrived to attend a local all-girl college, for support. But before too long the student body becomes precisely that, and both Elliot and Charlie come under renewed suspicion.The cast is unexpectedly solid. Leading man Lee Philips (in the role of artist Elliot Freeman) and supporting actor Shepperd Strudwick (as his attorney) both had long and respectable careers both before and after VIOLENT MIDNIGHT; James Farentino, Sylvia Miles, and Dick Van Patten would go on to notable careers of their own. Even so, there's nothing subtle about the script, which crams everything from biker chicks to college sirens into the mix, and most viewers will probably identify the killer in the first twenty minutes of the film.Even so, and in spite of a budget that was clearly just this side of zero, VIOLENT MIDNIGHT isn't a bad little flick, and it easily holds its own with the likes of the better-known DEMENTIA 13. It will probably lack appeal for the casual viewer, but fans of 1960s B-movies will have a good time.GFT, Amazon Reviewer
bensonmum2
Violent Midnight (Psychomania) is a nice little film in the Psycho tradition that, for the most part, manages to overcome the handicap of a very limited budget. If you can get past the spotty acting and the less than stellar production values, you'll discover an interesting early slasher. The script is far smarter than many films of this type. Violent Midnight actually manages to have the police believably cast their suspicion on two different characters at the same time that the viewer knows to be innocent. Lesser scripts struggle to generate enough credible evidence and circumstances to suggest one person, let alone two, is a believable suspect. And when the killer is finally revealed, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I would have never guessed the outcome.In some ways Violent Midnight was ahead of its time. Today's audiences might find it incredibly tame, but I would guess that 1964 audiences found the sex and violence in Violent Midnight shocking. Personally, I was amazed at how effective and provocative some of the racier scenes were. As for the violence, though nothing explicit is shown as in the Psycho tradition, there's a fair amount of blood for this type of film.Finally, I got a real kick out of the cast. My favorite cast member has to be the relatively soft and sometimes goofy Dick Van Patten in the role of the tough, no nonsense cop. Talk about working against stereotype! And to my surprise, he pulls it off. He's easily the best "actor" in the bunch.
