Midnight

Midnight is a 1982 American exploitation horror film directed by John Russo and starring Melanie Verlin, Lawrence Tierney, and John Amplas. Its plot follows a female hitchhiker en route to San Francisco who finds herself at the mercy of a backwoods Satanic cult in Pennsylvania who sacrifice young women in an attempt to resurrect their dead mother. It is based on Russo's 1980 novel of the same name, published by Pocket Books. The film was shot on location outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and features special effects by Tom Savini. The film was released theatrically by Independent International Pictures in 1982. While not prosecuted for obscenity, the film was seized and confiscated in the UK under Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 during the video nasty panic The film was re-released in 1985 under the alternate title The Backwoods Massacre. Plot In rural Pennsylvania, a young girl screams for help in a rural meadow, her leg caught in an animal trap. A group of children, along with an older woman they call Mama, arrive, and one of the boys, Abraham, knocks the girl unconscious. Later, the children chant a Satanic prayer over the girl at the behest of their mother, and one of the children, Cynthia, proceeds to brutally stab her to death with a dagger. Years later, teenaged Nancy Johnson runs away from her home after her stepfather Bert, a police officer, attempts to rape her. While hitchhiking to her sister's home in San Francisco, she is picked up by two benevolent young men, Hank and Tom. In the backwoods, they pick up a Baptist preacher and his adult daughter, Sandra, who they drop off at a cemetery to visit the grave of the preacher's wife. Sandra says a prayer and heads back toward their house; her father remains, and is stabbed to death by a man with a machete. Later, Sandra finds her father's corpse on their doorstep, and is also murdered by the man with the machete.