Midnight Madness

In my last entry, I talked about National Lampoon's follow up to Animal House, Class Reunion, and how the magazine was hoping to hit box office gold twice. Oddly enough, Disney took notice of Animal House's success and thought, "Hey, why don't we do our own version of Animal House." The result was 1980's Midnight Madness.

A genius college student named Leon, Alan Solomon, comes up with the ultimate scavenger hunt that he calls The Great All Nighter. He convinces five very different classmates to come up with teams and partake in it. The one who wins will be named King of The Great All Nighter. Not much of a prize, but the five students, and their teams, are up for the challenge. The rivalries between the five also sweetens the pot. All the while Leon monitors their every move from his apartment.

Even though it earned a PG rating, Disney was very unhappy with the end result. Thinking that it might be too mature for their family friendly image, they had the Disney name and logo removed upon release.Not a huge hit initially, It did develop a little following from it's constant showings on HBO back in the day. What I think is funny is that the original dvd release of it was from Anchor Bay, but when Disney got wind of this, they quickly got back the rights and added it to their dvd library. It's also funny to me that it ties in more with a movie like Scavenger Hunt than Animal House.

The cast is made up of a lot of familar faces. An American Werewolf In London's David Naughton heads up the cast as the likable guy you root for. Animal House alum Stephen Furst is the team leader of a group of rich slobs. And Eddie Deezen, who I mention a lot in these blogs, leads the team of nerds.Paul Reubens has a cameo, and this is Michael J. Fox's first film.

This is a good one to watch with kid's. It's one of my daughter's favorites.

I guess I'm glad this flopped originally or Disney might have done a family friendly version of Porky's.

It's available on dvd...from Disney.