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Video didn't just kill the radio star, it also marked the end of a golden era for alternative cinema. That's the premise of Stuart Samuel's Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream, a new documentary profiling six films that embodied the counter-culture ethos of the 70s. Breaking every taboo imaginable and teeming with gore, sex and violence, films like Pink Flamingos, Night Of The Living Dead and The Rocky Horror Picture Show played to packed late night screening houses for anyone looking for cheap cinematic thrills. Victims of their own success, midnight movies lost their lustre as Hollywood coopted their themes and home video whittled away at their audiences. Director Samuels offers a straightforward look at the rise and fall of the genre in this sporadically entertaining but ultimately unsatisfying profile.

Ironically, stylistically and content-wise, there's nothing controversial on offer here- and that's the problem. The film is so unabashed in its admiration for the success of Rocky Horror and its brethren, that the documentary itself flirts with becoming a slavish enterprise in mindless devotion. Interviews with proud filmmakers (such as John Waters and David Lynch) are cut with generous helpings of clips from their films - which makes for entertaining viewing for the already converted, but the lack of any kind of critical or dissenting viewpoints make this a very tame and reverent look at some very irreverent movies.

"LACKS ANY CRITICAL VIEWPOINTS"

Are midnight movies to be praised or condemned for bringing violent, crude and outrageous films to the masses? Has lowbrow cinema become the new mainstream? These are questions that are never pondered. A documentary about challenging and outrageous films should offer something more provocative than counter-culture filmmakers congratulating themselves on a job well done.

Midnight Movies: From The Margins To The Mainstream is released in UK cinemas on Friday 23rd March 2007.