But then she meets the glamorous Shug Avery, singer and magic-maker – a woman who has taken charge of her own destiny.

Other prisoners try to escape (which gives the book and movie their name), while Hayes remains, going slowly insane until his girlfriend visits him and urges him to escape as well. Ans: Mortimer followed the shadowy figure to an upper room of the cottage where a bright fire was burning. A made-for-TV documentary of the film, I'm Healthy, I'm Alive, and I'm Free(alternative title: The Making of Midnight Express), was released in 1977, and is seven minutes long. A shadowy American – whom Billy nicknames "Tex" for his thick Texan accent – arrives and accompanies Billy to a police station and translates for him. A few days later, Billy awakens in Sağmalcılar Prison, surrounded by fellow Western prisoners Jimmy (an American who stole two candlesticks from a mosque), Max (an English heroin addict), and Erich (a Swedish drug smuggler).Though originally sentenced to a relatively mild four years, just two months before his release date, a superior court overturned the decision and sentenced him to 30 years.

Pauline Kael, in reviewing the film for The New Yorker, commented, "This story could have happened in almost any country, but if Billy Hayes had planned to be arrested to get the maximum commercial benefit from it, where else could he get the advantages of a Turkish jail? He beats up and bites out Rifki's tongue and is sent to the prison's ward for the insane, where he wanders in a daze among the other disturbed and catatonic prisoners. Billy, Jimmy, and Max try to escape through the catacombs below the prison, but their plans are revealed to the prison authorities by fellow-prisoner Rifki.S.S:> With a shock he realized it was the same book from his childhood, the book which contained the story of ‘Midnight Express’. On a dark night, in a wailing storm he began a desperate and daring escape to freedom… This is the astounding journey, told in Billy Hayes's own words, of those five years of living hell and of the harrowing ordeal of his time on the run. On October 6, 1970, American college student Billy Hayes is caught attempting to smuggle drugs out of Turkey. According to the film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 90% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 29 reviews with an average rating of 7. The attempted rape scene itself was fictionalized; Billy never claims in the book to have suffered any sexual violence at the hands of his Turkish wardens but engages in consensual sex while he is in prison.

This is the astounding journey, told in Billy Hayes' own words, of those five years of living hell and of the harrowing ordeal of his time on the run. Billy's father gives him a care package of snacks, cigarettes, writing paper, toiletries, and loses his temper that he's unable to get him out of prison. Believing that he is to be released soon, Billy rebuffs Jimmy, who goes on to attempt an escape himself. Billy says that he bought the hashish from a taxicab driver and offers to help the police track him down in exchange for his release.

Billy goes with the police to a nearby market and points out the cab driver, but when they go to arrest the cabbie, it becomes apparent that the police have no intention of keeping their end of the deal with Billy. It also includes footage from the creation of the film, and Billy Hayes' emotional first visit to the prison set. Ending credits of the movie state: "Made entirely on location in Malta and recorded at EMI Studios, Borehamwood by Columbia Pictures Corporation Limited 19/23 Wells Street, London, W1 England. He passes by an almost dead Max to hold on and stay alive that he's leaving and will come back for him. Hayes has a great deal of time to ponder that irony, during an imprisonment that supplies the bulk of the movie.

The movie's art direction is especially good at recreating that world, as in a scene where Hayes and his friends try to escape down an old cistern. In the book, Hamidou, the chief guard, is killed in 1973 by a recently-paroled prisoner, who spots him drinking tea at a café outside the prison and shoots him eight times. In the original version, it was stated after having shown the movie to the Cannes film festival, there was a demand for exchange of prisoners in Turkey to be brought to America. In one scene, during Billy Hayes and Susan Kahre's visit, in which they were separated by a glass window, Susan Kahre undresses her top and presses her breasts against the window (an iconic scene in the movie). Influenced by '70s synthesizer sensibilities, if not a bit of disco, Giorgio Moroder's score doesn't always fit, when it is actually used, that is, but it is unique, entertaining and plenty effective in its alternating between liveliness and a certain bleak intensity, not entirely unlike Michael Seresin's cinematography, whose spare lighting compliments a sense of freedom by illuminating scenes set on the outside lushly, and, through contrast, emphasizes the heavy shadows in the prison and immerses you into this drama's world and atmosphere.

It opened in New York on 6 October 1978 before opening nationwide in the United States on 27 October. Hamidou, flailing and trying to regain his footing, slams into the wall, driving a clothes peg into the back of his head, dying instantly. Hayes and others criticized the film for portraying the Turkish prison men as violent and villainous and for deviating too much from the source material.