I saw The Other Side of Midnight just shy of 50 years ago, in the summer of 1977 at the Westport Fine Arts III. Based on Sidney Sheldon‘s same-titled novel, it’s a glossy, somewhat grotesque soap opera about an ambitious hottie (Marie France Pisier) climbing her way to wealth and privelege through a series of relationships with powerful men. One of them is an Aristotle Onassis-like tycoon, played by Raf Vallone.
The standout scene involves Pisier, Vallone and a silver-chrome bucket of ice. A naked Pisier, riding Vallone like an equestrian, grabs a handful of ice cubes and, at the moment of orgasm, mashes the ice into Vallone’s privates. The camera doesn’t show this — we are shown only an insert shot of Pisier’s hand scooping up the ice, and then we hear Vallone moan like a large animal who’s just been speared.
Sheldon’s book was adapted for the screen by Herman Raucher and poor Daniel Taradash (From Here To Eternity, Picnic, Castle Keep), who almost certainly took the gig for the money and money alone, holding his nose all the way.
Worried about the commercial potential of Star Wars (5.25.77), 20th Century Fox made a preemptive decision to furnish prints of The Other Side of Midnight only to those theaters and/or theatre chains who agreed to book Star Wars also — a package deal.
Midnight, which opened on 6.8.77 or two weeks after George Lucas‘s pop space epic, wasn’t a flop but only made $24 million. We all know what happened with the Obi Wan Kenobi thing.
