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Midnight Express is a 1978 prison drama film directed by Alan Parker, produced by Alan Marshall and David Puttnam and written by Oliver Stone, based on Billy Hayes's 1977 non-fiction book of the same name. It stars Brad Davis, Irene Miracle, Bo Hopkins, Paolo Bonacelli, Paul L. Smith, Randy Quaid, Norbert Weisser, Peter Jeffrey and John Hurt.
Hayes was a young American student sent to a Turkish prison for trying to smuggle hashish out of the country. The film deviates from the book's accounts of the story, especially in its portrayal of the Turkish characters, and some have criticized this version, including Billy Hayes himself. Later, both Stone and Hayes expressed their regret about how Turkish people were portrayed in the film. The film's title is prison slang for an inmate's escape attempt.
Upon release, Midnight Express received generally positive reviews from critics. Many praised Davis's performance as well as the cast, the writing, the direction, and the musical score by Giorgio Moroder. However, Hayes and others criticized the film for portraying the Turkish prison men as violent and villainous and for deviating too much from the source material. The film was later nominated for Best Picture and Best Director for Parker at the 51st Academy Awards in 1979, and won Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score for Stone and Moroder respectively.
Plot
On October 6, 1970, while finishing up on his vacation in Istanbul, Turkey, American college student Billy Hayes is in his hotel room, where he straps 2 kilograms of hashish bricks to his chest. He, nervous at being caught smuggling, then goes to the airport, goes to the washroom to wet his face and attempt to relax himself, and makes his way with his girlfriend, Susan, through customs. Billy perspires heavily, noticed by the middle aged, chain-smoking customs agent who checks his bag. After his bags are searched, both he and his girlfriend are about to board a shuttle bus to their plane back to the United States. Billy smiles and is relieved thinking he is out of danger. However, as the bus pulls up to the plane, he notices that a large detachment of armed police and soldiers have taken up positions just outside the plane. Unable to detach and discard the hashish, and sweating heavily, Billy is detained and arrested by the Turkish police, who are on high alert for terrorist attacks. The police immediately point their guns at him, thinking he may be dangerous. Billy is then taken away and back to security and searched, his bags being thoroughly searched, all items such as cigarettes, camera film, and toothpaste are searched and destroyed, and he is forced to stand around in his underwear. Afterward, the Turkish security chief of the airport makes Billy stand for several press photographs of him holding the confiscated drugs with the smiling customs officers and then slaps them around after Billy finds more hash in his boots they didn't find.
After a while, Billy is forced to stand naked with the customs officers staring and grinning at him. A shadowy American (presumably an agent with the D.E.A.) – whom Billy nicknames "Tex" for his thick Texan accent – arrives. "Tex" is calm and kind with Billy and accompanies him to a police station and translates for him. The next morning, Tex sends Billy to a bazaar, and 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 for him to be quickly caught by Tex, whose previously friendly attitude suddenly changes for the worse as he his holding a gun to his head.
Before arriving at a local jail, Billy is sent to a barber, where he has his hair cut short (while he writes what he says is "the hardest letter he had ever had to write" to his mother and father). During his first night in the local jail, he is put into a filthy cell by a trustee, whose name is Rifki. Billy wants a blanket very badly, because it is freezing-cold in his cell, but Rifki says that he's not selling any blankets at the time, so Billy sneaks out of the cold cell and steals one anyway. He is then rousted from his cell by the trustee and taken away by two guards, who force him to go blindfolded and take him to a filthy basement. Once Billy has reached the basement, one of the guards takes off his blindfold. A large shadow then approaches Billy, and the shadow turns out to be none other than the infamous chief guard, Hamidou. He brutally beats Billy up with a torture club, then ties him to a torture rack and beats him up repeatedly with the club several times for the theft. Billy's feet swell immensely and he is left in horrific pain.
The next morning, Billy awakens in Sağmalcılar Prison, surrounded by fellow Western prisoners Jimmy Booth (a towering, hot-tempered American who stole two candlesticks from a mosque) and Erich (a kindly Swedish drug smuggler). They get him on his feet and walking, and tell him his feet will continue to swell and his recovery will be longer if he does not move around. Jimmy was sentenced for attempting to rob a mosque and Erich was busted for smuggling about 100 grams of hash and given a 12-year sentence. Jimmy is quite sure Billy will receive a stiff sentence, but Erich remains optimistic that he just needs a good lawyer. Jimmy warns Billy that the prison is dangerous for foreigners and says no one can be trusted, not even young children who rat out prisoners to Hamidou. The prison resembles an old barracks from the 1800s.
Billy is introduced to Max, a bespectacled, introverted, unkempt, 30-something junkie uninterested in small talk that injects himself with "gastro", a stomach medicine with codeine. Max has been in prison the longest for drug dealing (seven years and counting), while Erich has already served four years and Jimmy around three. Billy and Erich are conversing with him to get a lawyer and Max is in a haze telling Billy about the Turkish justice system and that all Turkish lawyers are crooked and that he just needs to escape the best way he knows how, catching the "Midnight Express", a train that doesn't stop at the prison. He refers to him a lawyer named Yesil that got off a Frenchman for smuggling 200 kilos.
A few weeks later, Billy meets with Mr. Hayes, his father. Billy apologizes to his father, and he tells Billy that right now, he and the rest of Billy's family has got to get him out of prison. Mr. Hayes then tells Billy that he bought him a suit to "smarten him up in the courtroom". He also explains to him that, before Billy's family got the letter, Susan (Billy's girlfriend) was trying to get all of the money together to visit him in prison. He furthermore explains to Billy that his family told their neighbors that he went to a hospital in Europe after being beaten up by Hamidou for the blanket theft that had happened earlier. Mr. Hayes then introduces Billy to Stanley Daniels, a U.S. representative, and Yesil, a Turkish lawyer, to discuss his situation.
Billy is then sent to a courtroom, where, during his 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. Billy's father warns Billy not to do anything stupid and that they can play with his sentence. He gives him a care package of "food, candy, writing paper, books, cigarettes, soap, and toothbrushes", and loses his temper that he's unable to get him out of prison, and then they tearfully depart.
Over the next several months, Billy slowly adjusts to prison life. Jimmy gets stabbed in the behind for treating a Turkish prisoner badly during a volleyball game. Another time later, Billy and others witness the prison warden beat four of the young boys on their soles of their feet, believing them to have raped a new young inmate, with the warden's two pudgy sons looking on and him warning them about what happens if they ever break the law.
Billy is also given the truth about Rifki, the trustee, who informs on other prisoners for unheard-of privileges and favors and has a special distaste for foreigners. Rifki also sells watery tea, low-grade hashish, steals from his fellow inmates, and seems to have an unlimited (for incarceration) supply of money to bribe the poorly paid guards. When Max offends Rifki, the informant kills Max's pet cat.
In June of 1972, Billy meets with his lawyer Yesil again with Yesil assuring him of convincing Turkish officials to lose his records before the high court in Ankara can review his case for the right amount of money. Billy is bored and uninterested at Yesil's visit, feeling it's all empty promises.
Jimmy wants Billy to join an escape attempt through the prison's subterranean tunnels. Billy, due to be released soon, declines. Jimmy, angry, goes alone and is caught, then brutally beaten with a leather strap by Hamidou and sent to the sanitarium. 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 opens her blouse so Billy can masturbate, then leaves him a scrapbook with money hidden inside to help Billy escape. Her visit strongly helps Billy regains his senses. A guard then takes Billy away, leaving his girlfriend even more devastated.
The next morning, Billy is walking the pillar in the opposite direction, which is forbidden in the Muslim code. Ahmet meets him telling him it's wrong that a good Muslim always walks right. His words seem restore some of Billy's sanity and Billy tells him that he himself is the man that makes the machines. Ahmet walks away horrified.
Billy goes into the filthy sanatorium washroom and inspects the album closely, finding numerous $100 bills hidden inside the cover lining totaling around $2,000 in money. He passes by an almost dead Max to hold on and stay alive that he's leaving and will come back for him. Max wakes up and is somewhat conscious.
Billy sees Hamidou taking a restraining belt off a now dead inmate and about to leave. He approaches Hamidou with part of the money and tries to bribe his longtime enemy to take him to the sanitarium that Jimmy had spoken about where the guards are more lax in their duties. Hamidou accepts Billy's bribe but drags Billy past the entrance to the sanitarium, to a large dressing room filled with guard uniforms and with pegs set into the walls. Hamidou beats Billy, yells about how he's fed up with him, and attempts to rape him when Billy suddenly rushes Hamidou and pushes him forcefully backwards. Hamidou, flailing and trying to regain his footing, slams into the wall, driving a clothes peg into the back of his head, dying instantly. For a short time, Billy considers shooting the dead man with his sidearm but decides not to.
Billy dresses himself in a guard's uniform and reclaiming his money, walks through the prison unnoticed to the front door. As he walks down the stairs, another guard stops him and throws him the keys to the door telling him (in Turkish) to remember to lock up when he checks out. Billy walks out to the street, slowing down only briefly when a police jeep rushes past him. He runs away, the frame freezing on him as he takes a victorious leap.
The epilogue shows that on the night of October 4, 1975, Billy successfully crossed the border to Greece and arrived home three weeks later. The final shots of the film before the closing credits show Billy reuniting with his family and his girlfriend. In the original version, it was stated after having shown the movie to the Cannes Film Festival, there was a demand for exchange of prisoners in Turkey to be brought to America.
Gallery
Reception
Home media
- Main article: Midnight Express (video)
The film was first released on Betamax and VHS on November 6, 1979, along with 19 other Columbia Pictures films. Two years later, it was released on LaserDisc along with a few other films like Stir Crazy, The China Syndrome, and Chapter Two. In 1988, RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video issued a remastered full frame LaserDisc of the film, and in 1989, GoodTimes Home Video reissued the movie on VHS alongside a few other Columbia films. It was later released for the first time ever on DVD on October 20, 1998, for its 20th anniversary, also being reissued on VHS at the same time. A Blu-ray version was released on July 21, 2009.
Soundtrack
- Main article: Midnight Express (soundtrack)
Trivia
- Older pre-1988 releases of the film, such as the original 1979 Betamax/VHS, had this message appear at the end before the end credits roll: "On May 18, 1978 the motion picture you have just seen was shown to an audience of world press at the Cannes Film Festival.... 43 days later the United States and Turkey entered into formal negotiations for the exchange of prisoners." This message does not appear on later releases, such as the 1988 LaserDisc and 1998 DVD, or even on the Cannes Film Festival premiere.
- While most 4:3 full screen releases of this film, like the two aforementioned releases above: the 1988 LaserDisc and the original 1979 Betamax/VHS, were open matte, the 1998 DVD's 4:3 full screen version side is an exception, as it is pan and scan instead.
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