The old song said that Video Killed the Radio Star, but it was home video that killed the drive ins. Sure, there are a few out there and God Bless the people that operate them. But somehow, the magic, the mystery, the lure of forbidden fruit is no more.
People went to drive in theaters for different reasons. Some went to try to make it with their dates. Others went to show off their hot rods. Then there were the ones like me and my old friends. We went for one reason and one reason alone: the movies.
The Drive In was invented in 1933, by Richard M. Hollingshead. In New Jersey of all places. It was reasonably successful and a handful of others began to open up across the country. More followed suit in the 1940’s, but as the ’50’s approached, drive in theaters started popping up everywhere. You have to understand America’s passion for the automobile at the time. People were not merely content to drive and wash and work on their vehicles, they wanted to eat in them and watch movies in them as well.
Back when I attended drive in theaters, before the home video explosion, it was hard to see a lot of the more extreme exploitation films. Cable had been around for some time, but you had to take what you could get there. Skinamax showed a lot of good stuff and so did the other Premium channels, but it was, at least then, no substitute for the magic of watching the blood flow, the monster roar and the tits bounce under the freedom of the night sky.
In the privacy of an automobile, you were free to drink beer, smoke whatever you wanted to smoke, cut up, cuss, yell or even get buck naked. I was never once hassled for misbehaving at a drive in theater. If you remained fairly cool and respectful of others, you were not bothered. They needed the business.
But when anyone was able to rent The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Make Them Die Slowly, Mother’s Day, I Spit on Your Grave, etc and watch them at home, it all changed. I was a movie addict all my life, but suddenly EVERYONE was one too, and there were movie parties in just about every home I went to. It might be difficult for a younger person to imagine the excitement of those wild early years of VHS.
Now with DVD, we have the means to watch almost everything, without censors or shitty drive in sound, but in state of the art audio and video. I do most of the watching alone these days, as my old drive in buddies are either married, in jail or fucking insane. Now I have my own private vicarious drive in, with 5.1 sound and my big screen TV.
We have it better than we ever have before. Don’t we?
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