Midnight Express

• Cat.no: CDR 90006
• Cert: PG
• Running time: 116 minutes
• Year: 1978
• Pressing: 1999
• Region(s): 2, PAL
• Chapters: 28 plus extras
• Sound: Dolby Digital 1.0 (Mono)
• Languages: English, German
• Subtitles: 14 different languages available
• Widescreen: 1.85:1 and Fullscreen 4:3
• 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
• Macrovision: Yes
• Disc Format: DVD 10
• Price: £19.99
• Extras : Scene index, Theatrical trailer, Making Of, Filmographies

Director:

(Angel Heart, Birdy, Bugsy Malone, Come See The Paradise, The Commitments, Evita, Fame, Mississippi Burning, Pink Floyd: The Wall, The Road To Wellville)

Producer:

Screenplay:

Music:

Giorgio Moroder

Cast:

Billy Hayes: Brad Davis (Chariots of Fire, Cold Steel, Heart, The Player, Rosalie Goes Shopping, A Small Circle Of Friends)
Susan: Irene Miracle (Inferno, Watchers 2)
Tex: Bo Hopkins (American Graffiti, The Getaway (1972), More American Graffiti, The Newton Boys, Radioland Murders, Sweet 16, U-Turn, The Wild Bunch)
Jimmy Booth: Randy Quaid (Bye Bye Love, Caddyshack II, The Choirboys, Get On the Bus, Hard Rain, Independence Day, Kingpin, The Last Detail, The Last Picture Show, Moving, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation, No Man’s Land, The Paper, Quick Change, Texasville, What’s Up Doc?)
Max: John Hurt (Alien, Contact, The Elephant Man, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, The Field, Frankenstein Unbound, Heaven’s Gate, King Ralph, A Man For All Seasons, Rob Roy, Scandal, Spaceballs, White Mischief, Wild Bill)
Hamidou: Paul Smith (Crimewave, Dune, Feeling Minnesota, Haunted Honeymoon, The Left-Handed Gun, Maverick, Popeye, Red Sonja)
Stanley Daniels: Michael Ensign (Chilldren of the Corn 3: Urban Harvest, Ghostbusters)

Midnight Express is the true story of Billy Hayes, played here by Brad Davis, a student arrested at the airport in Istanbul in October 1970 for possession of 2kg of hashish. His girlfriend (Irene Miracle) doesn’t know about his stash, but soon will as the cops drag him away and he is sentenced to over four years in a Turkish hell-hole, Sagmalcilar prison. A new, more harsh judge later ruled that it was not a case of possession, but an attempt to smuggle the drugs back to America and stated that he must serve a life sentence of no less than thirty years.

Before the longer sentence is imposed, Billy decides not to follow a plan of escape by fellow prisoner Jimmy (Randy Quaid), but he throws caution to the wind and attempts to escape with Jimmy and Max (John Hurt, the latter of whom has been in there for seven years by the time the film starts. It’s not an easy task of course, especially when you have the sadistic Rifki watching your every move.

Being a true story we know that Billy finally escapes as the printed notes accompanying this release tell us how he came to write his book about his experience under the title “Midnight Express” – the prison code for escape – and later how this very film came into existence. The final chapter’s title, “Escape To Freedom”, is also a clear indication of the film’s conclusion.

The picture quality is mostly very good with only minor artifacts occasionally onscreen but not noticeable from the usual viewing distance. There’s also the occasional scratch on the print and the odd slight shimmery effect, but overall the quality is enough to warrant a purchase.

The film is available in both widescreen (1.85:1) and fullscreen formats, the average bitrates being 4.26 Mb/s in both cases. The widescreen side is enhanced for 16:9 widescreen televisions – thus allowing for 33% higher resolution. There’s one other thing to note with this disc when you choose which format to watch: the picture formats are on the wrong sides of the disc, or rather the right side. I’ll explain. When you put the disc in your player, like a CD the content you want to play is on the opposite side to the corresponding label. So on a typical DVD containing both formats the side with the widescreen label is actually the fullscreen version and vice versa, but not on this release so don’t be too shocked when you want to watch an anamorphic widescreen film and get the fullscreen equivalent.

Curiously, the sound is in mono only as it was filmed that way, despite surround sound now being an option to film-makers since the year before this film was made. Even so, dialogue is clear and Moroder’s score is surprisingly effective.

Extras :