The Australian Midnight Horror Show Riots
(Another article submitted to a few magazines in 2021. Again, not a single reply. Not even a polite (or a non-polite for that matter) rejection email)
The first such screening (that can be confirmed) happened at Broken
Hill, on New Year’s Eve, 1912 when the short film Auld Lang Syne[1] was screened shortly after midnight. From there the midnight
New Year’s Eve film became an annual tradition for Broken Hill and was as much
a celebration for the city as Christmas. The popularity, and success, of the screenings
was noted and picked up by other cities around the country. Soon it wasn’t just
New Year’s Eve that was chosen for midnight screenings, public and school
holidays and Easter were targeted.
In Melbourne the Lyceum Theatre on Burke Street began to run
what it called ‘Festival(s) of Fear’. These movies were held on Friday evenings
as many of the pre-1948 banned horror movies were dusted off and screened. Man
Made Monster, Ghost of Frankenstein, Dracula’s Daughter, House of Frankenstein,
and The Mummy’s Curse were all given a run, resulting in full houses and
a windfall for the cinema. Other cinemas realized what was happening and began
to book the same movies and screen them at midnight, generally on a Friday,
Saturday and, although more rarely, Sunday.
The early screenings attracted as many critics as they did
paying customers. A letter published in The Argus gives a great insight
into the kinds of people who attended these Midnight Screenings in the early
1950s.
On Friday night, out of curiosity, I entered a city picture
house for an early morning picture screening. I was late and was given a front
seat. Near me sat a bored little boy of 12, with a cigarette butt dangling from
his lips. Farther away were children of about 10, highly excited by the lack of
restraint in other adolescents. Soldiers, sailors, and toughs were present,
with language that matched their attitudes. Here and there were couples, and a
sprinkling of the ageless weather-beaten men seldom seen in the daylight. In
this atmosphere of emotional instability there must have been a number of wealthy
and or responsible people, to judge by the taxi afterwards employed. After the
show, at 2:30am, noisy groups departed homewards while little boys scurried
through them home to their beds. From my car I watched a lad of nine hurrying
along whistling nervously frightened by his own footsteps. A nearly deserted
city at early morning is a terrifying place, the father of that child a
scoundrel.[2]
The practice of midnight horror movies soon spread the
country, but the main problems all appeared to focus on Victoria and its
capital, Melbourne.
The first reported brawl occurred in Ballarat, a country town
outside of Melbourne. In April 1952, The Argus noted how midnight horror
movies were now banned in that city due to weeks of regular fighting and vandalism,
the latter usually happening when errant bricks missed their marks (most likely
a head) and went through windows. The audiences for these movies were young
people, teenagers.
 |
| Marwick calls out the Bendigo filmgoers. The Age, 29 March 1958 |
In the 1950s teenagers had discovered rebellion, alcohol,
sex, rock and roll, fast cars, and motorbikes, but not necessarily in that
order. The trend was towards two distinct types of teenagers, the Australian
equivalent of the American Greaser was known as the Bodgie, and their women
were known as Widgies.
Bodgies were working class men and boys. They drove hot rods,
rode motorbikes, wore jeans and t-shirts and liked to fight.
Bodgies would fight with anyone, especially authority
figures, and their foes, migrant Australians.
Ultimately it didn’t matter who was with what gang, once
teenagers got into the cinemas at midnight, they were half drunk. Once seated
they continued to drink and in the wee hours they would pour out onto the
street where any slight, real or imagined, would trigger an all-in brawl. The
screening of old Universal horror films wasn’t the trigger. The Bodgies just
happened to be there when they screened.
Things came to head in Thornbury, an outer suburb of
Melbourne, on March 10, 1958, when a riot broke out, resulting in heavy damage
to the theatre and injuries to police. The blame was placed squarely at the
feet of young people and horror films. We have a first account of the violence,
thanks to an eyewitness, John Brideson, who wrote to The Age shortly after.
To see this programme 1,700 arrived, some two hours before
midnight, but the most alarming feature about the audience was that most were
teenagers of the most extreme type – in clothes, language and attitude. They
were so rough that a plate glass screen was broken, a side door was surreptitiously
opened, and the crowds swamped the theatre. The crew of a police patrol car,
along with local foot patrols were required to maintain order during the show,
which lasted till 3.45 a.m.[3]
Instantly horror films were blamed, even though the cinema
was running gangster movies that evening. It was assumed that horror was the
factor due to a card placed out the front of the theatre before the show,
reading, “The whole theatre will quiver; you will shiver; but please don't
faint.”
Solutions to the problem came thick and fast. Influential
minister, and liberal theologian, Sir Irving Benson suggested a simple solution
– Sunday School. Dr. Benson stood to address a gathering at Wesley College in
outer Melbourne.
You probably have read that, when three lads were before the
court for trying to overturn a motor car after they had left one of these so-called
midnight entertainments their solicitor said, ‘The people who should be in this
court are the people who run the theatre’. We want. in this country freedom of
expression and thought, but such freedom does not entitle picture shows to
provide for these midnight parties films (sic) which could only disturb and
unbalance and give a wrong sense or values to the young people who see them. One
of the best things that could happen in Australia would be a great national
resurgence of Sunday School.[4]
Benson’s call was for all young people, under the age of 21,
to mandatorily attend Sunday School, either for Bible studies or for training
for work.
Replying to this, the Victorian State Government fell back
onto a tried-and-true solution – parents. “If we could only persuade parents to
go out more with their children, we would have a far less serious problem of
juvenile delinquency and hooliganism on our hands,” was the response from the
Chief Secretary, Arthur Rylah. “It would be unwise to rush in and take hasty
action.[5]”. Rylah went on to claim that the bulk of the damage at
theatres came about when some lads were refused entry and when boys and girls
were allowed to sit next to each other. Segregating the audience had seen a
reduction in the damage done to cinemas.
The opposition party didn’t agree. “We want the Government to
do something about these shows, and not adopt a ‘wait and see’ attitude,” said
the Leader of the Labor Party, Ernie Shepherd. “We can’t take the risk of
allowing this to grow. Only this morning I received a telegram from the
Mother’s Club Federation of Victoria, representing 55,000 mothers, expressing
concern on the matter.[6]”
Faced with growing attacks by the Church and Opposition,
Rylah ordered an immediate investigation and report.
The report verified that gangster movies, not horror, were
shown on the evening in question. “They were, in fact, some that could have
been described as rather poor melodrama and detective stories,” claimed Rylah[7]. What Rylah didn’t say was all the films were approved by
the censor and were American in origin. The showing of films, in particular
horror, had contributed to vandalism at both Ascot Vale and Thornbury. Even as
the report laid blame, it continued to defend horror films by deflecting some
of the blame for ‘larrikinism’ onto ‘objectionable’ literature, recordings, television,
and newspapers. Rylah again called for parents to take a more active role in
the education and supervision of their children.
Thirteen ‘objectionable’ films were named in the report, and
the media focused on the obvious horrors, Donovan’s Brain, The Creeper, The
Black Castle, The Creeping Unknown, Strange Door and The Creature Walks
Among Us.
Films from other genres, such as crime, gangster, thriller or
music, were not mentioned by name. As will be seen, this was deceptive as at
least one of the riots in Sydney broke out after a screening of a Bill Haley
and Elvis Presley double bill.
Before the Rylah commissioned report was tabled, more
problems arose, this time in Brunswick, another of the pouter suburbs of
Melbourne. The Hoyts Padua theatre hosted a midnight screening of two movies,
described as being horror, almost a year to the day of the 1958 Thornbury
incident. Despite opening the doors at ten thirty, people flooded the theatre
and police had to be called in to restore peace.
Government minister William Slater told the Victorian
parliament about his experiences after recently attending a midnight show.
The show started shortly after midnight, and among the
audience was a considerable number of teenage boys and girls and some children
aged from 8 to 10 years. They had displayed to them in an abominable fashion,
according to my informant, these ‘horror’ films depicting such scenes as a
surgeon from Mars performing an operation on the brains of persons destroyed by
a monster. I think it is time a strong protest was registered, in the name of
youth, against the sordid commercialism of certain interests which are
prepared, for the sake of money, to display these extraordinary and horrible
films to that section of the community.[8]
This time the principal of the nearby Brunswick Technical School
was the complainant, and he had support within the state Labor party in the
form of stalwart Slater, then in the last year of his life. Slater read letters
that had been sent to him and thundered his opposition about horror films and
midnight screenings[9].
As Slaters health declined, his colleague, Campbell Turner,
took up the gauntlet.
Our chaplain attended a midnight ‘horror’ session at a
Sydney-road picture theatre during the early hours of Monday, March 9th.
The films screened were of a particularly morbid type, and the large audience
included children and adolescents from the age of eight or nine upwards. It may
perhaps be argued that what occurs outside school hours is not the business of the
school, but I feel that teachers have a moral responsibility toward their students,
and I know that some of our boys attend such ‘horror’ screenings. From the
standpoints of morality, health and plain commonsense these shows appear to be
highly undesirable, and I would urge that the Government be encouraged to bring
down legislation to at least curb this social evil.
Faced with yet more attacks, the Government decided not to
legislate, but rather to handball to the local councils. When Rylah’s report
was finally tabled in the Victorian Parliament in 1959, he included this
statement.
“In districts where midnight performances are held from time
to time the remedy seems to be for those who oppose such entertainments to make
their representations to the local municipal councils and urge that a by-law be
made and enforced regarding the times at which picture theatres may be open to
the public.[10]”
This now ensured that all complaints about Thornbury,
Ballarat, Brunswick or anywhere else, would now not be the State Government’s
problem.
By then it didn’t really matter as another series of midnight
picture shows was about to explode – at the drive-ins.
On 29 January 1962, the worst of the riots occurred in
Melbourne. Again, Preston and Thornbury were the epicentres and again it was
horror films that sparked the riots.
 |
| The Thornbury/Preston riot. The Age 30 January 1962 |
If it sounds like a gangland hit, then it probably was. But
the fact that the victim and his cousin had been at a midnight film show in
Northcote was cited as the likely cause. That the gunman was not identified as
being at the show meant nothing. A man was shot and beaten, it had to be the
fault of a midnight horror movie.
At the same time as the shooting the Regent Theatre,
Thornbury, was under attack from within. As the movies were being screened, patrons
started jeering and throwing eggs at the screen (sadly the name of the movie is
not known). Those who were there to watch the movie took offense at the eggs
and began to throw fists.
Then bottles started flying. That was it. The film was shut
off, the lights turned on and the theatre manager stormed down to the front and
was in the process of telling everyone to get the hell out of his theatre when
he too was knocked senseless with a bottle. When he got to his knees, another
man rushed up and smashed him in the mouth with a broken bottle. This time he
stayed down.
It must have been a full moon because in nearby Preston, the
entire drive-in simply got up after the film ended and had a fight (again, they
were described as ‘horror’ films, but the names aren’t readily available). This
time it kicked off as everyone was leaving. Someone said something to someone
else and that was it - it all erupted. As is usual with such riots, nobody
knows who threw the first punch, but when it was on, it was on.
For those reporting the scene, it was clear – midnight screenings,
plus horror equated riots. But was the riot due to the films, the time of the night
or something else?
One newspaper account gives the best clue as to what happened
and why when it was reported that ‘migrant’ and ‘Australian’ mobs fought in the
streets. Fences were ripped down, palings torn off to be used as weapons, cars
were set on fire and letterboxes blown up with firecrackers. Newspapers were
set alight, bottles rained down and letterboxes were used as weapons. By the
time police regained control, twenty-one people were sitting in the cells.
If it sounds like a race riot, it’s because that’s exactly
what it was. Sadly, they weren’t that uncommon in the late 1950s and early
1960s.
Again, media and politicians played up the midnight
screenings of horror films. Never mind that people had recently rioted in
Sydney after a midnight screening of Rock Around the Clock and Jailhouse Rock, horror was the true enemy[11].
By the early 1960s, the Bodgies were in decline, replaced by Sharpies,
so named due to their tendency to ‘dress sharp’. The Sharpies hung around anywhere
that had any kind of youth entertainment and didn’t care who they fought. They’d
bash each other if no other entertainment was available.
The usual calls for banning horror films went up and were
ignored. Distributors and the censors knew that horror films had been banned
since 1948, so they couldn’t ban the banned. Police formed what they called a
‘Bodgie Squad’, a flying squad that was designed to go around and beat up as
many Bodgies and Sharpies as could be found. Oh, and if they could be bothered,
arrest them. Incarceration came secondary to the beatings. They also put
plainclothes police on bicycles to infiltrate the youth gangs.
Midnight shows were also banned in Thornbury, so that was
being looked at. Fines were issued. Again, parents were handed the bulk of the
blame. The County Women’s Association then stepped in and that was it for
midnight horror cinema shows in the greater Melbourne region for the duration.
The film most likely at blame is Village of the Damned. This movie was in circulation and a popular midnight movie
of the time. It was being shown in other cinemas and drive-ins across the
country at the same time, including Victoria, but this hasn’t been confirmed.
 |
| The Age. 30 March 1958 |
What had once been a place for fighting, drive-ins showing
horror films at midnight became family affairs. If people didn’t bring their
families, then they were highly likely to be starting them during the quiet
bits of the films. They would continue well into the 1970s.
END NOTES
[1] USA. 1911, Vitagraph
Company of America, directed by Laurence Trimble.
[2] The Argus, 21
December, 1951
[3] The Age, 17 March 1958
[4] Ibid
[5] The Age, 20 March,
1958
[6] Ibid
[7] The Age, 31 March,
1958
[8] Hansard 41 CA V257
[9] One such letter read,
“As you are doubtless aware, it has become the practice of suburban picture theatres
to present midnight screenings of " horror " films. The unanimous
feeling of the council of the Brunswick Technical School is that these
screenings should be prohibited, or at least transferred to more suitable times
and then very strictly controlled. I am instructed to bring to your notice the
fact that young children and adolescents attend ·these shows in large numbers. From
the standpoints of morality, health, and plain common sense they are most undesirable,
and your support is sought for any legislation which will deal with a growing social
evil.”
[10] Hansard 41 CA V257
[11] Sydney Morning Herald
5 March 1963
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