Alan Parker's searing prison drama Midnight Express was screened as part of the recent Boulder International Film Festival. The film's screenwriter Oliver Stone received the Master of Cinema Award.

Stone says he's proud of Midnight Express, which was released in 1978 and starred Brad Davis as hash smuggler Billy Hayes: "I think it's got a lot of tension and surprise and it pops out at you like the headline. It took the world by storm in 1979. I can tell you it was a very low-budget film - it was the last one made on the roster of Columbia, very minor production value, and they actually made quite a bit of success around the world.

"Everywhere I went at that time people were saying to me, they still do: 'I remember that film - I'm never going to let my daughter or son go to Turkey, these places.' It hit the solar plexus.

"I think it was exaggerated - certainly I see it as an angry young man in me - but at the same time, I did feel very strongly about drug crimes and the justice of them. The victimless crime from drugs is true about the United States as much as Turkey and I said so at the time and I got killed for it... I got into a lot of trouble when I said drugs should be legalized, and I kind of said the same thing in Scarface, which I wrote four years later."

The following review is excerpted from Steve Bloom & Shirley Halperin's Reefer Movie Madness: The Ultimate Stoner Film Guide:

The harrowing saga of Billy Hayes and the book and movie about his experience spending five years in a Turkish prison for smuggling two kilos of hash is significant on a number of levels: It was the first movie to deal with drug smuggling - many have followed, such as Brokedown Palace and Return to Paradise - and it introduced Oliver Stone, who wrote the screenplay based on Hayes' book.

Hayes (Brad Davis) gets busted at Istanbul's Atatürk Airport in 1970 and the nightmare begins. Virtually the entire film is set in a large, run-down prison housing hundreds of men. Hayes is beaten and quickly befriended by by fellow American Jimmy (Randy Quaid), Englishman Max (John Hurt) and Swede Erich (Norbert Weisser). At first Hayes is given a four-year sentence, but that's overruled and another 25 years are tacked on. After Erich is released, the three amigos plan an escape. They're caught and punished, but by 1975 Hayes ultimately figures another way out.

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