Midnight Madness (1980) is an American comedy film directed and written by Michael Nankin and David Wechter. The film follows Leon, a graduate student who organises an elaborate all-night treasure hunt across Los Angeles, inviting five teams of college students to compete against each other by solving clues that lead from one location to the next. The teams are divided by colour and personality, including a group of good-natured students, jocks, nerds, sorority girls and troublemakers, turning the city into a comic playing board. David Naughton, Debra Clinger, Eddie Deezen, Stephen Furst, Maggie Roswell and Brad Wilkin are among the main cast, with Michael J. Fox appearing in an early film role. Produced by Walt Disney Productions, the film has the unusual quality of a Disney comedy built around youth culture, night-time Los Angeles, competitive chaos and a scavenger-hunt structure that keeps the story constantly moving.
Midnight Madness was filmed across the Los Angeles area, and its locations are central to the film’s concept. Since the story is built around a citywide overnight game, the production uses Los Angeles not as a background but as the route of the film itself. The hunt sends the teams through a wide range of real places, including Occidental College, Griffith Observatory, Art’s Delicatessen, Osko’s Disco, Johnny’s Fat Boy Restaurant, the Hollywood Wax Museum, the Sherman Clay Piano Museum, Hollywood Boulevard, the Bonaventure Hotel, the Pabst Brewery, Golfland, Los Angeles International Airport and the Long Beach Pike. The Pabst Brewery is especially connected to one of the clue-solving sequences, where the players follow the logic of the game through music and advertising references. The locations give the film a playful map of late-1970s Los Angeles and Southern California: colleges, observatories, restaurants, discos, museums, hotels, breweries, arcades, airports and amusement areas all become stops in the same absurd nocturnal competition. This makes Midnight Madness unusually location-driven for a campus comedy, because the city itself functions as the board on which the whole game is played.
Griffith Observatory
Griffith Observatory is in Rebel Without a Cause, Midnight Madness, The Terminator, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, La La Land, Transformers, and many more.
Hollywood Tower Apartments
Hollywood Tower Apartments, also known simply as Hollywood Tower, is a historic apartment building at 6200 Franklin Avenue in Hollywood, Los Angeles,…
Johnie’s Coffee Shop
Johnie’s Coffee Shop is in Midnight Madness, Miracle Mile, Reservoir Dogs, Volcano, City of Angels, The Big Lebowski, American History X and Gone in 60 Seconds.
Occidental College
Occidental College is in Pat and Mike, Midnight Madness, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Real Genius, Beverly Hills, 90210, Clueless and many more.
Westin Bonaventure Hotel
Westin Bonaventure Hotel has appeared in The Driver, Heaven Can Wait, Midnight Madness, Blue Thunder, Breathless, This is Spinal Tap, Rain Man and many more.