So Mojo is one of those poor misinformed people who has never had the opportunity to see certain movie classics. Like Taxi Driver. Sure, I've seen enough clips and parodies you'd SWEAR I've seen it all the way through, but I haven't. (Ditto The Godfather until I was somewhere in my thirties.)

No, this isn't about seeing Taxi Driver, although that's on my to-do list. This is about another movie I've heard so much about most of my life, and I finally got the chance to see it. Midnight Express, the Turkish prison "horror" movie that pretty much everyone my age saw when it first came out and were traumatized for life by it, and then didn't have to have things Explained To Them when scenes were parodied in other movies or TV shows.

Anyway, after twenty years or so of people TALKING INCESSANTLY about it, I finally saw it this weekend. And while I understand social mores have changed and while I agree breaking the feet of prisoners by whacking the soles of their feet with a two by four is probably not the most humane of prisoner treatments out there, unless I missed something glaringly obvious all I can say is a) pretty much the guy brought everything on himself through his own innate stupidity and b) if what the movie portrayed is indeed the horror of a Turkish prison--which seems to comprise mostly of the prisoners sitting around in a large facility petting cats and taking drugs and wandering the compound freely at all hours--I gotta say it's really not as horrifically bad as I've been led to believe all this time. Unless, of course, you break the rules by trying to escape or by attacking a fellow inmate (even if the guy TOTALLY deserves it; I mean there are smarter ways to attack someone than by going nuts and trashing the place) or whatever. This guy was so dumb I kept waiting for him to say something along the lines of "Leave me alone! I'm an AMERICAN! I have RIGHTS!" but luckily the filmmakers did not stoop THAT low.

I kept waiting for the Really Bad Stuff to happen, like I've heard just about all of my adult life, until all of a sudden it was the end of the movie. And all I could say was, ummmm, everything REALLY BAD that happened to the guy was a direct cause-and-effect result of his own stupidity. First, the whole smuggling bricks and bricks of hash by taping them to your body and trying to get through the airport in the first place. Not Very Smart. But it's the Seventies, so, okay, everyone's stoned and stupid in a Cheech and Chong sort of way. I'll chalk that one up to living on hash in Istanbul for the past six months or so and hence not bringing our Intellectual "A" Game to the airport. So now the guy's in custody. He's yelled at, he's scared, lots of butt shots of him naked (no complaints from Mojo there) and finally he's told if he turns in the dealer who sold him the stuff he'll be on the next plane home.

So our young bozo fingers the dealer, and then, inexplicably, in the furor of the cops collaring the perp the stupid kid decides to make a break and run for it. Why? I'm not sure. They had yet to give any real evidence that the Turkish officials were corrupt and were gonna screw him over. But the kid decides to run for it, and he gets re-caught, and now he's in MORE trouble, duh. So they put him in another jail, where it's cold and they ignore him when he asks for a blanket. Plus his mattress is dirty. OH THE HORROR. So what happens then? Another prisoner, who clearly does NOT have Our Hero's best interests at heart, tells him how he can get a blanket! So after being officially denied a blanket he now has one. Surprise! Shock! He's in trouble again!

Okay, granted this is the worst punishment that happens to him, and it's pretty awful--the aforementioned whacking one's feet with a club. Ouchie. And then he's befriended and taken care of by his fellow inmates, including John Hurt--I'm terrible with faces, but I know that voice anywhere--and they spend pretty much the rest of the movie sitting around washing each other, walking around the compound and complaining about how dreadfully miserable it is. Hey, you want misery, make those guys clean up this morning's cat vomit or something. Now THAT would be one nasty punishment!

So I spent the entire movie waiting for the BAD STUFF to happen. So, okay, maybe the insane asylum wasn't the nicest place in the world, but at least they showed the insane people, while noisy, were basically harmless. And ya gotta admit, he was put in the loony bin because he decided to Act Out When Life Didn't Go His Way. Which, especially when you choose to do that in prison, you pretty much have to deal with the consequences of your actions.

And as many have complained--including the original Billy Hayes, who has since made up with Turkey and apologized for the movie, of which he had no say in how they changed his book--there's not a single decent Turkish person in the entire movie. I don't think any movie has so thoroughly and horrifically libeled an entire geographical area and its populace since Birth of a Nation.

So final moral to take from Midnight Express: don't break the law in foreign countries. And if you do, ummm, don't KEEP breaking the law, or things will not improve anytime soon. Which I gotta say I sort of expected all along. But hey, if it helps someone else in making those Life Choices, you're welcome.

Mojo