Horror Roundtable - Week Three
Schedule your ideal drive-in movie line-up. This can be a double bill, double bill with added feature or, if you’re feeling ambitious, Dusk to Dawn. Non-horror titles are allowed.
Come on, Steven make it a hard one!
My ideal Drive-In experience would be to go completely old school, and have a dusk til dawn festival of the Universal Horror Movies:
DRACULA, THE WOLFMAN, THE MUMMY, THE INVISIBLE MAN, FRANKENSTEIN, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, and as the light creeps up behind the big screen finish it all up with THE INVISIBLE RAY.
When I was 13, oh so many years ago, I got to see a re-release of the original KING KONG in the theater. I had seen it on television several times, but this was different, life-changing even. Young kids today need to see this stuff if only to show them how far we’ve come.
My second choice would be to do a whole Hammer retrospective…
This is a quap-tacular swords and tits lineup.
Conan the Barbarian
Pheonix the Warrior
Deathstalker
Barbarian Queen
Werewolf Madness!!!!
I would toss in The Howling. Silver Bullet. And just for kicks, Monster Squad, ’cause Wolfman got nards!
Dusk to dawn horror… I’d pay to see these:
THE EXORCIST
JAWS
DAWN OF THE DEAD (Romero Original)
ALIEN
David Zuzelo - Tomb It May Concern
From Dark To Dawn… A Tomb It May Concern Drive-In-A-Thon
7:45 P.M.
Trailer Park Pre-Show w/trailers from:
-Night of the Living Dead
-The Candy Tangerine Man
-Invasion of the Bee Girls
-The Thing With Two Heads
-The Flesh Eaters
-Five Deadly Venoms
8:15 P.M.
Camp Blood Carnage in… FRIDAY THE 13TH
10:00 P.M.
You don’t have to go to Texas for a CHAINSAW MASSACRE… PIECES
11:30 P.M.
Eurotrash Trailer Terror w/trailers from:
-The Embalmer
-Nightmare City
-Zombie
-Bay of Blood
-Suspiria
-Anthropophagus
MIDNIGHT
The Blind Dead stalk once more… can you silence YOUR heartbeat to save
yourself from them? RETURN OF THE EVIL DEAD
1:30 A.M.
Feeling Tired? See mud wrestling ninjas collide in the wild feature
that exposes the LIFE OF NINJA
3:00 A.M.
Madness came AFTER THE BOMB! Enter… THE NEW BARBARIANS
4:30 A.M.
Sleaze for the Stay Awakes! Bruno Mattei puts Emmanuelle under the
BLADE VIOLENT in WOMEN’S PRISON MASSACRE!
All the ghoulish mayhem you crave…all the sleaze you deserve… pack
your best girl in the trunk and bring your own barf bags!
9pm Deathdream
After a classic Gerald McBoingBoing cartoon and ads with dancing BBQ sandwiches, “Classics of 70s Paranoia Horror” night kicks off Bob Clark’s Deathdream. This post-Vietnam zombie classic is a slick but low budget horror production that is spooky, but still light enough for watching on a warm night under the stars. And hey, it actually ends with a scene at a drive-in theatre!
11pm The Crazies
Still an underrated film, The Crazies expands upon the anti-authoritarian ideas George Romero first set out in Night of the Living Dead, which makes it a perfect match with Deathdream. With survivalist themes and a bleak view of disease and biological warfare, it’s another perfect drive-in flick, with a devastating ending to think about on the way home. Make sure the kiddies are asleep in the back for this one!
Ossorio’s four BLIND DEAD flicks would make a perfect double-double-feature. A more personally significant selection, for me, though, would be a triple-bill of Naschy’s NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF, Franco’s EROTIC RITES OF FRANKENSTEIN (the nude version without Lina), and Larraz’s VAMPYRES.
Sean T. Collins - Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat
My non-horror line-ups are all a bit of a cheat, since my co-workers and I actually did these triple bills (sans drive-in, of course, but plus a whole lot of beer) for periodical mini-marathons that we’ve termed our “Manly Movie Mamajamas”:
ROADS AND/OR WARRIORS
Road House
The Warriors
The Road Warrior
DYSTOPIAN FUTURES AND/OR KURT RUSSELL
The Running Man
Escape from New York
Big Trouble in Little China
THE MASTERWORKS OF PAUL VERHOEVEN
RoboCop
Total Recall
Starship Troopers
But taking things back to horror, I think this would be my ideal trifecta:
Night of the Living Dead
Hellraiser
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
No particular connection there–they’re just favorites of mine that I think lend themselves to communal viewing, and I’d have a hard time coming up with a way to enjoy myself more at the movies than watching those three in a row. And I’d want people to leave feeling like they weren’t at a drive-in so much as in a car wreck, which is why Texas Chain Saw caps off the evening.
Katie
My ideal drive-in movie line-up is my recent $1 DVD bin finds at Wal-Mart - The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues, The Phantom Planet and The Phantom From Space.
They’re all awful, 50’s science fiction movies with phantoms (hilarious looking monsters). You know how aliens were the big thing in the 80’s (E.T, Mac and Me, ALF, etc)? These movies have convinced me that phantoms must have been all the rage in the 50’s. I also think seeing these phantoms on the big screen, at a drive-in, is a must to get the full 50’s phantom experience!
‘ll keep it sharp and simple, going with a double feature. I’d soften ‘em up with Beethoven and finish ‘em off with Cujo!
Nah, I’ll go with the original Friday the 13th followed by Texas Chainsaw Massacre (also the original)… cuz those are just summer movies.
I’d have to say the two Waxwork movies, back to back. I’ve loved the series ever since I was younger, and would love to see them on the big screen. If pressed for a third entry, I’d probably put Rocky Horror Picture Show in at midnight, in-between the two movies. I’ve never seen it in a theater, just at home, but always wanted to, and I think it’d be interesting to see how it would work at a drive-in.
Jay C. - Film Junk
1. The John Carpenter Apocalypse Trilogy!
- The Thing
- Prince of Darkness
- In the Mouth of Madness
or…
2. A Night of Larry Cohen
- Q The Winged Serpent
- The Stuff
- It’s Alive!
Thanks everyone. And, as always, if you like what you see please visit the sites of our contributors.
July 14th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
I’m definitely going with Paul Corupe’s suggestion of The Crazies…
A “zombie” movie before all his other zombie movies, I always took it to be…sort of a “warm up lap”, if you will…
July 15th, 2006 at 9:43 pm
Paul T’s Verhoeven Madness sounds great. “It is unlawful to park here sir.”
How about Citizen Toxie, followed by the making of feature, Apocalypse Soon.
July 18th, 2006 at 1:41 am
“Come on, Steven make it a hard one!”
I’ll show you a hard one!
Why should every question be difficult? It’s summer! Less time answering silly horror questions means more time in the hammock with a glass of refreshing lemonade!
July 21st, 2006 at 6:32 pm
Ah, this subject is near & dear to my heart because going to the drive in with my two older sisters & my parents was pretty much a weekly occurence the entire time that I was growing up in the 60s & 70s. Since we’re talking the Buffalo, NY area it was limited to the warmer or warm-ish months of May through about October, but that was still a LOT of trips to the drive ins ( & there were several in the area back then ) & a LOT of movies seen during them.
With at LEAST, 60% of them genre fare. Probably more like 75%.
So, for my personal “dusk ’til dawn” show, I’ll limit it to those that I actually saw for the first time at the drive in. Which, isn’t really narrowing my choices down by much, but…
THE HILLS HAVE EYES
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD
TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE
VAMPIRE CIRCUS
July 22nd, 2006 at 10:36 pm
Thanks for raiding one of the older posts on the blog, Jim.
I grew up just on the other side of the border from you, so I’m very familiar with that region’s drive-in season. I only remember attending one dusk to dawn screening, though I’m sure I went to more before then. I can’t remember what the movie was, but I do remember that it was fucking scary.