Scaring is caring
Joe Bob Briggs World Drive-In movie festival is a reminder that horror is community
About four miles northwest of the Las Vegas Strip lies the West Winds Drive-In. In a city that never sleeps, where you’re always accompanied by flashing lights and revelers, the white screens stand austere and monolithic. Set against the barren landscape, they’re almost ominous.
I steer the rented Kia into the entrance of the West Winds, where a man asks to see my tickets. “Here for the Jamboree?” he asks. “Yes,” I say. He scans one ticket, and says, “Go ahead.” I have to remind him that I have two tickets, and he goes, “Oh yeah.”
“Go to screen four,” he says after scanning the second ticket.
I park. My wife Jessica and I step out of the car. A blank white square towers over us.
The setting sun casts long shadows. It’s been a scorcher of a day, and heat radiates off the vast, black surface.
This doesn’t bode well for all the black t-shirts, I think.
And there are plenty of them. It wouldn’t be a horror convention without a legion of dark shirts adorned with bloody images from both obscure and iconic horror flicks: Basket Case, Suspiria, Halloween, Zombi 2, etc. These shirts are not just the uniform of the horror-head, but a calling card for like-minded fans. Just like at a punk show, getting a “nice shirt” his affirmation that you’re with your people. Here, we are all mutants
Like Taylor Swift’s “Swifties,” or Lady Gaga’s “Little Monsters,” “Mutants” is the term co-opted by fans of the enduring horror host, Joe Bob Briggs.
Back in the days of public access TV, regional horror hosts would play scary movies on weekend nights when viewership would be most spooky, and some hosts gained enough traction for national recognition. Some recognizable names include John Zacherle, Svengoolie, Vampira. And of course, everyone knows Elvira.
But it’s Joe Bob Briggs who has my heart. Starting in eighth grade and continuing through high school, I would watch Briggs’ TNT show, Monstervision, with my dad. This was around the time that my parents divorced, and to have a show that connected us during that hard time was invaluable. It was a comfort.
Sadly, Monstervision ended in 2000. But five years ago, the horror streaming site Shudder brought Joe Bob Briggs out of horror host retirement for a 24-hour horror marathon called “The Last Drive-In.” The event was so successful that The Last Drive-In became a regular series, which finished its fifth season earlier this year. Every Friday night during Last Drive-In season, I order a pizza, pour myself a beer (or four) and buckle in for four hours of horror, schlock and exploitation. There’s no better way to spend an evening.
What I love about Briggs is unwavering devotion to the independent spirit. He champions filmmakers and art that’s made outside the Hollywood system. He loves the same trash that I do. He’s an unabashed lover of blood, guts, and nudity. He inspires interest in the most ridiculous films.
And when I heard that this year’s Joe Bob Briggs’ third annual World Drive-In Jamboree—a weekend of live music, horror and all-night movie marathons—was going to be held in Las Vegas, there was no question as to whether I was going. I was pulling out my credit card before my eyes had completely scrolling over the words.
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Why horror?
I’ve thought about this question for most of my adult life. Most horror fans have. It’s often asked with a hint of concern, a raised eyebrow, thinly veiled disgust. The real questions people want to ask are: Why are you weird? Why are you sad? Why can’t you just be happy? If you are attracted to this kind of stuff—like, really attracted to it—then you are unwell.
I’ve interacted with normies enough to know that they consider my fascination with horror a deviancy, or at least a symptom of arrested development. Only recently did I have a friend say that horror was the most “basic” genre (which would’ve offended me more if I didn’t know he was a huge fan of Ted Lasso).
When people ask why horror, my knee-jerk reaction is to respond: why NOT horror? Doesn’t a willingness to look into the abyss invoke a deeper intelligence? Isn’t the act of looking toward where others look away a symptom of curiosity? I’ve written about the therapeutic qualities of horror and how they’ve allowed me to understand my own anxiety. Horror fans even showed a greater resilience against despair during the pandemic. Horror is objectively good for you.
But recently, I’ve become less militant about it. So many aspects of horror can be triggering for people with past trauma. It’s understandable that those people wouldn’t want to sit through a didactic lecture on why horror is smart, actually.
These days, I try to check my enthusiasm around normies. I’m also trying to turn down the pretension. But there’s one benefit to horror that I still hold dear, and that’s the community. There’s really no such thing as a casual horror fan—those who like the genre like it a lot. And the tacit bond that forms between people with similar-but-maligned interest forms fast and strong. If you were a punk, goth, or other outlier in high school, you know what I’m talking about.
Everybody needs a community. Or in the words of the living doll, Chucky: “Friends til the end.”
****
I’ve been to a few horror conventions, and every time there’s a hint of sadness that permeates throughout. It’s the realization of: “oh, these are my people?” It’s nerdery, ten-fold. And then you realize that, yes, these are your people, and you are indeed one of them.
I’m used to it, but Jessica isn’t. We stand in a tent adjacent to the concession building at West Winds, looking at the lurid vendors hocking lurid items: straight-to-DVD films, monster paraphernalia, ghoul shit.
Next to us, exploitation maestro Charles Band—auteur behind the Puppet Master, Gingerdead Man and the Evil Bong series—directs two scantily-clad women and Sleepaway Camp star Felissa Rose in a movie you’ll probably soon be able to find on the seventh page of Tubi’s horror section. Zombi 2 star Ian McCulloch sits alone at a table in the back of the merch tent, where nobody’s asking for autographs. He has the tired look of someone who’s been to too many conventions. Even though Zombi 2 is my favorite non-Romero zombie film (the zombie vs. shark scene is a thing of beauty), I can’t bring myself to engage.
Across the parking lot, a band led by Last Drive-in composer and cast member John Patrick Brennan pumps out original tunes that they’ve written for the show over the past few years. A handful of the people in attendance have been here all day, sweating and burning under the hot sun, and they have the rabid desperation that comes from ingesting soda and popcorn all day.
“Is this it?” Jessica asks, trying to hide her disappointment. “I thought there’d be...more.” But I’m only half-listening because I’m entering a sweepstakes to win, like, 13 Subspecies DVDs. Do I want them? Hell no, but when in horror Rome.
I think Jessica expected more merriment from The World Drive-In Jamboree—more of a festival, less a sequence of Lynchian curiosities. They don’t even sell beer in the concession stand, and I can see the reality dawn on her: she’s about to do an all-night horror movie marathon, in the middle of the desert, surrounded by horror nerds. And we’re going to be sober for all of this?
“You want to get bee—” She begins
“Yes.” I say.
Out this far, the only businesses that we can see are a Taco Bell, a Wal-Mart and a gas station. We book it to the gas station, get a twelve-pack of Modelo, and return. Again, the guy checking tickets doesn’t really check ours.
By now, the sun has gone down, and a crowd of people have converged around the main screen. Some sit in lawn chairs, some lean against concrete barriers, and others stay in their cars. Mutants ask for selfies with other mutants whom they know from Twitter (livetweeting a Joe Bob episode with the #MutantFam is one of the few good things left about Twitter [not going to call it X]). The setting feels exactly like how drive-ins were portrayed in movies like The Outsiders: not a place to merely watch movies, but a social gathering. A communal space.
A solitary guitarist takes the stage and plucks the first notes of The Last Drive-In’s theme song, a goofy-yet-earnest song that never fails to worm itself into my brain. But tonight, the guitarist plays a stripped-down version and, under the bright Nevada stars, it’s just about as beautiful as an old country ballad.
Have you ever been in the presence of royalty? When Joe Bob Briggs and his co-host/executive producer Darcy The Mail Girl take the stage, it’s not so much a celebrity sighting, but more of an entrance by benevolent dictators. We all rise to our feet, collectively eager to do, say, participate in whatever Joe Bob and Darcy want from us.
Tonight’s special guest Roger Corman, the legendary—and legendarily cheap—film producer who’s produced over 300 films and gave pretty much every famous director their first job. Without Corman, we’d have no Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, or Ron Howard. Even if you don’t know the name, you’ve seen one of his movies.
I suck on a 5-mg edible, crack open a Modelo. Jessica and I asphalt at the end of a makeshift row of lawn chairs. The ground is still warm.
The first movie they play is a Corman-directed horror-comedy from 1959 called A Bucket of Blood, featuring a young Dick Miller (who most people know as the curmudgeonly old man in Gremlins) as a busboy who keeps accidentally killing animals and making them into art. (Oh btw, young Dick Miller could get it). As the busboy’s fame increases amongst art aficionados, so does his willingness to kill bigger things. As a parody of the Beat Generation, A Bucket of Blood captures the pretentious ridiculousness of art scenes better than any actual Beat movie.
The old black and white movie plays across seven screens set against the night sky. I can’t help but think that I’m having the same experience that people were having 65-years ago. But it could be the weed talking.
When the film ends, Joe Bob and Darcy bring out Roger Corman, who is 97-fucking-years-old. I feel like a strong sneeze could blow him off the stage. There’s part of me that thinks, please don’t die on stage, Mr. Corman. But the man is still sharp and charming, and Joe Bob’s vast experience as a journalist shines through their discussion. It’s fun to see Joe Bob’s excitement talking with his hero, and I get lost in thinking about how many levels of fandom are going in this space right now.
They bring out another surprise guest, Bruce Dern, who’s been in a number of Corman productions. At a spry 87 years old, the acclaimed actor cracks jokes about Corman’s age with the same squeaky-voiced rancor that he showcases in movies like Hateful Eight, Nebraska and the TV show Big Love. It’s a delight watching the two friends rib each other and tell stories about their shared past. Dern even shares a story about advising his daughter—Laura Dern—as to whether she should sign onto “that little dinosaur movie.”
Dern and Corman leave the stage and Joe Bob introduces the second movie: Deathstalker, a 1983 Corman production that features a lot of swords and boobs. If I was 13, it would be my favorite film. We move from the asphalt back to the car, and I feel myself dozing. I take a little nap in the front seat. I wake up an hour later, and nothing in the film has changed. The clock on the dashboard reads midnight, and the screens are still filled with greased up men and topless women. I think they plan to show two more films after this, but I don’t have the stamina. I turn on the engine and drive us back to our hotel, where Jessica goes to sleep and I find my longtime friend Ryen—who’s in Vegas for other reasons—and we gamble and drink until the morning.
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I was not a popular kid in high school. At least for the first two years of it. Ryen was basically my only friend. Every weekend, we would hole ourselves up in his parent’s basement, playing N64, listening to punk cds, and watching scary movies.
The stuff we used to watch down there.
Certain scenes were branded onto my brain—scenes which, to this day, I have not been able to shake. Severed-head cunnilingus in Re-Animator. The sound of the stretched vocal chords of a man getting his head pulled off by a zombie in Day of the Dead. The priest in Dead Alive saying, “I kick ass for the Lord!”
Later in high school, we started going to parties. But no matter how much underage imbibing we did, nothing really fucked us up as those movies.
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Sunday night. Last night of the Jamboree. The itinerary is a Sleepaway Camp marathon. Four movies, eight hours. From dusk til dawn. It’s hard to think of a more destructive bender.
Beforehand, Jessica and I go to to the Wal-Mart for camping chairs. The the aisle is ravaged. Seems that the other mutants beat us to it. We find a child-size one for Jessica and a $30 camping chair for me. It’s more than I want to spend, but I remind myself that I dropped $100 on black jack the night before, and have nothing to show for it. At least now I have a chair.
Plus, I need something with cup holders to hold Hard Mountain Dew, which is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard of, and, therefore, must try it.
I thought Sunday would be a calm night at the West Winds, but there are more people eager to spend a school night at a drive-in than I imagined. There’s also a car rigged up to be a moving bar, selling craft beer from taps sticking out of the chassis.
“What do you think the guy-to-girl ratio is tonight?” Jessica asks. I’m about to say five-to-one, because horror scenes are usually sausage fests, but after a quick scan of the crowd, I'm surprised to see that it’s nearly one-to-one. I never thought a Sleepaway Camp marathon would possess a hint of romance, but here we are. A number of couples wear matching Camp Arawak shirts, a nod to the titular camp.
Sleepaway Camp is expert-level horror. Not that it’s particularly scary or gory, but it’s an extremely difficult text to engage with. To call it problematic would be an understatement, and to reveal what makes it problematic would be to spoil the entire movie. It’s easy to interpret Sleepaway Camp as homophobic and/or transphobic, and excessively so. People who do not watch horror would think it’s disgusting.
I’m not going to defend the Sleepaway Camp, but I do find it one of the most enjoyable slashers of the ‘80s. The film has strangely adept craftsmanship, yet incredibly inept story. It’s basically Wet Hot American Summer if there was a POV killer.
Before the movies start, AWE wrestler Chris Jericho leads his metal band, Fozzy, through a loud set of generic metal. Jericho, a huge horror fan, has been a guest on Joe Bob’s show at least once, and if you’ve ever needed a demented film like Bloodsucking Freaks to be even ickier, try watching one the world’s most famous wrestlers fanboy hard over it.
I crack open my Hard Mountain Dew. Yep. Disgusting.
After the band ends, Joe Bob and Darcy come out. Their demeanor is loose, and I can’t tell if they’re just exhausted after three all-nighters, or if they’re drunk. Probably both. But it fuels one of Joe Bob’s most touching rants, in which he addresses the problematic nature of Sleepaway Camp. “Whatever group is being bullied, mistreated, or harassed—I’m on their side,” Joe Bob says. “Everyone is welcome in the mutant family.” The crowd erupts, giving a standing ovation. It’s exactly the thing we need to hear at the moment, and there’s a noticeable ease that settles over the audience. I think so many of us are hesitant to engage with difficult or problematic art in fear that it somehow reflects poorly on us (i.e. enjoying transphobic movies makes us transphobic), and all we need is reassurance that such engagement is usually made with good intentions.
Sleepaway Camp turns out to be one of the best movie experiences I’ve ever had. The crowd cheers when the right people die. It’s rare to feel like you’re on a team as a spectator, but tonight we are.
The movie ends, and Joe Bob introduces the cast of Sleepaway Camp. Felissa Rose, who plays the main girl Angela, moderates a discussion between the reunited cast, who are all very proud of their work. Karen Fields, the woman who plays Angela’s nemesis, Judy, talks about how her child is trans and how grateful she is that this movie continues to stoke discussion about trans representation.
When it’s time for Sleepaway Camp II, Chris Jericho returns to the stage, joined by Darcy, a few stars from the sequel, and some dudes from a podcast (pretty sure “dudes from a podcast” is redundant). Unbeknownst to everyone in the audience, this crew is going to try a live Mystery Science Theater 3000-style commentary. That is, they’re going to talk over the movie. I’m not sure who thought this was a good idea. MST3K can do it because they have writers poring over every detail of a movie, but even then it can be annoying. But to have a bunch of unrehearsed fans talk over a movie is annoying from the get-go? Nah, son. Worse, it quickly becomes the Chris Jericho show. The obviously-drunk wrestler hogs all the attention and talks over everyone.
I last 15 minutes and then turn on the ignition. We drive toward the exit. Chris Jericho’s drunken, unfunny voice keeps pouring from our radio speakers, but once we turn out of the West Winds, it fades to static, transitory as a ghost.
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Great travelogue