If you wonder why Midnight Express isn’t gayer than it is, why it isn’t as gay as the true story it’s based on, that’s explained in the extra material on the 30th-anniversary edition DVD and in the accompanying 28-page booklet by director Alan Parker.
In a homoerotic montage, exactly halfway through the movie, Billy Hayes (Brad Davis), doing time in a Turkish prison for trying to smuggle two kilos of hashish out of the country, bathes and works out balletically with Erich (Norbert Weisser), a fellow prisoner. They kiss passionately in the shower, but when Erich wants to go further Billy shakes his head, gives him a farewell peck and walks away.
In real life, as Hayes recounted in the book about his experience and told me in an interview at the time of the film’s release, he didn’t shake his head. They became lovers in prison.
The villain was not Oliver Stone, who won the Oscar and Golden Globe for this, his first major produced screenplay; nor were the actors, producers or director reticent (Parker includes considerable gratuitous male nudity, mostly butt shots). It was Columbia studio head Daniel Melnick who originally wanted the whole shower scene taken out but compromised when he saw it. Ironically, he produced Making Love four years later, so homophobia can be cured.
A powerful, well-acted drama with a shower scene that will make you need a cold shower, Midnight Express has stood the test of time.
Read the entire review at WindyCityTimes.com.