A drive-in theater seems to me to be the perfect setting for a horror movie, and I'm surprised more filmmakers haven't used them. I can't imagine that it would be expensive to shoot there, especially if it were done in the off season. Horror fans love drive-ins as much as anyone else in the world. More so, in fact.

There was one simply called Drive-In, which flopped onto the world in 2000. It is amateurish and awful, and endless scenes of Troma movies playing onscreen did absolutely nothing to improve things. There was another one from 1976, maybe not as bad as Drive-In, called Drive-In Massacre. I can't recommend it. There was Drive-in Horrorshow, a wretched anthology movie, from 2009. And then there was the Australian feature, Dead End Drive-In, which was a fairly visible title in the days of VHS. It's interesting, but more of a Mad Max kind of story than an out-and-out horror movie.

There have been a couple of comedies like Drive-In, which isn't bad, and American Drive-In, which is bad.

It's too bad no one was ever able to get an adaptation of Joe R. Lansdale's The Drive-In made. I know that Don Coscarelli wanted to for a while.

That leaves us with Ruby, a pretty good shocker from 1977.

In one sense Ruby is a routine late 70's horror movie. You got your Exorcist ripoff scenes, pre-slasher death set pieces, cheesy effects, but Ruby rises above the stereotypes.

That's because it was directed by Curtis Harrington. Harrington should be discussed more by horror fans. He directed some superlative movies like Games (with James Caan and Simone Signoret), Who Slew Auntie Roo and What's the Matter With Helen (both with Shelley Winters), and Night Tide (with Dennis Hopper). Harrington directed Robert Bloch teleplays The Dead Don't Die (NOT to be confused with the Jim Jarmusch fiasco) and The Cat Creature.

Curtis Harrington is also a name renowned by devotees of underground and experimental film. He worked with Kenneth Anger and Maya Deren. He also directed a number of avant-garde short films, which were collected on blu-ray in 2017.

Ruby was obviously a work-for-hire job for Harrington, but he put his stamp on the material. The story involves an aging Hollywood bit performer, well-played by Piper Laurie, whose lover was a mobster. He is killed in a prologue and then the action takes place around fifteen years later. Now Laurie owns a drive-in that resides next to a swamp. The ghost of her husband seems to have returned, bringing forth grisly deaths and very bizarre behavior from their mute daughter.

While the plot of Ruby is standard stuff, Harrington's love of the opulence and decadence of old Hollywood is on full melodramatic display. The movie is lurid and it drips with fading show-biz glamour, even while drive-in attendees and staff members are dispatched in colorfully modern ways. A man hooked to tubes in a soda machine which delivers blood into a patron's cup is a highlight.

Ruby is set in the 1950's, and Harrington obviously had a lot of fun by using Attack of the 50-Foot Woman as the movie-within-the-movie playing on the drive-in screen.

This is surely no genre milestone, nor is it a high point in Curtis Harrington's career. In fact, I would not be surprised to learn that he disowned the movie. Still, it's worth a look, and the director's touch adds a lot. It certainly does not hurt to have the always-watchable Stuart Whitman in the cast. Roger Davis, from Dark Shadows, is fun as a lawyer who spouts a lot of paranormal hokum.

Written by Mark Sieber


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