On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.
This September, we’re celebrating Back to School Nightwith four midnight movies that aren’t just academically themed but also teach the lessons essential to understanding this school of cinema.
First, read the spoiler-free bait — a weird and wonderful pick from any time in film and why we think it’s worthmemorializing. After you’ve watched the movie, come back for the bite — a breakdown of all the spoiler-y moments you’d want to unpack when exiting a theater.
The Bait: A Lesson in Midnight Movies from Ant Timpson
Midnight movie-goers tend to be friendly, but Ant Timpson is more popular than most.
The New Zealand filmmaker, who pulled off a small miracle when producing “The ABCs of Death,” has been around the world’s festival circuit for decades. He’s smiley, sharp, and the kind of guy who serious genre fans describe as the one person “you just have to meet.”
That’s how the “Bookworm” and “Come to Daddy” director was able to pull together more than 26 short filmmakers on a shoestring budget and deliver a midnight movie masterclass at TIFF in 2012. The extreme horror anthology leaves room for improvement as an exercise in gender diversity — Timpson laments the credits as “a total sausage fest” today — but it’s also a testament to the role close relationships play in building film counterculture.
“I’m in the ass-end of the world,” Timpson told IndieWire, laughing over Zoom. “It’s hard to maintain connections and I had to travel a lot. Austin has become like a second home to me.”
Community is essential to indie filmmaking. As a programmer, director, and dude who has crashed on Tim League’s couch, Timpson knows that better than most. He credits much of his career’s early success and credibility to League, who helped produce “The ABCs of Death” for Drafthouse Films. League founded that company, the Alamo Drafthouse theater chain, and Fantastic Fest, an annual genre event returning to Texas later this month.
“If I wasn’t partnered up with Tim, I doubt ‘ABCs’ would’ve got off the ground to be honest,” Timpson said. “But the idea was to capture a specific moment in the zeitgeist and to preserve the horror scene as it existed at that time. I think we did that.”
Timpson came up with the concept for “The ABCs of Death” while sleep-deprived and caring for his young children — but he found the very adult film’s talent mostly through networking. With League’s help, Timpson recruited enough buzzy genre directors to assign each artist a single letter from the English alphabet. That classic school-kid framework inspired a spectacular tome of unapologetic riffs on the murderous and macabre. Think “A is for Apocalypse” or “B is for Bigfoot” explored as a bite-sized, cinematic nightmare.
“The interesting thing from that is how much of an impact those filmmakers have gone on to make,” said Timpson. “There’s just no way you would be able to do this with them now. First off, the money was insulting. If they weren’t friends, I think they would’ve been right to spit in our face.”
For the original movie (“The ABCs of Death” was successful enough to inspire a sequel and a spin-off), the directors roster included still up-and-coming voices like Ti West, Adam Wingard, Jason Eisener, and Ben Wheatley. Working on a microbudget of $5,000 U.S. dollars per short, that once-in-a-lifetime group floored Timpson with not only their talent but their commitment to making the outrageous practical.
“When we saw some of them coming in, I was absolutely shocked because they were delivering,” said Timpson. “Xavier Gens’ one [‘X is for XXL’], no shit, that looks like a $200,000 sci-fi film.”
The results were doubly impressive when it came to British animator Lee Hardcastle, who won a contest to become the film’s so-called 26th director with his claymation. (There are 28 filmmakers if you split up the teams.) Roughly 500 entries were culled down to a meager top 10 via an online voting system — one that was designed for “ABCs of Death” by eventual Letterboxd founders Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow. Hardcastle was ultimately chosen as the winner by a jury of his “ABCs” peers.
“He was such a sweetheart guy, literally a basement filmmaker,” Timpson said. “When he turned up at TIFF, you could tell it was just overwhelming to him. It was an amazing moment watching him start to hang out with these directors. I don’t know if he idolized them, but he definitely knew who they were and he was kind of in awe of the whole thing.”
“T is for Toilet” launched Hardcastle’s career — and slotted him into a human pyramid on the red carpet at the premiere. None of the directors were told anything about the segments bookending their own and the cascading surprises made for an especially raucous screening. From the notoriously tough-to-take “L is for Libido” to a foxy Nazi strip tease (that’s “H is for Hydro-Electric Diffusion,” obviously?), “The ABCs of Death” uses the variety-style structure of a midnight shorts block to capture the essence of bonding at a film festival.
“I felt like at least then we had that kind of rock-and-roll film that was just perfect for Midnight Madness,” said Timpson. “Some shorts don’t work for some people, but they all have highs and lows. And the idea of it was to make that midnight movie experience.”
Ironically enough, the producer admits to liking “The ABCs of Death 2” somewhat better. As a programmer for plenty of festivals over the years — including his own Incredibly Strange Film Festival and the New Zealand International Film Festival — Timpson sees midnight as a somewhat floundering subculture. It’s hemmed in by a lack of originality from major studios, supersaturation in the streaming age, endless side effects brought on by social media, the American bias still skewing the international market, and plenty more.
But fringe filmmaking is far from dead, Timpson said, and there’s a “delicious irony” to the bonds we make as midnight movie fans. Repetition is key and teamwork can be crucial, but endlessly obsessing over the possibility of controversial art is also an act of L-O-V-E, love.
“It just needs that young blood, that hunger, that mad action,” he said, emphasizing how grateful he is for these filmmakers. “With ‘The ABCs of Death,’ I’m still in touch with so many of those people. There’s just so much warmth and humanity behind something that’s…so disgusting and gross and offensive.”
Those brave enough to join in on the fun can stream “The ABCs of Death” on Tubi or Pluto TV.
The Bite: If You Don’t Know, Take a Guess
Check back here in a feature or so for our spoiler-filled reaction. Plus, more trivia from Timpson.
IndieWire After Dark publishes midnight movie recommendations every Friday night at 9:30 p.m. ET. Read more of our deranged suggestions…
- Revisit Midnight Masterpiece ‘Holy Motors’: French Arthouse Ponders Cinema and the Self
- Kate Winslet Burns It Down in Australian Haute Couture Revenge Movie ‘The Dressmaker’
- Karate and Vomit Make ‘Little Manhattan’ a Midnight Movie for Kids — and Basically ‘Sex and the City’ for Boys
