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?