The Absolute Policeman: Wes Olsen’s The Dark Side of Midnight
Art & Trash, episode 2
The Absolute Policeman: Wes Olsen's The Dark Side of Midnight
Stephen Broomer, February 11, 2021
The Dark Side of Midnight was made in 1984 by Wes Olson, who served as the film’s writer, director, producer, editor, and lead actor. A thriller that is both of its era and out of time, it is defined by its homespun technique, curious pacing, and uncannily brilliant hero. Protagonist Brock Johnson is logical, invincible, the absolute policeman. Stephen Broomer explores the film's dramatis personae, the interplay between archetypal characterizations and the cast's charms, Olsen's use of genre tropes, the debts of its story to a legendary beach thriller, and the function of a flawless hero.
The Dark Side of Midnight was released on home video, both under its original title and as The Creeper, by companies such as Prism and Video Graph. In 2005, it was issued on DVD by Troma Entertainment as part of Toxie's Triple Terror Volume 5. Since that release, the film has not been commercially available.
SCRIPT:
The Dark Side of Midnight was made in 1984 by Wes Olson, who served as the film’s writer, director, producer, editor, and lead actor. For his many roles, Olsen’s ambitions place him in a long line of filmmakers who, by maintaining complete creative control over their work, reinforce a model of lone authorship, an auteur cinema that favours the romantic image of the artist. But the concept of an auteur cinema presumes the repetition and evolution of a set of themes and styles over the course of a growing body of work. The Dark Side of Midnight would be Olsen’s only film, a thriller that is both of its era and out of time, a movie defined by its homespun technique, curious pacing, and uncannily brilliant hero.
The story borrows liberally from Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, another film in which the law must fight both an unpredictable monster and the greed of local officials. Modesto, California stands in for the fictional Fort Smith, a town on the verge of change. Plans to establish a new state university in Fort Smith seem to have turned the town’s fortunes so dramatically that city officials will do anything to ensure that the deal goes through. At the same time, a serial killer known as the Creeper has been terrorizing the town, and his crimes are threatening to drive away the university. This killer is aggravating the conflict between the new and old culture of the town, typified in Mayor Reilly and Chief Ned Cooper. Mayor Reilly is introduced as a corrupt, self-interested incompetent, eager to gloss over the crimes to protect his own investments. Chief Cooper, a crusty pillar of honesty, is at odds with the Mayor. He races against time to catch the Creeper who, as the movie’s theme song tells, has a pattern, and only makes his strike on the dark side of midnight.
The Creeper’s identity is no mystery: the killer is seen early in the film, a random maniac with no connection to the people of Fort Smith. He is portrayed as a force of nature, an unmistakable boogeyman in his wide-brimmed hat and red plaid shirt. He is an outsider, an urban legend made flesh. It is revealed that he is the Detroit Creeper, a murderer who fled capture in Motor City, only to take shelter in the attics and backseats of Fort Smith. The Creeper’s crimes are brutal in subversive ways that defy expectation: for example, during a prolonged sequence in which it is suggested the victim will either be a mischievous child or his weary babysitter, the film delivers the more gruesome outcome.
The premise turns in a new direction as the Chief is forced to call in outside expertise. The town enlists Brock Johnson, a famous detective whose supposed youth stuns his new colleagues. Played by writer/director Wes Olson, Brock Johnson is an archetypal hero from his arrival in town. In his presence, the film transforms from a routine thriller to a paean to Johnson’s unchallenged vitality and youth. The only challenge to it is not within the world of the film, but in the audience’s encounter with Olsen himself. From his haircut, to his nasal voice, to his startling lack of charisma, Brock Johnson is unexceptional, a state made all the more comic by the flattery of the chief. Such a disconnect between what the film tells us and what it shows us becomes central as Johnson pursues the chief’s daughter, in a sudden courtship, within moments of meeting her, in one of the strangest, most infernal fireside romances in cinema.
Throughout, a friendship develops between the chief and Brock Johnson. Chief Cooper’s hot-tempered inadequacy makes him a foil for Johnson, who he admires as a hero. Johnson’s affection for Chief Cooper is, like all that he does, an effortless facet of his generous character. Mayor Reilly and his cronies lay obstacles in their path, enlisting another cop, Lieutenant Ted Nilson, to undermine their investigation. Nilson is presented as a counterpoint to Cooper and Johnson; ironically, it is he who is portrayed as a vain, self-deluded lothario.
Johnson’s sleuthing leads into the film’s final act, where the Mayor receives his comeuppance, the town’s university ambitions collapse, and the threat of the Creeper is eliminated by Johnson, who, after a prolonged confrontation, throws a molotov cocktail into the killer’s house. This strange act of cowardice is rationalized within the rose-coloured lenses of the film, where Brock Johnson is indisputably heroic, logical, invincible, the absolute policeman.
The Dark Side of Midnight echoes the customary twists and turns of police stories: it offers the familiar archetypes of corrupt bureaucrats, traitorous lawmen, honest lawmen, outsider lawmen, traumatized victims. The archetypes themselves are indistinct but the performances are not: the exaggerated expressions and affected speech of the actors is funny, but it also serves the ends of fleshing out the setting, realizing Fort Smith as an authentic anytown USA peopled with memorable, genial characters. While some characters are presented as villains, even they function as reminders of the civility of the protagonists, and their antagonism is nearer to that of a cartoon coyote. Brock Johnson is the epitome of valour, to such a degree that the function of a protagonist might be questioned: is this character, who is constantly reminded of his power over others, simply a mirror of the killer, whose malice and perversion is a perfect opposite to Johnson’s benevolence and respectability?
Its editing is spare and utilitarian, the harsh shadows of its thrifty lighting no more unusual than those of many low-budget movies; its dialogue is wooden and unnatural; an accidental comedy arises out of its intended comedy, as the stiff and stuttering dialogue delivers smug jokes with plain overstatements or flatness of delivery; its storytelling relies on the well-worn but entertaining tropes of the thriller. The Dark Side of Midnight distinguishes itself in how it handles these tropes. In spite of its dated appearance, it was made at the height of the slasher movie craze, and it embraces the time-values of that genre, namely, to have prolonged scenes in which the killer stalks their victims, where every closet door or dark corner has menacing potential. It subverts these expectations, as all slashers do. But it also suspends its victims in anticipation to a greater extreme than the average slasher, lending the film a greater unpredictability. Sometimes it offers the Creeper up as a relief from tension, other times, his appearance ratchets up the tension; but because of his strange costuming and his stoicism, these sudden appearances can also serve as a sight gag.
What most differentiates The Dark Side of Midnight from other films of its kind is its commitment to the ego of its maker, this curious proposal that Brock Johnson’s expertise is, like his purported youth, a fact beyond reproach. Indeed, within days of arriving in town, he solves the crimes and vanquishes the killer, but his character remains most defined by admiring remarks of others, the absolute policeman, a perfect alien.
Jaws, in its portrayal of a small town facing a threat to both its citizens and its economic future, gave us a flawed protagonist who succeeds by conquering his individual fears and by belonging to a team of equally flawed, haunted experts, The Dark Side of Midnight offers only a fantasy of sharks, one a brutal psychopath, the other a hero of heroes.
