In March 1998, my wife and I attended the final night of her hometown drive-in in Union City, now replaced by just another generic multiplex. For this grand finale, showed several vintage features that had once been classic drive-in staples, like AIP’s low budget sci-fi gem Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957) and Howard Hawks’ iconic Western Rio Bravo (1959). We (or rather, I) chose a personal favorite, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957). It was a rainy night, and a bittersweet experience. Monica had many cherished memories of growing up in that drive-in, watching movies like Grease (1978) and Disney’s The Rescuers (1977) wearing pajamas and when bored, checking out what was playing on the other screens in the adjacent lots from her cozy makeshift blanket bed in the back of her parents’ car. The Bay Area still boasts the Solano Drive-In in Concord, which is pleasingly and stubbornly old school, clinging to its retro roots despite the strong winds of change over the past few decades that have blown away many of America’s sacred drive-ins, demolished and desecrated to make way for flea markets and malls.
The death knell for drive-ins actually sounded during its heyday and final hurrah in the 1970s, when dozens if not hundreds of raw, revolutionary flicks flying under the ratings radar and spitting in the eye of polite society, like The Last House on the Left (1972), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and The Hills Have Eyes (1977), lit up the night skies from coast to coast with unbridled carnage and forbidden carnal delights. These movies were made just for the drive-ins in rural suburban areas, or grindhouses in the urban markets, and not subject to typical critical scrutiny. Once Steven Spielberg (Jaws, 1975) and George Lucas (Star Wars, 1977) appropriated the basic ingredients of cheap thrill exploitation for mass consumption by the burgeoning mainstream mall culture (ironically lampooned in George Romero’s drive-in/grindhouse masterpiece Dawn of the Dead, 1978), the long reign of the drive-in, and more significantly, movies made just for them, began to rapidly wane, soon replaced by the soulless but cost effective multiplex phenomenon, their small screens beaming with big budget, star-studded “event movies” cashing in on the proven profit-making formula of their lowbrow, low-budget ugly cousins. By the end of the 1980s, most of these pulpy fringe productions were being distributed directly to the video market. The drive-in as a popular destination was all but dead by the end of the 1990s.
Naturally, when any once popular pastime or unique institution is tottering on the brink of extinction, from tiki bars to bowling alleys, a nostalgia boom explodes in its wake, and the remnants of the discarded cultural corpse are picked over for cherished souvenirs, followed by feverish, targeted attempts to re-animate its essence, creating a subculture of impassioned enthusiasts where there once was widespread acceptance and reverence.
Two recent DVD releases prove the special attraction of the drive-in and drive-in movies haven’t entirely expired, but, to quote This Is Spinal Tap, “their appeal has become more selective.”
Chillerama is a thrilling if threadbare throwback to that the horror anthology films of yore, paying ironic, satirical but loving tribute to drive-ins and their movies with four films-within-the-film - Wadzilla, I Was a Teenage Werebear, The Diary of Anne Frankenstein, and Defecation- plus a wraparound segment involving an undead orgy/drive-in massacre that shamelessly rips off Joe R. Lansdale’s cult novel The Drive-In while intentionally quoting and riffing off a wide variety of cult movies from throughout the decadent decades. It’s all in good, dirty fun, with the hit-or-miss humor tilted toward the Troma school of glaringly bad special effects and crass displays of crude sex-and-violence (the main setting is even called the Kaufman Drive-In, in honor of Lloyd), but that’s all part its cheapjack charm. This is essential late-night viewing for anyone who experienced the Golden Age of the Drive-In, but especially for those who missed it altogether.
Machete Maidens Unleashed! is an Australian-made documentary about the unduly obscure but much beloved (by me, anyway) explosion of Filipino exploitation films from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, when established American T&A tycoons like Roger Corman and homegrown cinematic heroes like Eddie Romero turned out dozens of incredibly lurid, wildly graphic monster and action flicks bursting with “the three B’s” (“blood, breasts and beasts”) sporting titillating titles like Brides of Blood, The Mad Doctor of Blood Island, Beast of the Yellow Night, The Twilight People, Night of the Cobra Woman, The Big Doll House, The Hot Box, Black Mama White Mama, Savage!, Ebony, Ivory and Jade, and the notorious midget-secret agent classic For Y’ur Height Only starring diminutive dynamo Weng Weng, one of the biggest (as it were) movie stars of the post-Marcos era. Domestic drive-in icons like John Ashley, Sid Haig and Pam Grier also scored career-defining (or reviving) success in these sultry sleazefests, filmed on the fly in no-frills real-life sets amid tropical hellholes and exotic locales where both life and production costs were astonishingly cheap. Filled with archival clips and interesting interviews, including famous directors John Landis (who is typically condescending to the subject) and Joe Dante (who edited many of the original trailers), Maidens is a frantic, fascinating and fun look at a unique underground phenomenon buried by the sands of time, like the drive-in itself, the venue where these funky freakshows once thrived, now enjoying an unlikely resurrection in the very format that helped kill off their original showcase.
Will “the Thrill” Viharo is a pulp fiction author and B Movie impresario.
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