Midnight Madness (1980)

It’s the long-awaited beginning of the Golden Age of Cult Classics! And we’re ringing in the shiny new decade with… another comedy. Awesome. Well, this one seems to have a bit of a following at least!

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Have I mentioned that I’m REALLY EXCITED to start the 80s? We’ve been in the 70s for nearly three entire years, but all that’s behind us. It’s time for a fresh start, with some fresh faces. After several years of people like Norman Tokar and the McEveety brothers writing and directing most of the studio’s output, the studio heads were looking for new blood. There’s a concentrated effort being made to bring energy to the stagnating studio and I for one very much appreciate it.

Michael Nankin and David Wechter were brand new to their careers. Their only previous credit was a musical short film called Junior High School featuring a very young Paula Abdul. The short film impressed then-CEO Ron Miller (who we may remember was Walt’s son-in-law) so much that he gave them a few million dollars to produce a feature film about whatever they wanted. It’s the big break every creative type dreams of!

Unfortunately, this movie was a huge bomb, making only $2.9 million off its $7 million budget. Ouch. Reviews were not kind, particularly for being too raunchy for Disney’s usual audience. It seems combining It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Animal House was a hard sell for a studio used to making family entertainment. Even though this one was also rated PG. In fact, the movie was such a disaster that Nankin and Wechter never worked together again.

The story does have a happy ending. When the new craze of cable TV came around, Midnight Madness found new life, and now it’s considered a minor cult classic. There are even real-life Midnight Madness events around the country, emulating the Great All-Nighter with scavenger hunts and activities around various cities. There’s even a Cast Member exclusive event in Disneyland! Not bad for a movie I’d literally never heard of until right now!

STORY

We open to an absolute banger of a disco tune playing over two pretty girls in tiny shorts skating through a college campus that’s totally not the Disney studio lot. Whenever they stop, they hand an envelope to a character who will probably be important later. There’s Lavitas, captain of the football team, Donna the hyper-feminist sorority girl, Wesley, the nerdy head of the debate team, and the disgusting spoiled fat boy Harold, introduced throwing a tantrum and making a mess of a drive-in burger joint. Charming. The characters really don’t get less stereotypical as they go along.

The girls, named Candy and Sunshine I kid you not, stop by the college counselor’s office to deliver the last envelope. There we meet Adam Larson, who’s coaching a shy freshman named Flynch on how to improve his grades. They won’t tell him much, but Adam’s curiosity is piqued. So he follows the letter’s instructions and heads over to the Hollywood Tower Hotel. Presumably, it’s not going to drop him thirteen stories into the Twilight Zone. Probably. There is, however, something weird going on. The other four students are there, too, and just as confused. Candy and Sunshine play some weird filmstrip about the history of games, then the screen rolls up to reveal- Leon!

The only thing we know is that this whole scheme was Leon’s idea. He explained that he brought them here to play the new game he invented, the Great All-Nighter. Each invitee was chosen to be the Team Captain for a madcap race around Los Angeles, solving puzzles and finding clues to lead to the finish line. The prize for winning the race? Wow! Nothing! Cool! Naturally, none of the captains are particularly motivated to get involved with this nonsense. They all leave, muttering about how dumb this all is and how there’s no way they’re participating. Leon’s girlfriends try to console him, but he’s not worried. He’s going to make them interested.

With the game behind them, the students get back to their regularly scheduled cliquey rivalries. The nerds debate whether football should be banned from college campuses, while the football team doesn’t exactly endear themselves to us when they start throwing garbage at the nerds. Donna tries to get someone, anyone to join her sorority, but no one’s interested. It doesn’t help that two of the only members are the most irritating human beings I have ever seen, two twins who constantly, and I do mean constantly, make this obnoxious dolphin noise whenever the camera turns on them. Like every time. Also the football team keeps messing with them too but I blame the twins.

Adam goes back to his job as a student counselor, but his attempts to coach Flynch aren’t working. Something’s bothering him, and that’s why his grades are slipping. Turns out, he’s upset because he’s a virgin, and as everyone knows you’re not worth anything unless you’re paired off. Love that. Adam encourages him to find a girlfriend because romantic relationships solve all your problems doncha know. I’m too aroace for this. As if on cue, Adam’s own crush, Laura walks in, proving that all his big talk about confidence is just that. Talk. He’s got no game at all. Speaking of games, Laura encourages Adam to play Leon’s because… reasons, I guess.

As for our last Team Captain, Harold is lounging around his dad’s manor with his harpy of a girlfriend Lucille, a racist Mexican stereotype, and two of the dumbest humans ever to walk the earth. I didn’t catch the three guys’ names because I don’t care but the Mexican guy is supposed to be a gang member and he’s obsessed with his switchblade knife. Charming. But he doesn’t have any lines and doesn’t really do anything. Lucille whines at Harold to stop stuffing his face and Harold takes back control by bullying the housekeeper to clean up after him because he’s fat so of course he’s rude and slobbish. Charming. Harold’s dad catches him and takes him into his office to chew him out for being a useless lazy failure. Not like Adam Larson. Now that’s a fine upstanding gentleman. And you know what would make Harold less of a loser? If he won bragging rights in Leon’s game! Obviously.

Back to Adam, he and Laura are trying to gather some more teammates. Preferably one with a really cool car. They find just the guy in Marvin, who owns a bright yellow Toyota Landcruiser that everyone insists on calling a Jeep even though the word Toyota is written clearly across the hood. At first, Marvin declines to join because he has to work on his car, but Adam slyly remarks that they’ll find a cooler car somewhere else. Nobody messes with Marvin’s car so that’s a third teammate in the bag for the Yellow Team.

Marvin’s not the only one with a sweet ride. Harold’s dad gifts the Blue Team a souped-up van with everything they could possibly need: a car phone, an observation bubble, and an advanced computer programmed to solve any clue. It even has flames on the sides. They’re sure to beat all those other losers. The only thing missing is a stash of snacks for Harold to gorge on when Lucille’s not looking, so he shoves them into every nook and cranny. We also have the White Team, made up of Wesley and his army of nerdy clones, the Red Team, made up of Donna and her annoying sorority, and the Green Team, made up of Lavitas and the football team. They all hate each other and are pretty much irrelevant. We’ve got our heroes and villains, we don’t need the other three.

Friday rolls around, and the Yellow Team still only has three members. Right on cue, Flynch races up in his Sunday best. He finally found a date! Okay, his mom helped. Because what’s more pathetic and geeky than having parents who care about your happiness, right? At first, Adam is happy for him and starts to offer advice on how to act. And then the girl knocks on the door. She’s not conventionally attractive so Adam instantly decides Flynch has to dump her and drags her off to play the Great All-Nighter instead. Our hero, everybody.

All five teams gather outside Leon’s apartment building, wearing matching sweaters in their teams’ colors. Once everyone is ready, Leon briefs everyone on how this is going to work. He and his girlfriends will be monitoring everyone’s progress and waiting for them to call him from each spot. When he gets their calls, he’ll mark their locations on a giant map of the city. Candy and Sunshine hand out the first clue: “The Sea is reversed. The S.S. Itari is mixed up and blind. 38-22-23/56-10-11.” And the game is on! First order of business is to figure out what any of that means. After some hemming and hawing, everyone figures out that the first part means to switch the two words around so they form “See The”, and the second part means to unscramble the letters and remove the Is (blind = no eyes, get it?) so you get Stars. But everyone has different ideas of what See the Stars means.

Everyone gets to their respective destinations. The Green Team half demolishes a wax museum, the White Team stumbles across Mickey Mouse’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in case anyone forgot this was a Disney movie, and the Red Team gets stuck wrangling the annoying dolphin twins at a disco. The Yellow Team tries to plot out a course on a tour of the stars’ homes, but thanks to a sudden epiphany from Marvin, figure out that the clue means literal stars. And it’s off to the famous Griffith Park Observatory! They’re right, of course, as evidenced by The Blue Team showing up after just plugging the clue into the computer. They zoom off just as the Yellow Team arrives, taunting them and laughing maniacally, but the Yellow Team won’t be intimidated.

They figure out the numbers are telescope settings and race up to the observatory’s giant telescope. Unfortunately for everyone including the audience, some fat spoiled kid is hogging the whole telescope so… ugh… he can peep on a lady getting undressed through her window. The kid’s dad gets in his face, proud of his kid for being a sleazy pervert until Adam catches them in a lie. If he’s looking for Venus’s two moons (the actual line from this Disney movie), he’s looking the wrong way. So they slink off and give the Yellow Team the chance to look down at the next clue: a bank sign that points them toward “8800 Keys.” While they celebrate, the Green Team bursts in. And how do you distract a bunch of dumb jocks? By turning their attention towards scantily clad women, of course.

While they all peel off in different directions, Leon’s landlady, Mrs. Grimhaus, crashes Game Control. All the radios and monitors hooked up in the apartment are making an absurd amount of noise. The neighbors have had enough of it, and so has she. If he steps one more toe out of line, she’s going to evict him. Yikes. It doesn’t take long for things to go sour. While he’s monitoring things at the Observatory, a host of complaining neighbors burst into his apartment. One of them is our very good friend Jon Fiedler, the voice of Piglet himself! He’s in a surprising number of live action movies. Anyway, he tells Leon to shut up but his mom is astounded by the strategy board taking up one wall. Leon explains that it’s all for a game, and they’re all so intrigued that they stop being angry.

Harold’s computer points the Blue Team to the Piano Museum. Most of the team runs inside, but Harold hangs back to shove marshmallows in the general direction of his face. Lucille catches him eating and whines at him, condescending to him and talking down to him like he’s a very small child and not her boyfriend. Ick. Meanwhile, the Yellow Team hits a red light and to their surprise, finds Adam’s younger brother Scott sitting at a bus station. They’re in too much of a hurry to bring him home so Adam shoves Scott into the car to keep him out of trouble.

The Blue Team pretty much trashes the Piano Museum, but there’s still no sign of the clue. Harold goes berserk and starts smashing more stuff while his idiot friends start playing Heart and Soul for no apparent reason. Lucille’s the first to find the clue written in plain sight on a piano right in front of them: a little musical phrase where the alphabetical notation forms A-B-A-A-G-F-E-F-E-E. They head back to the van to find out what it means, but the computer only gives them static. Then nothing at all. Turns out, Harold stashed his marshmallows in the motherboard when Lucille dragged him out of the car. The whole computer is full of melted marshmallow! Well, that’s what you get for cheating.

8800 Keys is pretty obviously about pianos, so the Yellow Team arrives to the museum shortly after the Blue Team. Laura tries her best to include Scott, but he’s too busy sulking and being a whiny teenager. Just then, the Green Team busts in, yelling like wild animals and causing even more property damage and this isn’t even the worst it gets. The jocks find the musical staff first and instantly recognize the melody. And they scream for the whole museum to hear that it’s the Pabst Blue Ribbon jingle. Because who would figure out a clue about a beer commercial better than a bunch of drunken frat boys?

Naturally, the Green Team gets there first. The Yellow Team is right behind them, with Laura continuing to awkwardly flirt with Scott and Flynch worrying about whether Scott can enter the beer factory. The Red Team gets distracted when the annoying dolphin twins jump out of their truck to go to a random carnival, the Blue Team is still stuck on the idea that the music notes’ letter names are a word scramble, and I don’t know where the White Team is. Apparently Pabst Blue Ribbon gives tours 24 hours a day because the teams that did show up have no trouble getting them. One member of the Green Team is such a severe alcoholic he has to be held back from the factory, culminating in him diving into a vat of beer. Yikes.

Scott does get left behind in the factory’s lobby, and tries his best to get a beer for Adam. Of course the bartender won’t serve a fifteen-year-old, so Scott tries to grab a drink over the bar. This goes about as well as one might expect and Scott gets arrested for his trouble. Adam rushes in and tries to talk to the cops but all they get is thrown out of the factory. How are they going to find the clue now? Easily, as it turns out. The clue’s not in the factory at all, but on a pallet outside: Mr. Carson’s Obese Male Child. Within seconds, they connect “Mr. Carson” to Johnny Carson pretty much out of the blue, and from there it’s an easy connection to the local burger place Johnny’s Fat Boy.

Leon’s made nice with his neighbors and now everyone’s enjoying themselves, breaking out the snacks to listen to the teams’ progress. Another batch of frustrated neighbors barges in but Jon Fiedler smooths things over by telling them all about the game. The Blue Team tries their best to fix the computer while Lucille nags Harold. It doesn’t look good for them until they spot the Yellow Team’s car driving past and decide to follow them to their next location. While the Yellow Team scopes out the restaurant, the Blue Team slashes their tires and siphons off their gas. Meanwhile, with the Red Team, Donna drags the annoying dolphin twins off a Guess Your Weight machine that breaks under them because what’s funnier than making fun of fat people. On their way out, they catch some guy trying to steal their truck!

It doesn’t take the other four teams long to find the next clue hidden on the menu board: “Look between the two giant melons”. And do I really have to describe the next part? Really? Big long sigh. Everyone orders piles of honeydew, cantaloupe, and watermelon while a buxom waitress flits around filling their drinks with the camera fixed directly on her chest. She drops a tray and kneels down, giving everyone a good view down her blouse to the necklace she’s wearing. Everyone gets it at the same time. Rather than asking the poor girl if they could maybe see her necklace, everyone starts making messes for her to clean up so they can leer down her shirt. Things get so bad that she slips and falls, cracking her head and going unconscious. No one bothers to make sure she’s all right or anything, the Yellow Team (our heroes, everybody!) just snatches up her necklace. Then everyone throws money at the register and books it before they get arrested for massive property damage, sexual harassment, and assault.

Just in case that scene wasn’t gross enough, Lucille makes a big deal about how much the Johnny’s Fat Boy mascot looks like Harold and demands he buy her a doll. Because he’s fat and gross do you get it is this joke old yet. The Yellow Team examines the stolen necklace and finds that it reads Hug Me. At first I thought we were in for more sexual harassment, but no, it’s just another word scramble puzzle. And a fairly easy one at that: the answer is Huge M. My first thought would have been one of the hundreds of McDonald’s in LA, but we just did a burger restaurant so the obvious answer is Mini Golf World. Of course. What kind of idiot wouldn’t get that?

Laura squeals with delight that they managed to figure that out so quickly and turns around to hug Adam. But this obligatory romantic plot tumor is so painfully awkward and they freeze before making contact and oh my god I don’t care. Fortunately, we move swiftly on and they head back to the sabotaged car. It’s not a pretty sight. Marvin breaks down crying when he sees his four flat tires. The Blue Team pulls up to gloat and there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind who did this to them. But the Yellow Team isn’t out of the game yet. Adam and Flynch go to hitchhike to Miniature Golf World while Marvin calls a tow truck and Laura stays with Scott to keep him out of trouble. Literally the second she turns around, Scott’s gone.

The Green Team is still at the brewery, in search of their missing friend. He tumbles out from the vat’s drain, completely and utterly trashed but thrilled about it. The Red Team is held up too, still chatting with the guy stealing their car instead of, I don’t know, doing anything. But the fourth girl on the team whose name I didn’t catch smacks him in the face with the truck door and they all steal his truck instead so all’s well that ends well I guess. Laura finds Scott petting somebody’s dog through a car window. The two have a heart-to-heart where Scott whines that no one cares about him, and we find out that the whole reason he’s being such a little emo kid is that Adam forgot today is his birthday.

After a lot of waiting, Adam and Flynch finally find a car to take them to the next clue. Unfortunately, the driver is the oldest man in the world and his wife won’t stop nagging while they drive negative miles per hour. Adam’s about ready to give up on the whole race but Flynch turns his speech about confidence on its head. The two jump out of the slow-moving car and Flynch finds his own confidence, ripping off his suit jacket and drawing the attention of a car driven by two pretty girls. They’re not going towards Mini Golf World but he’s not going to take no for an answer. So he jumps in, grabs the wheel, and kidnaps them. We’re supposed to be as proud of him as Adam is. Our heroes, everybody!

This time the clues are waiting right at the entrance in the form of color-coded envelopes instructing the teams to play a full round of mini-golf. No cheating. So of course, the Blue Team cheats and marches straight to the 18th hole. All they get is a little slip of paper that says “I told you not to cheat” and the humiliation of having to buy a second ball. The Green Team gets ready to give up because they never found the clue at the factory, but they have to pull over to let their drunken friend be sick. To their surprise, they’ve stumbled straight into the Blue Team’s van! They’re back in the game! And the Yellow Team’s new friends aren’t upset at all at being carjacked. They even give Flynch their number. Um. What.

Somehow the Yellow Team’s car gets fixed and Marvin, Laura, and Scott roll up just in time for Adam to start playing their round of golf. Scott tries to tell Adam the best way to win this course because he plays it all the time but Adam just snaps at him to shut up and get out of the way. Our hero everybody! The Blue Team gets stuck behind a gaggle of rowdy little kids playing mini golf with their parents at like 2 AM as you do, and the Green and White Teams get into a fight that ends with the jocks throwing the nerds’ ball into the water. Green finds the clue first, which isn’t at the 18th hole at all but somewhere in the middle: “Look at xylophones initially (5:30 AM)”. Now to figure out what that means.

Obviously, the first part is pointing to the initials of each word: “LAX”, or Los Angeles Airport. But what could 5:30 AM mean? It’s only 2:30, and surely Leon can’t expect them to just sit around for three hours. Well, they know where to go, so the Yellow Team starts on their way until the car stalls. Out of gas! Red and White follow Green, having never finished their round of golf, but it’s one of the idiots on the Blue Team who spots the answer written on a sign. AM radio station 5:30 is the source for airport information! But Harold shuts him down so the White Team is the first to actually spot the sign and tune in to hear Leon hear that the clue is in Terminal 3. I’m sure all the people trying to catch flights appreciate having that information.

Some Hari Krishnas accost the teams with pamphlets as they storm into the airport to find the clue. The White Team just tosses the pamphlets aside without realizing that they’re just racist white kids with T-shirts and tube socks under their robes. The Yellow Team avoids them completely while Laura lays into Adam for treating Scott so badly when he just wants some attention. And the Blue Team pushes the Hari Krishnas to the ground, sending pamphlets flying all over the place. Only then does one of the idiots realize the picture of Leon marking the pamphlets as the clue! Everyone else comes crawling out of the woodwork to grab for them and read: “You’re off your rocker if you don’t look inside your locker”. So they run down to the rental lockers, painted in each team’s color because airports love it when you deface their property, and pull out the packages inside.

Each box contains a red ball and three photos: a safety pin, a chair, and the letter E. One of the dumb guys on the Blue Team thinks they’re pointing them towards Cherry Point (chair – E- the point of the pin), which is actually not a bad guess except for the ball. But the Yellow Team gets it right: pin, ball, sit, E. So off they go to Pinball City, the local 24-hour pinball arcade owned and operated by – holy crap, Pee Wee Herman???? Okay, this was before Pee Wee’s Playhouse, but seeing the late great Paul Reubens in his first movie was still wild. Gotta say, I don’t love him pointing a gun at the Black kid, even if it is full of coins. Anyway, there’s an animatronic fortune teller in the arcade named Madame Leona, a caricature of Leon and a nice nod to the Haunted Mansion. It tells them to get the high score on the Star Fire video game. The game existed in real life, too, which is surprising considering what a blatant rip-off of Star Wars it is.

None of the Yellow Team can quite get it, much to Scott’s amusement. Turns out he’s here all the time. What’s more, he already has the high score on Star Fire! But Adam pushes him away again, and Scott wouldn’t help his rotten older brother if he wanted to. But Laura sweet talks both of them and he cleans up! Their reward for Scott’s excellent performance is a video of Leon dressed as an alien giving them the last clue. The finish line is at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel! They’re so close! Laura hugs Scott, but Adam’s already out the door. It’s the last straw, and Scott leaps out of the back of the car and runs for it. Adam’s so tired of Scott acting out that he leaves a fifteen-year-old boy to the tender mercies of Los Angeles in 1980 at four in the morning. What could possibly go wrong? Marvin, Laura, and Flynch recognize that this is a terrible idea and refuse to go any farther, so Adam dumps them on the side of the road and leaves in Marvin’s car.

The Red Team beats the game next, and the Green Team sneaks up behind them to watch the clue video over their shoulders. They block the doors, preventing the sorority girls from leaving. So the annoying dolphin twins pelt them with foam balls from some shooting game. The Green Team fires back by throwing prizes from the prize booth. Pee Wee Herman steps in to try to convince them to not destroy his place of business, but this is a Disney comedy so of course we devolve into chaos instead. The White Team shows up during all this madness and starts to play their round of Star Fire until the machine gets smashed. Then they join in the free-for-all. The Green Team escapes but not before ramming the Red Team’s truck off the overpass.

By now Leon’s neighbors are all in on the Great All-Nighter. Everyone’s got snacks and beer and are even taking bets on who will win! Mrs. Grimhaus can’t evict Leon if no neighbors are complaining, so she takes matters into her own hands and calls the cops. To her horror, the cop is so impressed with Leon’s equipment that he lets Leon explain the Great-All-Nighter. And he’s into it! Mrs. Grimhaus has had just about enough of this, so she smashes Leon’s police radio and demands that the cop arrest the troublemaker. So he arrests her, and good riddance.

Despairing of finding the clue, Harold pulls up to a light and finds Scott sitting on a bench. Scott’s so angry at his brother that he agrees to tell his rival where the finish line is. Maybe Harold will acknowledge he exists. After all, he doesn’t know the abandoned members of the Yellow Team are looking for him. Adam finds his friends on the side of the road and picks them up, finished being a jerk. But Scott quickly realizes that the Blue Team aren’t his friends, and clams up. Perhaps having the guy with the switchblade menacing him isn’t the best way to get information that he was about to willingly volunteer. Terrified, Scott blurts out the finish line’s location. So the Blue Team throws him out of the van. Adam finds him lying in the middle of the road and is relieved to see that he’s not hurt. The two brothers embrace without ever reconciling or even really apologizing. And that’s the end of that.

While tossing a child out of a moving van, Lucille drops her Johnny’s Fat Boy doll and demands that Harold turn back to get it. They roll up as the Yellow Team gives up and piles into the car to go home. Harold and Adam can’t resist throwing jabs at each other, and the Yellow Team realizes they can’t just let Howard win. So they’re still in the game and it’s off to the Bonaventure Hotel for the big finale. The White Team confronts the Red Team for smashing the machine and ruining their chance of getting the last clue, and the Red Team blames the White Team for smashing their truck. Wait- they each have something the other team needs, so the annoying dolphin twins and one of the Eddie Deezen clones suggest they work together. The sorority girls end up clinging to the nerds’ backs as they speed off to the hotel on the White Team’s mopeds.

All of Game Control races out to the hotel to meet the teams at the finish line, even the cops arresting Mrs. Grimhaus. Then we meet the most sympathetic character in this whole movie: the front desk agent. Listen, I worked as a concierge at several nice hotels for nine years of my life, and this whole next part gave me crazy anxiety. First, Leon’s posse has way too many people for one hotel room, which is a major fire code violation even if this is the biggest double I’ve ever seen. The Green Team busts in, hooting and yelling and making a nuisance of themselves while trashing a rack of pamphlets. The Yellow and Blue teams join them, continuing to trash the lobby in an effort to find the clue. This poor guy finally breaks down when the White and Red Teams burst in, circling the lobby on their motorcycles. Were you all raised in a barn?

The frazzled concierge runs for security, and my god is this security guard in the wrong movie. The guy thinks he’s Clint Eastwood or something, with his big sunglasses and cigarette. It’s kind of awesome. He holsters his gun and vows to take care of it like the action movie star he thinks he is, then drags the Red and White Teams out of the hotel. Wesley spots a bellman headed outside for a smoke break and gets a wonderful, awful idea. He and his clones march up to “help” a rich lady with her bags, meaning that they shove her into the elevator and throw her heavy suitcases (and her dog!!!) at her. Charming. They meet back up with the Red Team, who are disguised as housekeepers, and the chase is on! All five teams careen through the hotel, tearing through plants and using stolen room keys to check rooms. Seriously, if this ever happened at one of the hotels I worked at, I would have probably had a nervous breakdown.

Leon calls down to the front desk and asks them to announce to “Mr. Game Players” to pick up a hotel phone. The chaos pauses so they can hear the last clue “Look at the pool area. I mean this expressly.” And everyone rampages off to the pool. Adam, being our protagonist, is the first to realize the clue isn’t at the pool at all, but in the express elevator facing the pool. The Blue Team follows them, and everyone else throws each other into the pool because they’re minor characters so they can’t win anyway. So now we’re down to two. Mrs. Grimhaus also dials security with her nose to get them to trespass all these ruffians. So now there’s a new contender: Clint Eastwood the security guard and his posse.

On their way up, the two remaining teams spot pool chairs arranged to spell the words “Room 2704”. It’s the finish line! But this elevator only goes between the pool and the restaurant on the top floor, so they have to go all the way back down to get to the guest room elevators. Suddenly, the power flickers out. The Blue Team found the elevator control room, and now both the Yellow Team and the Security Team’s elevators are stuck. With them trapped, the Blue Team decides to climb 27 flights of stairs. Have I mentioned Harold’s fat yet? Marvin spots the emergency override switch, but they don’t have the key. Nor do they have a small piece of wire to pick the lock. Or don’t they? Scott pops his retainer out of his mouth, and Marvin bends it to get them moving again. Gross.

Somehow, the Blue Team gets to the top of 27 flights of stairs at the exact second the Yellow Team gets to the top of the elevator. The two teams face off. Harold smashes the glass in front of the firehose and prepares to blast his rival, which I’m pretty sure is a felony. Thinking fast, Adam unlocks the manual control for security’s elevator, and the water sprays them in the face instead. Security full-on tackles the Blue Team, and the Yellow Team bursts into Room 2704 unopposed. They won!

Downstairs, Leon treats everyone to a breakfast buffet to celebrate a game well played. Scott even gets a birthday cake! Leon presents Adam with a plaque I think I’ve seen at Five Below to make all these shenanigans worth it. Security hauls Harold downstairs, threatening to call his father, but he can’t hear them over the sound of that huge buffet. He breaks free and lunges at the food, shoveling handfuls at his face because fat people are gross isn’t it hilarious?!! Lucille whines at him to stick to his diet so he punches her into the pool because the only thing funnier than making fun of fat people is domestic violence. Oh, and Adam and Laura kiss. Yay.

There are no words you guys. Just because other studios found success with raunchy comedies like Animal House and Porky’s around this time does not mean everyone’s going to meet with the same success. Even as Disney tried to be a little more adult and a little more risque, they’re too committed to being family-friendly to really commit to any of it. So the only option left to them for that more “grown-up” humor ends up being incredibly mean-spirited to fat people, old people, ugly people, women, and fat people. And it is gross. I was so excited to get into this new decade and now my skin is just crawling. I know this movie has something of a following but for me? This ain’t it. It’s not even competent as a film. There are way too many characters, none of whom are likable or relatable in the slightest, and the plot is completely disjointed to the point where I had to reorder several scenes to make my recap make sense. It’s a hot mess all around.

CHARACTERS

Laura is our obligatory love interest. Other than solving clues and being awkward around Adam, she gets almost nothing to do. But you have to have a girl, so she’s the girl. I did appreciate her attempts to keep Adam in line, though. Debra Clinger was a regular on the childrens’ variety show Kaptain Kool and the Kongs as Superchick

Harold is such a weirdly written character. You’re supposed to think he’s rude and slobbish and disgusting from the beginning where he dumps food on a waitress. Then you get the scene with his dad and it’s like… is he supposed to be sympathetic? Do you want to root for him to mend things with his dad? But nah, they just drop that plotline completely and we’re back to him being repulsive because he’s fat. And it’s always because he’s fat. This movie already invites comparisons to Animal House, but Stephen Furst seems to be Disney actively asking you to remember the more successful film, having played Flounder in the earlier movie. He also had an extensive voice acting career, playing roles in a few Disney direct to DVD films like Booster in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command and Dash in The Little Mermaid 2: Return to the Sea.

Wesley is your stereotypical nerd. He’s the captain of the debate team with a fixation on library sciences. He’s a loser. He’s bullied by the football team. He’s a little bit perverted and written to be so ugly that it becomes repulsive even without the movie’s rampant misogyny. We’ve seen all this before in like every high school and college comedy ever. Speaking of high school comedies and rampant misogyny, Eddie Deezen’s illustrious career as the nerd’s nerd playing Eugene Felsnic in the only movie I hate more than Peter Pan, Grease. His unique nasally voice also gave him quite the voice acting career, notably as Mandark in Dexter’s Laboratory. He even comes very close to Mandark’s iconic laugh in this movie!

Donna doesn’t actually get a lot to do. Her team gets sidetracked by the carnival early on, and doesn’t really come back into play until nearly the end of the movie. Most of Donna’s character is just being frustrated with the annoying dolphin twins and honestly? Can you blame her? Wikipedia tries to paint her as some kind of straw feminist but I didn’t even really get that so much as her being sick of the football team antagonizing them. Even with her small role, though, she’s still one of the most notable members of the cast. Maggie Roswell went on to voice several recurring characters on the Simpsons, including Maude Flanders and Helen Lovejoy.

Lavitas and his team are the most annoying frat boys I’ve ever seen. They’re the source of a lot of the random destruction in the movie and openly antagonistic to at least three of the other teams without ever really being villainized like the Blue Team is. So mostly, they’re just a nuisance. Brad Wilken is actually a pretty good-looking guy, so I was surprised to see that he never had more of an acting career than a few bit parts in various TV series. He does, however, currently front a Jimmy Buffet tribute band. So that’s exciting. One of his teammates does have quite a career, though. The guy who falls into the vat of Pabst Blue Ribbon is Dirk Blocker, aka Hitchcock on Brooklyn Nine-Nine!

MUSIC

We’ve seen nepotism bring us sons writing music for their fathers’ movies before, but I think this is the first time we’ve seen the other way around. And yet Midnight Madness’s score was provided by writer/director David Wechter’s father, Julius Wechter. This was his only movie, but he was a well-known marimba player, and his composition Spanish Flea is a frequent fixture in movies, television, and commercials. You’ll know it when you hear it. I wrote down absolutely nothing on the score to Midnight Madness, which probably goes to show how much it stuck out. He does tend to use sad trombone music to underscore how gross the fat people are which is unfortunate.

Midnight Madness, performed by backup singer Donna Fein, makes up for how unmemorable the score was. The theme song is still in my head two weeks after watching the movie for the first time. It’s incredibly cheesy and really underscores the fact that, while released in 1980, this movie was made almost entirely in the late 70s. Listen to that disco beat! It’s glorious! If the movie that followed kept up this level of goofiness, we would be having a much different conversation. Alas.

ARTISTRY

Our good friend Frank V. Phillips started shooting yet another Disney film with wide shots and flat lighting. Unfortunately, the difficult nighttime shoots took their toll on the elderly cinematographer, and he left the project to be replaced by someone who remains uncredited. The visuals are another area where you can really see that this is a 70s comedy by any other name. There’s very little of interest to look at, aside from some okay on-location shooting around the city of Los Angeles.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Okay, the 80s are off to a bad start. But that’s fine, we know the later part of this decade has some good stuff in store. And hey, this movie was only released in February 1980, meaning that it wasn’t made in the 80s. I’m holding on to whatever hope I can find, guys. The idea of an all-night scavenger hunt with clues and puzzles leading teams around the city actually sounds like a lot of fun. It’s a shame the execution is so utterly repugnant on so many levels. If anyone has any ideas to do something like this around Orlando (or the theme parks), call me- but make sure none of the clues are about objectifying a waitress and knocking her out cold.

Favorite scene: Leon explaining the rules of the game. It’s so overblown and ridiculous and has the exact opposite effect he was expecting that it is actually kinda funny.

Final rating: 2/10. Good concept. Bad movie.