Celebrate the Drive-In is a tribute to a beloved venue of the past. During it's heyday, a trip to the drive-in was one of my favorite things, both on the rare occasions as a child, and in my early adulthood. This blog is going to celebrate Drive-In Day (June 6) with a series of movies that I was too young to see (or in a couple of cases, not even born yet) that I wish I could've experienced in a drive-in. Keep coming back for the entire week as there will be one per day for the duration.
It's Saturday night! Let's go somewhere where we can party like Monday isn't a school day! Presenting the next Coming Attraction! Drive-In!
The word "kismet" comes to mind. What better way to wrap up the Celebrate the Drive-In Week than with a movie titled Drive-In?
I would be highly surprised if you have heard of any of the actors and actresses that populate the cast of this movie. Hell, the director is probably the most prominent name in the credits, Rod Amateau... He directed most of the episodes of the 50's TV shows The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show and The Bob Cummings Show, as well as most of the episodes of the 60's TV show The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. He was primarily a TV director, although he did branch out occasionally to direct feature films. If you are, like me, a devotee of really bad movies, he was also responsible for The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (often cited as one of the "worst movies of all time").
I should point out that not ALL of the actors in this film are complete nobodies. The main character of Orville is played by Glenn Morshower, who had a recurring role on the TV show 24 over the span of it's life as a TV series. And if you saw the film Raising Arizona, Trey Wilson was the bigwig father of the baby that Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunter kidnap. He was also Col. Nivens in a film I reviewed on this blog a few years ago, A Soldier's Story. Still, those two are exceptions. Most of rest of the cast have only this film, or maybe one or two more, to their credit.
I would also be highly surprised if you don't think "Hey! I've seen this movie before!" The fact is there is almost nothing original going on here. Have you seen American Graffiti? Well, in this movie you get the white bread borderline goody goody redhead who is looking to hang out for one night with his tag along friend (here it's the character's little brother, but still...)
Have you seen Grease? You get the somewhat rough girl who has grown tired of her hoodlum boyfriend as is looking to make a change. Have you seen Dazed and Confused? You get the fight between a guy who is out of his league taking on the hoodlum bigwig who is giving him hassles.
Have you seen a movie (hundreds of possible comparisons here) where a wide-eyed African American is played up for laughs? Here the guy is a doctor instead of the typical stereotyped servant, but still the similarities come through.
The movie playing at the drive-in in the movie is not even original. Parodies of disaster flicks such as Airplane! and The Big Bus played out the theme with a bit more panache. But, in fact, most of the really funny parts of Drive-In occur in the movie within the movie (here titled Disaster '76), although I'm not entirely sure if Disaster '76 was intentionally meant as a parody, at least within the context of it's presentation to the audience in the film. That fake film uses some pretty funny stuff as it comes off like a parody of Airplane!, The Towering Inferno and Jaws, all rolled into one. But I think that the movie itself was supposed to be a serious disaster flick to the characters at the drive-in premiere.
Really, one of the better parts of Drive-In are some of the unique places where the soundtrack plays along with the action on the screen. The soundtrack is an anomaly, at least for a film that was made in 1976, and has a mostly teen cast. Instead of pop and rock songs, the soundtrack is filled with country(?) music. OK, so the movie takes place in west TEXAS, and probably more of the populace in that region were listening to the local country station as opposed to a pop / American Top 40 station, so maybe it was fitting in terms of it's setting.
The Statler Brothers song, "Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott?" plays over the opening credits (which credits, by the way, does not include the actors names... those don't come until the end credits. But like I said at the beginning, you probably don't know any of these people anyway...) The lyrics to that song fit along very well with the story as it plays out, however.
You've gotta read the paper and know the code of G, PG and R and X.
And you gotta know what the movie's about before you even go.
Tex Ritter's gone and Disney's dead and the screen is filled with sex.
Whatever happened to Randolph Scott ridin' the trail alone?
Whatever happened to Gene and Tex and Roy and Rex, the Durango Kid?
Oh, whatever happened to Randolph Scott, his horse plain as could be?
Whatever happened to Randolph Scott has happened to the best of me.
Everybody's tryin' to make a comment about our doubts and fears.
True Grit's the only movie I've really understood in years.
You gotta take your analyst along to see if it's fit to see.
Whatever happened to Randolph Scott has happened to the industry.
Whatever happened to Johnny Mack Brown and Alan Rocky Lane?
Whatever happened to Lash LaRue? I'd love to see them again.
Whatever happened to Smiley Burnette Tim Holt and Gene Autry?
Whatever happened to all of these has happened to the best of me.
Whatever happened to Randolph Scott has happened to the industry."
Hey, as nostalgic and somewhat idealistic as it sounds, there were, and probably still are, people who feel the same way. My sister would be one of those. (And, no, she didn't watch this with me...)
Drive-In (1976):
In the summer of 1976, everybody in the small Texas town in this film are preparing for the event of the summer, a premiere of a new disaster movie, Disaster '76. (This is the glue that holds the film together, ostensibly. There are a few subplots going on, but none of them would be enough to make this film interesting if they were the sole focus.)
Note: The town, BTW, is never actually named, but it was filmed in Terrell, TX, which at the time only had about 15,000 population. So the small town feel comes through. And Terrell had it's own drive-in theater at the time which was used as the location for the drive-in in the film. Elsewhere I found out that that drive-in has been replaced by a bank... So their reminiscences probably parallel mine on the drive-in experience.
The main characters include Orville (Glenn Morshower) and his little brother (Gary Lee Cavagnaro). The brother (credited by the name "Little Bit", although I don't recall anybody in the film addressing him by any name), is looking up to his older brother, but is dismissive of being able to learn how to approach women, since he basically views Orville as a dweeb.
Also, there is Glowie (Lisa Lemole; who is now better known to people as the wife of Dr. Oz, so maybe there is one more person in the film you might recognize...) Glowie has had a relationship with the leader of a pack of town hoodlums, Enoch (Billy Milliken), but she has grown increasingly frustrated with Enoch, probably mainly because he treats her like property instead of as an individual.
You can probably see the conflict coming a mile away, since early on Glowie hooks up with Orville, not only to the surprise of Little Bit, but also to the surprise of Orville himself. Orville is not entirely on board with this new relationship, mostly because he has not had much success in attracting female companionship in his life. I think he is just a little "so, what's the catch..." viewpoint, which I would feel pretty much the same way, since I too was kind of like that when I was the same age.
At the same time as all of this is going on, two rather dimwitted would be thieves are planning to rob the drive-in of it's cash collection. Gifford (Trey Wilson) and Will (Gordon Hurst) would be better off if they gave up the life of petty crime and instead went to Detroit to train to be diesel mechanics, as one of them suggests. If you watch these two in action you may just wonder how they ever had any previous successes at their endeavors in crime. Although listening to them talk, I'm not sure that "success" was ever a part of their vocabulary...
The other running story in this film is about a gang called The Widow Makers (of which Enoch is the leader). Why are they called The Widow Makers? Who the hell knows? They seem to be some kind of nod to a motorcycle gang, except they don't ride around on motorcycles... Instead they drive around in a cheesy decked out van that looks like something that a disco dude would drive.
They are on the lookout for a rival gang at the drive-in where they are hoping to have a rumble. The Widow Makers don't look like they could cause much fear, however. Looks like a gang of senior citizens could take them out with no problem. For that matter, so does the other gang (who also do their running around in a van...)
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Enoch, having just been told by Glowie to go fly his kite in someone else's front yard, is also looking for the dude that Glowie left him for, who, coincidentally is also the guy who knocked the driver's side door of his van off it's hinges. And, as you found out from earlier in this review, is the town dweeb. The showdown at high noon midnight 9:17 PM is one of the focal events that happen at the drive-in that night, but it doesn't inspire an nail-biting, or for that matter any thumb twidgeting...
The most exciting action in the entire movie is a car chase that occurs in the parking lot after our two bumbling desperadoes try to escape with the cash box. A would be hero, Bill (Kent Perkins, who, BTW, was married to Ruth Buzzi), chases the doofuses around the place, leading to one of the few times that I laughed at something that wasn't on the drive-in screen.
And, of course, you couldn't have a 70's teen movie without an obligatory scene with someone smoking wacky tobacky... A guy has taken his mother to see the picture, and when she complains about his hospitality, bemoaning the fact that he doesn't even offer her a cigarette, he obliges, but not with the kind of cigarette she was expecting....
It may take a concerted effort on your part to follow the plot lines of these individual characters, and just maybe you won't be entirely successful. But as I hinted earlier, it is worth a watch just to watch the scenes that are playing out on the theater screen. Word of warning, however: There is a scene in the film within the film where a plane crashes into a skyscraper. While this may have been funny in it's original playing, it is not at all funny now, given the recent history. But I think it is not entirely fair to retroactively judge it as ALL in bad taste. This movie was made in 1976, 35 years away from those horrific events of 9/11.
The film has its share of incoherent scenes. I chalk this up to the mish mash writing by the screenwriter, who apparently tried to jam any references to current movies he could into one script. For instance, there is one scene early in the film where a semi driver is being chased by the local cops. He thinks he's ditched them when he hides the truck behind a building, but he's wrong. The problem with this scene is that driver never makes another appearance in the film, ever. So what was the point of the scene, other than to establish that this town does indeed have a police department? The best excuse I can come up with is it was some kind of nod to trucker movies (although the iconic trucker film, Smokey and the Bandit, was still a year away from appearing on the big screen).
In terms of reception of this movie, I really liked what Gene Siskel had to say: He gave the film 2 out of 4 stars and said he wished the film had been focused on fleshing out the fake movie, Disaster '76, rather than the activities going on in the theater. In the wikipedia article on the film, it apparently was received as a decent typical juvenile effort, not disparaged, but not lauded either, so Siskel's 2 out of 4 is probably about the same as the rest of the reviews at the time. Rotten Tomatoes has the film at 53% Fresh. I couldn't find any information on what kind of profit the movie made, but given that it had no big name stars, it probably didn't cost a hell of a lot to make. I bet the biggest expense was renting the drive-in theater where the film was made. So a profit was probably a foregone conclusion.
As to my opinion: I have to admit this movie did have a small bit of appeal, but it's definitely not in my top 100 of movies I've seen. Give it a shot, but don't expect too much. I will say it is a damn sight better than the director's other foray into big screen work, the aforementioned The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. But, then, watching a marbles tournament would be more interesting than THAT one...
That's it for today, folks. And also a wrap-up for the Celebrate the Drive-In Week event. Hope you all had fun. Drive safely.
Quiggy
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