'The Dark Knight' Debate: What Was The First Ever Midnight Movie?

Quick, when I say midnight movie, what's the first film that comes to mind? As with a lot of things in life, the answer probably depends a lot on how old you are.

For me, the first movie that comes to mind when I think of a midnight movie is "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace," because that's the first film I ever saw at, well, midnight, in a National Amusements Cinema in Hazlet, NJ. I was 18 and a senior in high school.

But for a lot of other people the term midnight movie probably conjures up images of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" or "Eraserheads," cult classics that used to run at independent theaters the second the witching hour began.

Tonight, hundreds of thousands of people will line up with the former camp, dragging themselves out to screenings of "The Dark Knight" at midnight. But when did the change occur -- when did the camp classics make way for the blockbusters? What was the first big movie to premiere at midnight?

"Oh, that's a hard one," a representative from Mann's Chinese Theater in LA told me. "I have no idea. I wouldn't even know who WOULD have an idea."

That would be Stuart Samuels, the writer, director, and producer behind "Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream," a documentary that explores the ways in which our movie going experience changed dramatically during the 1970s. And I was right. Well, sort of.

"'Star Wars' broke the mold," Samuels told me. "What happened was, the nature of midnight movies shifted in two ways. Midnight movies were cult films. That it could play at midnight meant that, by its very nature, it was non-commercial. 'Star Wars' became a part of your life the way 'Rocky Horror Picture Show' did. They could play it 24 hours a day."

But if "Star Wars" was the fulcrum, the movie that existed in the camp world and the blockbuster world simultaneously, that was only discovered in retrospect, which still doesn't REALLY answer my question. What was the first true blockbuster, the first movie everyone knew would be a hit, to premiere at midnight.

Thanks to "Star Wars," the answer is pretty obvious.

"Empire Strikes Back," Samuels said. "That was probably the first film most like 'Batman,' to have a midnight screening."

So three questions: One, are you going to see "The Dark Knight" tonight at midnight? (Have fun, it's awesome!) Two, what's your best midnight movie going experience? When I went to see "Menace" two guys dressed as Darth Maul fought each other in the aisles (seriously). And, finally, anybody want to suggest a film prior to "Empire" that fits? Sound off on all your thoughts below!