Midnight Express

1978
R
2h 1m

IMDb RATING

7.5/10

90K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

Play trailer1:18

Dark Comedy Prison Drama Biography Crime Drama Thriller

Billy Hayes, an American college student, is caught smuggling drugs out of Turkey and thrown into prison.Billy Hayes, an American college student, is caught smuggling drugs out of Turkey and thrown into prison.Billy Hayes, an American college student, is caught smuggling drugs out of Turkey and thrown into prison.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.5/10

90K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

4,287

427

See production info at IMDbPro

Won 2 Oscars
- 17 wins & 14 nominations total

Videos1

Trailer 1:18

Midnight Express

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Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
Banned (and never released theatrically) in Turkey until 1992 when the private television channel HBB broadcast it.

Goofs
The Turkish spoken by the Turkish characters in the film is uniformly broken. The actors are obviously not Turkish; sometimes the language is so broken it is difficult for native speakers to understand what they are saying.

Quotes
Max: The best thing to do is to get your ass out of here. Best way that you can.
Billy Hayes: Yeah, but how?
Max: Catch the midnight express.
Billy Hayes: But what's that?
Max: [laughs] Well it's not a train. It's a prison word for... escape. But it doesn't stop around here.

Crazy credits
The only opening titles are: Columbia Pictures presents a Casablanca FilmWorks production an Alan Parker film Midnight Express After this, the opening prologue text reads "The following is based on a true story. It began October 6, 1970 in Istanbul, Turkey."

Alternate versions
Some of the VHS and Betamax copies included text before the end credits run that did not appear on the DVD and Blu-ray copies "On May 18,1978 the motion picture you have just seen was shown to an audience of world press at the Cannes Film Festival.... 43 days later the United States and Turkey entered into formal negotiations for the exchange of prisoners." This dialogue existed on HBO's showing of the movie back in 1985.

Connections
Edited into The Running Man (1987)

Soundtracks
Istanbul Blues
Vocals by David Castle
Written By Oliver Stone, Billy Hayes (as William Hayes)
Arranged and Lyrics by David Castle
Acoustic / Electric Guitars by Patrick McClure
Drums, Percussion by Jerry Summers
Strings by Fritz Sonnleitner and Sid Sharp
Bass by Rick Tierney
Piano, Electric Piano, Clavinet by David Castle
Published by Rick's Music Inc./Gold Horizon Music Corp. (BMI)
(p) 1978 Casablanca Record and FilmWorks, Inc.
© 1978 Columbia Pictures

User reviews321

Review

Featured review

truth or fiction? who cares?

First of all im turkish and i have seen this movie for several times. I LIKE it and i simply know what other people think about this movie. If they are turkish, they simply hate the movie and tell that its giving the turkish nation a bad name. If they are not turkish then they start to think about bad things about turks. And thats normal. BUT!!!! The main problem of the movies is not that its not showing true things. The main problem of the movie is that it tells the things that happaned to the main characters happened cause he is AMERICAN. I think thats the wrong thing about this movie. If bad things happen to americans in turkish jails then bad things happen to turkish people in jails too. I dont think that they would harras someone MORE just cause he is AMERICAN. Im turkish and i know that turkish people dont hate americans, like most of the other muslim countries. Also, this movie is 20 years old. I think many things changed in Turkey in this past 20 years. Come to Turkey, then you can Judge as much as you can. truth or fiction. I! LIKE! THIS! MOVIE!