Midnight Madness

I was an usher when this movie premiered in Chicago and Northwest Indiana at select theaters at Midnight only on Friday and Saturday. Naturally I was the Friday night usher. It was the worst midnight show experience of my life. We knew we were in trouble when people started showing up in the lobby before the 10pm shows for the AC/DC movie. Once we locked up we had to escort them outside and the line was down the entire length of the lobby windows by 11pm. When we opened the doors at 1130 it was a madhouse. We had security check for liquor and that helped a lot but we still had people vomiting from drinking heavily beforehand. During midnight shows we always kept one of the doors to the auditorium open and one inebriated young man was not happy about it and kept closing it. I kept re-opening it. The guy basically told me if I did it again he was going to beat me up. Now our security man was 6'0, 300 lbs of muscle and finally he told me to open the auditorium door and see what happened while he hid on the other side of the wall. I did and the guy made a move towards me and security intercepted and he was escorted out. Then there was the problem of the estimated 100 people we had to turn away because it sold out. Many of them threatened to burn the building down or throw bottles at the lobby windows or slash car tires in the parking lot. Local police finally had to be called to get rid of them. In the end the next night was just as bad and General Cinema announced that Monday they were pulling the film from any further weekends (it had been scheduled for 4 but I imagine they could have gone much longer if the crowd was behaved) due to safety concerns. It was memorable that's for sure. Incidentally I never did get to see the film as we were to afraid to enter the auditorium unprotected.