Drive-In Massacre

For the type of movie this is, given when it was made, and a total lack of big name stars ( or small name stars for that matter ) this film is very watchable. The players, none of whom are great at their craft, are worth the effort and make the movie. The special effects aren't bad given '76 standards and low budget. The plot is typical and functional. My favorite part of the whole thing? The cops. They actually come off like cops. Coupled with the premise its like Dragnet does Freddie Kruger. I liked this film. Of course I liked Dragnet and Nightmare on Elm Street too. Its certainly not great art, but thats not what this type of film is meant to be. Its meant to be cheap entertainment, and thats exactly what it is.

OK, just finished watching the awful transfer of this film on a $1 DVD. I prepared myself to be shatteringly disappointed by reading the reviews here before I started. And... drum roll please... I didn't think it was nearly as bad as everyone says.

That being said, let's get the really awful aspects out into the open; the music really is pretty uninspired. Think Radio Shack electronic workshop - imagine a 9 year old plugging and unplugging wires and pushing buttons on a flimsy bit of PC board. Got it? OK, bring it down a notch. There are also some awkward transitions in the plot. Consider a story you might tell a child, the kind you make up as you go along. When the child asks why the plot of your story contradicts itself, you just wave off their questions with a shake of your hand and say, "Keep listening!" This movie does that... kind of a lot. And, alas, sometimes the murdered dead look like dummies - and that never happens in any film and it should absolutely not be forgiven under any circumstances... ;) But what about the good? How about some really excellent acting on the part of Douglas Gudbye as "Germy" and his counterpart, Newton Naushaus, "Mr Johnson." Gudbye's skill on the screen made me pause the movie to check his filmography, hoping he had matured into a great success. Saddly, his role here was his first and last. Gudbye puts Dustin Hoffman to shame in acting out the role of a mentally handicapped. Naushaus, also appearing here in his only film role, was the embodiment of the anal-retentive schmuck we all endured at our first summer job. Also good? The sets - always authentic but never in the way.

Bearing in mind that the film was intended for drive-in audiences, the plot, the ending, and the characters all make perfect sense and contribute to what would have been, if seen in the proper environment, a genuinely unnerving film.

I'm sorry for those who really think this is the worst film ever. I'm always on a quest for the Holy Grail of Hokiness, the Ark of Awful... but it won't be found here.

DRIVE IN MASSACRE was meant to scare the patrons of the actual drive-ins that dotted the landscape of it's day. Starting off with a gag-inducing theme song, the horror gets under way.

A madman is lurking among the rows of cars, and beheads a pair of amorous customers. With a sword! As usual, the cops are stumped. Cantankerous, bullet-headed manager, Austin Johnson (Newton Naushaus) is no help at all. He just hates everyone and everything. Could he be the killer? Or, could it be Germy the "halfwit" janitor? Why is he so twitchy? And, Why is he wearing Pinocchio's hat? Hmm?

Meanwhile, in spite of the gory murders, the drive-in fills up the next night. Unsurprisingly, another couple is dispatched, this time in shish kebab fashion. And, on it goes. At no time does it seem like a bad idea to keep the drive-in open. Even when someone is killed every night!

This movie's biggest problem is that in between deaths, it's an extremely dull police investigation, conducted by the world's most lackluster detectives. They're more like fast food-loving carpet salesmen. While chasing a suspect, one fears that they could drop dead at any second!

By normal standards, this is a debacle. However, on the schlock scale, this is pure gold!

P.S.- Watch for an uncredited George "Buck" Flower as a marauding, bug-eyed maniac!...

Dreadful film about a serial killer that repeatedly butchers his victims with a sword at a Californian drive-in. On the trail of the killer are two overweight police detectives with no acting skill whatsoever - which accommodates a cast of similar types. This film has little substance: we are given the killings with no reason at all, with no killer it seems, and with no credibility in direction, script, or acting. None of the "cast" seems like a real actor(maybe a case could be made for the guy playing Germy). The actors look like they move on cue. The script gives us nothing in terms of plot except that a couple cops are looking for a killer at a drive-in and they have three forgettable leads in solving the case. The direction is sub-par as the lighting is barely able to illuminate much of the action at night. The gore is ridiculously inept in execution, and the editing is just as flawed. The film is funny for all the wrong reasons, especially some inane dialog like the fattest police detective being warned that the ham sandwich he is eating may be his father(?) The film is framed in the same type of documentary prologue and epilogue used so much more effectively in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Here it is laughable. A truly bad film with little merit.

I find many of the old horror movie titles as part of packaged releases from Brentwood and other companies, twelve titles for $5.99, fifty titles for $20.00, etc. Therefore, many of these films have not been remastered and have lousy sound or picture quality. This is very true for the version I saw of "Drive-in Movie Massacre". I couldn't understand most of what was being said in the opening sequence, and I had to increase the brightness of my television to figure out exactly whom was being shown at the end, and I think I know who it was -- due to the context -- but it wasn't clear.

However, despite its sound and picture problems, this film couldn't have been any better in crisp shape 30 years ago. I was only 4 and 5 in 1976 and recall only one time being sneaked into a drive-in; my understanding of drive-ins, however, is that when things on the screen got boring, people honked their horns. I read that that was why Sam Raimi kept up the pace of "Evil Dead", to prevent horn-honking. I imagine that there was much honking during screenings of this film. The ending is laughably absurd; it MIGHT have worked in 1940, or 1876, and it might scare little four year olds who are still afraid of the bogeyman and have parents who try to keep them well-behaved by using his appearance as a threat, but for teenagers or adults, it's "Oh, Jesus" lame.

This is on top of the film being highly padded, with a minutes-long scene of one character's carnival-gazing and another set in a warehouse that doesn't make a lick of sense. However, I found this film mildly amusing, in a movie-night-with-your-drinking-buddies sort of way. It has touches of camp, sometimes intentional. The manager of the drive-in, filled with angrily-told stories of self-pity, amused me, and I thought that the actor playing "Germy" often hit some spot-on moments, his pathetic 'am-I-a-good-boy?' eagerness to help with the investigation and wounded reaction when finally being pushed too far helping to ground the film.

This is not the worst film of its genre, and I'd watch it again with friends who want to make fun of something while we get drunk.