The Midnight Express (1978) phenomenon and the image of Turkey

Abstract

Adapted from Billy Hayes’s autobiographical book, the ‘true’ story of his five-year incarceration in a Turkish prison on charges of drug smuggling, Midnight Express is a film and phenomenon that never becomes dated. Released in 1978, it was a small movie yet a major commercial success and a critical favourite on an international scale. It won many awards, including two Oscars and six Golden Globes. It launched several Hollywood careers, most notably that of Alan Parker, Oliver Stone and David Puttnam, has been shown on American and British televisions since 1980, and in 1986 was released on video. In 1998, a 20th-anniversary edition of the film was released on DVD. In 1998, David Panzer Productions even bought a script from Billy Hayes about the ‘real’ story of his prison escape. The new movie, Midnight Express—The Return, would also tell of Hayes’s attempts to free a still-imprisoned friend in Turkey. On 5 May 2000, Variety reported that the $30 million movie ‘Midnight Return’, ‘a sequel to Midnight Express’, would be shot in the fall in Tunisia and that the producers were approaching Edward Norton for the lead role. Although there has been no new information about the sequel since then, Midnight Express inspired several other films in the 1990s as well. While Return to Paradise (Joseph Ruben, 1998) is described by critics as a Midnight Express for the 1990s, Brokedown Palace (Jonathan Kaplan, 1999) is referred to as the female version of Midnight Express. Both films depict young Americans jailed on drug-related charges in ‘primitive’ Third World prisons, namely in Malaysia and Thailand, respectively. Moreover, it is possible to read the video erotic thriller Prison Heat (Joel Silberg, 1992)