The Last Drive-In came to Shudder back in 2018 as what was going to be a single twenty-hour movie marathon of weird, bloody, boob-filled, glorious, ridiculous films. It had been so popular that fans, encouraged to log on if they wanted to see more, and keep the showing going, pretty much — from what I understood — broke the Internet, or at least Shudder during that period.
I was in a different place in 2018. I’d recently gone through a breakup two months before, and I was just trying to find my way back to something: to some place where I would could feel a sense of solidarity and home again after losing that particular feeling of equilibrium. I’d known about Joe Bob Briggs, particularly his MonsterVision, through James Rolfe’s segments on MonsterVision itself, and his interview with Joe Bob. I also found out about The Last Drive-In, and I’d gained a Shudder account before then based on my love of horror being constantly supported by my time at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival.
There were a few differences then. In addition to my personal journey and struggles, I was still very much in a Netflix frame of mind. You know the one: where you hear about an interesting program, or a series and just wait for it to come out so that you binge the entire blood sucker that night, or for a few moons afterwards: to tide you over until the next ghoulish feast.
And then in 2019, after some specials — including one Halloween series one where I actually interacted more with Diana Prince, who had been responsible for me finding out about The Last Drive-In altogether on Twitter — the The Last Drive-In had its first season. By this point, I was going out again, meeting new people and making new relationships — or meeting new relationships and making new people as the case may be — and I wasn’t spending as much time at home anymore. Before 2019, I’d mostly stayed indoors as a borderline hermit, with the occasional trip to downtown Toronto or a Greyhound bus to the States, but by 2019 I was downtown a great deal more. One of the consequences of this was that my writing output, which had been considerable, fell by the way side. I used to write for GeekPr0n and cover the After Dark: writing smaller reviews as I went on. Those reviews of weird and odd independent films never left my mind, and while I grew to just enjoy watching the movies, and not having to apply my dissective brain to all of them, something felt missing.
I needed a place to put my thoughts about all those films, even when I attempted to ignore that impulse. At first, I would write some things on my Mythic Bios, but they just remained in my head. Waiting. Waiting for something.
And I thought one of the things I was waiting for was for Season One of The Last Drive-In to be all gathered in one place, and I could binge it at my leisure on Shudder. I hesitate in committing to something. When I commit to something, I put a lot of energy these endeavours until I either run out of that energy, or I just keep going with it. It can take a toll, to set aside that time and effort, to find that space. It also doesn’t help that I have anxiety, and when I don’t get something done, or I need to do something — or set myself to do something a certain way — it can affect me adversely. So I waited on it.
I waited, basically, until Doomsday. I’ve gone into it in previous Blog entries in various permutations as the mad science of grieving allows. The Pandemic happened. One of my partners died. My pet died. Some of my long-time relationships ended. It all went I-t’s Up, if you know what I mean and I think you do. These were things that defined my personality: my sense of self. And there were all gone. What’s more,, like many other people, I lost the ability to go outside as we were — and still are as of this writing — all in Quarantine. I discovered things during this time: finding truths about people and places that I really hadn’t wanted to know,. but also making new connections where I didn’t consider them before.
Twitter is a magical place, like Tahiti. But Agents of SHIELD references aside, I’d Tweeted before back in my GeekPr0n and comics scholar Sequart days. It is addicting to have your words shared and out there, and potentially made concise and clear: as cutting as a scalpel, but also fascinating tissues from the recesses of your mind.
I’m not sure when I found out, or when I realized the truth about Joe Bob Briggs’ The Last Drive-In on Shudder. I loved seeing the Halloween episode on Shudder TV, a nice glimpse into communal viewing again like we did in the old Cable TV days. And Tweeting along, then, while posing my Michael Myers theory about his supernatural abilities was fun. But I didn’t know how much I wanted to commit.
But I found out that many of the old episodes, with Joe Bob’s commentaries as commercial segments –as he apparently would also do in his Drive-In Theater show before MonsterVision — were deleted off of Shudder: both due to jurisdictional reasons, and those of copyright as Shudder (and AMC that owns it) eventually loses the rights to show some of those films.. Those shows I kept waiting to watch were, for the most part, gone and I realized that this had been — and it still is — an ongoing issue. I genuinely regret not seeing Daughters of Darkness, and Joe Bob’s take on it, even though it was because I knew he showed it in the program that I watched it to begin with. Unlife works like that, sometimes.
So one night, realizing that I had nothing else to do that Friday, feeling like I would never do anything again thanks to the hermitage of the Pandemic and everything I lost, I felt myself on a precipice of participation, on the edge of entertainment, an alliteration of awesome, in deciding to watch one episode live on Shudder TV in addition to doing a Tweet-along. It was like taking a breath and forgetting that I didn’t need to breathe anymore, but realizing that I still could. I didn’t know what to expect. I was wondering if this would be another 24-hour marathon of mayhem, and if I could take it. But it wasn’t: Season Two has six hour episodes each showing two films and having erudite and sometimes ridiculous Joe Bob commentary in-between. I found myself taken by his folksy mien, and fierce intelligence as well as Diana as Darcy the Mailgirl’s laconic tolerance but genuine fondness of it all.
The first episode was hard for me to get through, as sitting in one place can take a lot out of me. I didn’t actually feel well afterwards, but I liked it. And I came back the next week. And the next. My friends and I weren’t really gaming, and my other interactions were now long-distance. I watch some anime once a week with some friends, which can be a commitment of time again, but this is different as it is longer and there are so many more people involved.
I joined at an interesting time in more ways than one. Revelations about CineState went down, and Fangoria began distancing itself from its former parent company. I wondered if the magazine would survive. And then Joe Bob’s old articles, and even something he said the previous year came to the fore, and I saw that side of Twitter.
I know I might not look it, but I am not a stupid man. I have a Graduate School Education, a Master’s Degree in the Humanities. I’ve gotten work published in print and online. I’ve met a few people with differing opinions. Even with the pain I went through, I still had my sense of self. And I recognized that what was happening, as I was interacting with other people, as I was getting to know MutantFam people of the “blood, breasts, and beasts” crowd was that I was finding solidarity and a sense of safety in what Joe Bob and crew were constructing in this time of plague and death and real life horror. I also understood that there were people who didn’t feel this way, and felt like the show propagated aspects of their lives that weren’t safe, or represented. I’d seen a lot of personality revelations online, and I didn’t want to get involved. I didn’t want to believe in something just to see that it was worse than fake blood, but I also didn’t want to destroy something good because other people were crying about how the sky is falling.
A lot of things had been going down, then, behind the scenes that few of us knew about. At one point, slightly before the Twitter outrages and the usual cyclical nature of Diana Prince being sent to “Twitter Jail,” Joe Bob actually PMed me. It was after I was Tweeted about Diana’s role in Frankenstein Created Bikers (which I’ve finally seen, and think should definitely be a Last Drive-In feature) and he thanked me for my support and wanted my email so that he could “keep me in the loop.”
I think this, while it never got followed up on, was the seed for something else.
See, as Season Two was unfolding and I got caught in what ultimately became a wave of positivity, I kept having these thoughts about horror and its plasticity and its ability to vastly experiment with form and storytelling, and just weirdness. I realized that I was getting a lot of attention with some of the things I wrote about on Twitter, and I was being heard: which, for me, is a big deal. So I was going to send an article to a Joe Bob fanzine in response to some backlash that Diana was facing: to support her. But I was already thinking about something else.
Towards the end of the season, especially after the One-Cut of the Dead showing — in which I ended up writing “The Cut of my Jib” as an article that I even sent out — I created The Horror Doctor. It was partially in honour of my late partner, whom we’d always talked about writing, or collaborating, on something together. But I realized I needed a place for my horror. I’d written about Jordan Peele’s Us, and Ari Aster’s Midsommar in a few places elsewhere, but I felt I needed to streamline this. Create a home. A lab.
The Horror Doctor was also going to be a place where I would find ridiculous movies and rewrite them into stories that made more sense, at least to me. I have dabbled in it, but my grand experiment hasn’t happened yet. I wanted to something unique: something where my voice would stand out. And The Last Drive-In, and the fanfare inspired this.
As of this coming Season Three of The Last Drive-In, I now come into it with my Blog more firmly established. I don’t want to analyze episodes. I just want to have fun with them. The fact of the matter is based on all the above factors, I came to the conclusion that it’s far more satisfying to watch this show with others than binge it on your own: that Live-Tweeting brings a sense of community, and comradery during uncertain and even terrible times. Perhaps when I take about how being with likeminded people with something — or someone — to believe in, I could be talking about a cult. Certainly, it would not be out of place given the films we watch. But it’s more than that. There are dissenting opinions, and conversations, and that is more than okay. It’s not perfect but, honestly? I don’t want it to be: as it can’t be, and all we can do is acknowledge that while continuing to examine it, and even enjoy the spectacle.
I don’t know where I would be without having found, and taking the plunge to watch this show. I don’t think I really want to know, to be honest. I certainly have no idea where it will take us, where it might take me. I have a dream that one day I might create something worthy of a Silver Bolo Award, perhaps something on this Blog. It might not always be called The Horror Doctor. It might change.
But I don’t think the intent behind any of it will ever truly perish. For after all:
That is not dead which can never say goodbye,
and even with strange aeons the Drive-In will never die.
See you all this Friday, my fellow Fiends.
The Horror Doctor 