Midnight Cabaret

My review was written in January 1991 after watching the movie on Warner video cassette.

"Midnight Cabaret" is a pretentious satanic shocker being released to home video after over two years on the shelf.

Pic, which received its R rating in 1988, is a leftover inherited by Warner Brothers in its purchase of Lorimar

Laura Herrington toplines sympathetically as an actress in Michael Des Barres' "concept" Broadway play "Midnight Cabaret", a purposely decadent piece showing at the Mephisto Theater.

Unconvincing conceit of director Peter Dingo is a throwback to Busby Berkeley musicals: what unfolds on stage is enacted (on the Universal backlot) on a much larger scale in violation of what the audience could actually witness in the theater.

Another porlbem is that these abstract chase scenes down studio streets are filmed in a stylized fashion that also is duplicated for Herrington's several nightmare sequences. Resulting hodgepodge is deliberately ambiguous as to what's real, but it's a cheat. So is the film's symmetrical structure and reliance on the gimmick of the play script coming true in real life.

The play's set pieces, including talk-songs by character actress Carolyn Seymour (well-cast as the devil's mother), are morbidly fascinating. Attention to detail is poor, with the Hollywood backlot settings never suggesting Manhattan (an impossible address is given as "1156 E. 85th St.").

Des Barres exudes an oily charm as the ostensible villain, and Herrington is easy to root for. Worst performance is delivered by Bruce Wright as a handome but incredibly wooden police detective. From the world of home video, the premier lading lady of late, Canadian bombshell Lydie Denier, opos up at film's end to set up a possible sequel.

Anyone who is a fan of Michael Des Barres' darker roles should see this -- It's as if they combined Murdoc from Cleo Rocks, Malcolm Graves from Ghoulies, the Blue Moon Killer from The Pretender, the Dark Priest from Charmed, and some LSD for good measure.

Don't let the cut-and-dried review on the back of the box fool you, however. The film weaves dreams, real-life, and Cabaret theater scenes together in such a way that you won't quite know what's what by the end, and that's a good thing.

My one complaint is that the leading lady is a bit flat in her role, but Des Barres more than compensates for her lack of screen presence.

Midnight Cabaret (1990) is a movie I watched on Tubi last month. The storyline follows a Broadway producer staging a dark play centered around the devil. When eerie events start mirroring the play's sinister plot, the cast and crew grow increasingly uneasy, setting the stage for a potentially dramatic grand opening.

This film is directed by Pece Dingo (Until We Meet Again) and stars Lisa Hart Carroll (Terms of Endearment), Michael Des Barres (To Sir, with Love), Paul Drake (Beverly Hills Cop), and Laura Harrington (Maximum Overdrive).

This is one of those movies where you keep waiting for something significant to happen, and when it finally does, it's underwhelming. The costumes, sets, and lighting effectively create a moody atmosphere with an '80s vibe, but that's where the positives end. The risqué subplot flirts with exploitation without fully committing, and while there's plenty of nudity, it feels disconnected from the main storyline. The conclusion attempts a twist but doesn't land as strongly as intended.

In conclusion, Midnight Cabaret explores multiple themes with potential but fails to tie them together in a satisfying way. I would score this a 3/10 and recommend skipping it.

I think all the actors in this movie were excellent. They had a great cast of characters. It really kept me on the edge of my seat. It was very moving. The set was my favorite cause I like unique places of setting. I havent seen any movie quite like it. Excellent piece of work.

Pece Dingo's MIDNIGHT CABARET reveals it's hand early when the fragrant, shaggable damsel at the focus of it's "story" (Lara Harrington, looking fresh), a struggling actress named Tanya, finds herself thrust into a nightmare vision where she is pursued through a Gothic, fashionable Los Angeles by a straight edge razor wielding vampire whom she had witnessed feeding off another hunk in a downright sexual manner. He is stark naked, with plenty of rump shots as he scuttles up various staircases in pursuit of her nightie-clad, rain dampened body. Either the film is gay, or it's for the ladies, which turns out to be the case by the second reel when we get to see her apartment. It isn't a living space for a struggling actress, it's a stylistic flourish dream pad that Mies Van Der Rohe would have had trouble paying the rent on.

The premise for the film is actually interesting: A super high-class nightclub/cabaret type of hotspot staging neo-Grand Guginol type performances which blur the line between reality and dreams. Are the performances for real or imaginary? The answer seems to be yes, they are both. Everyone has perfect clothes, perfect hair, plenty of cigarettes, and behave as though they were in a Duran Duran music video. Which makes sense given the presence of lead actor Michael Des Barres, who fronted a Duran Duran spin off band during the 1980s. He glowers under his highly stylized hairdo, rasping in a mid Atlantic half-British accent while intoning the Prince of Darkness, ironically clad in a perfect white suit. His stage MC evokes a pre-heroin Boy George, and everyone in the cast is apparently on the verge sleeping together in the most casual of ways.

Slowly the dream imagery of the stage plays begins to spill over into Tanya's fashionable life as she finds herself plagued by aspiring rapists or hunky suitors who seem more interested in how they are being lit than actually getting away with anything. Even the film's would-be heroic cop, trying to get to the bottom of things after some untimely deaths, swaggers through the frame in a $1500 knee length designer jacket while wafting cigarette smoke through the diffused lighting. Is he a real person or a functionary of her dream? The film seems more interested in making us wonder if he'd be a good kisser more than how he pays for his wardrobe. The fact that he never bothers to read the lass her rights even when interrogating her over the coincidental murders of everyone close to her suggest that he's either inept or simply hot for a date.

The film gets one thing right which is putting the viewer into a state of confusion over whether what we are watching is supposed to be part of the nightclub act or reality, no easy feat since Ms. Harrington spends an awful lot of time running blindly down empty city blocks while always managing to look freshly showered. The story becomes secondary to the imagery, which has more in common with a Nagel print than it does a standard horror movie, with the complete absence of exploitational female nudity eventually giving the film's agenda away, which is to be respectable at all costs. Even when the characters are having sex the film manages to avoid being sleazy or voyeuristic. Here at last is a horror movie for couples, where all the guys are sensitive minded beefcake and all of the women are resourceful, quick witted, and have fantastic apartments. Nobody seems to have a job or need money, people speak in hushed stage whispers or listen in turn attentively, and hot chicks don't mind having 2nd hand smoke blown in their faces because the smokers all look so great.

In other words I'm not the person to be reviewing this film. It's poised, dramatic sensibilities are wasted on me and will find their most appreciating audiences in fashion minded females in their mid 30s who still go nightclubbing & are nostalgic for the 1990s. Guys watching this will feel under-dressed and somewhat at a loss for what to say, other than perhaps asking "So when do we get to see her tits?" You never do, but afterward you might just find yourself in the mood for a cup of International House French Vanilla coffee. And a cigarette.

4/10