Home Before Midnight
1979 · Directed by Pete Walker · UK
Home Before Midnight is Pete Walker’s 1979 exploitation dressed as social drama. I first saw this in my local Ritz cinema as a second feature. I was a teenager and the Ritz was lax on school kids watching X films, as they were classified in the UK.
Mike offers a lift to hitchhiking Ginny and they soon form a relationship. Mike soon learns that Ginny is only fourteen, but doesn’t let that stand in the way of carrying on as normal. Mike works in the music industry as a lyric writer for pop outfit Bad Accident. Pete Walker must have loved the irony of the band’s name, as Mike is soon charged with statutory rape and Ginny proves an unreliable witness to their loving relationship.
A different direction for Walker from the Grand Guignol shockers of Frightmare, The Flesh and Blood Show and House of Whipcord, but he still crams in the nudity, sex and quips on underage groupies so as not to disappoint his fan base.
For British pop pickers, look out for cameos by Radio 1 DJs Diddy David Hamilton and Annie Nightingale, and the pop tunes by Bad Accident are provided by Jigsaw. I had never heard of them either.
Gallery
Trailer
From the score
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Jigsaw – the full film score
