Dead End Drive-In
A review by Nick Peron
It was true in the 80's as it was true now, if something made a shit load of money in the box office, chances are some lower-end production house, or independent producer was going to make a low budget rip-off with a similar theme. However, back then you were able to get a lot more with you money. There weren't pyro-technicians or special effects artists that were charging you an arm and a leg, because most of them were starving or just getting their start, and it was an era where the film industry wasn't over saturated with high prices and people asking for higher wages.
I mean take a look at the popular movies and their rip offs. Take Gremlins
The point I'm getting at here (that's right, I had a fucking point) is that the 80's was a time where you could have a low budget movie that is cashing in a concept made popular by a bigger budget film and it would still look pretty decent with the budget they had. Another great example to this theory is taking a look at Troma movies that were made in the 80's compared to now. I think the major shift in quality has more to do with inflation of a films budget over anything else.
But anyway, this has all been a round-about way to talk about the movie that I am reviewing today: Dead End Drive-In. It's a film by director Brian Tenchard-Smith, who's name you may not recognize, but you may know some of his work as he's responsible for the very unnecessary third and fourth installments to the Leprechaun movie franchise.
The other thing to point out is the fact that this movie came out in 1986, the year after Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
The plot goes a little something like this:
There is this spindly runt named Crabs (he's called Crabs because he almost caught them once) who lives in a post apocalyptic world where people really really covet working cars, in fact there is a huge problem with roving gangs of thieves that look like rejected contestants from a Cure look-alike contest, that go about and steal usable car parts. Crabs really wants to bulk up and be strong, but he must be dreaming the guy is a total exomorph. Anyway, when he's not jogging around and picking up skanky punk rocker chicks in the street he's riding passenger with his brother who is a tow-truck driver, which is a highly competitive and lucrative market in post-apocalyptic chaos land.
One night, Crabs manages to talk his brother into letting him take out his mint '57 Chevy convertible out on a date with his girl on the weekend. Now not only is it hard to swallow the fact that somebody in this post-apocalyptic world that the director has indicated wouldn't last five minutes on the streets before it's stripped bare could possibly exist in once piece in this movie, then here's another whopper for you to swallow: The owner of said expensive car lets his kid brother take it out on a date so he can stain the interior with his man spunk.
So Crabs takes his best girl out to the local drive-in and the cheap bastard pays the rate they have for unemployed people. As they sit and watch the movie, they of course decide to fuck, and after when they're in the warm afterglow of back seat-coitus somebody goes and steals two of the cars tires. Crabs follows the thieves when he finally realizes that it was the cops who stole his tires. When he goes to report it to the theater manager, he's told that he can stay the night and make a report in the morning (for whatever reasons in this post apocalyptic future it's illegal to walk home from the movies...)
So at this point he notices, hey, there are a lot of fucking people here in derelict cars that are literally living at the movie theater (how he could have missed this coming into the place is anybodies guess) does he go around looking for tires that'll fit his car so he can get the hell out of this place? No, he continues to try and get his tires back, until he realizes that this place is just setup as a trap for societies undesirables.
Still, even at this point, he still won't settle for just any kind of tires, they have to be Chevy tires, because his brother will be downright pissed that his mint '57 Chevy was vandalized at the drive in. Let's forget the fact that during the time his car is just sitting there the paint job gets bleached by the sun and people start writing graffiti all over it.
Anyway hell bent on getting out because he doesn't think he belongs there, his girlfriend fits in just nicely, and Crabs just can't figure out that there's something totally fishy going wrong. It takes until they start dumping off car loads of immigrants and the theatre manager has the engine of his car stolen that he realizes that the powers that be might just want him to stay where he is.
About two hours in he finally gives up on using his brothers car as an escape vehicle and in a climactic finally that involves car crashes, tow trucks, and explosions, Crabs manages to break out of the drive-in in a cop car by using a conveniently placed ramp to hop over the main gate and drive away to freedom.
The problems with this movie is that it's not that it's a blatant Mad Max rip-off, it's not that the idea of a post-apocalyptic future is unbelievable either, and I've read enough science fiction that I can suspend my disbelief so that I can believe the concept of converting a drive-in theatre into a prison for undesirable people. The problems with the movie are two things:
1.) The heavy handed metaphors and analogies
and
2.) The most unbelievable plot devices put in to prolong the course of the film.
First let's talk about the heavy handed metaphors I'll find it very hard to believe that anybody watching this movie who has any sense of history would be able to miss the social commentary and analogy the filmmaker is making here. Bunch of undesirables, put in a remote location isolated from anything and everything. They finally settle in and make due with their situation. Then they start putting in people from different ethnic backgrounds and suddenly everybody is a racist blah blah blah. Sound familiar? Well if it does, then you probably already figured out that they're making a commentary on Australian society, it's history as a prison colony that turned itself into a country and the racism that's common place there.
Okay, great, we get it, Australia isn't perfect. But the problem with this social commentary is that it's flat, the director doesn't put much more effort into expanding on the idea. It's like he's going "HERE IT IS GUYS!" and you're just sitting there scratching your head and going "Uh, okay... So what's your point?" If I were to used childish toilet humor to describe this further. It's like being in a room full of people and letting a short, but audible fart that everybody hears. It'll shock everybody at first, but it doesn't have the brilliant subtlety and lingering power a silent but deadly fart would accomplish. Being more mature for a moment, what I mean is that hitting hard and fast makes it obvious to the audience but doesn't give them time to think about it than delivering your commentary in more subtler ways.
The second issue is the '57 Chevy as a plot device to keep the character rooted in one place so that the plot can advance. You've already stretched my ability to suspend my disbelief where it could dissented like a porn stars anus, how are going to expect me to keep going at this rate when I've got metaphorical ass-guts dangling between my legs?
What I'm talking about is the fact that here we have a grown man trapped in a movie theater, and instead of finding the fastest way to get out before he's too trapped, he's more worried about getting the right replacement parts for the car so that his brother doesn't get pissed off at him when he finally gets home. The character goes so far as to wait for the bad guy to bring in a Chevy of the exact fucking make and model (Which is even harder to swallow considering how coveted cars are in this movie) to be dumped off at the drive-in just so that he can steal two tires.
There has to be a point in the days you spend as a prisoner where you should finally just say fuck it to finding the exact make of tires for a '57 Chevy and just steal tires that'll fit on the goddamn car enough to be able to at least escape and get home, or at least put another fucking car in working order to get out.
And here's the other thing that bothers me about this movie, this guy has a mother and a brother who knows he is going out on a date, and not once during the time he's stranded at this drive in do they bother looking for him? What the fuck is up with that? I don't care if this is supposed to be a post apocalyptic world, I'm sure if movie theatres are still in business, somebody is going to notice once enough people go missing during the Sunday double feature matinee don't you think?
The final, but amusing, point to make about this movie is how incredibly dated this movie is because a lot of the fashion sense and attire of the characters is that over-the-top outrageous 80's new-wave punk rocker look that only people in the movies seem to adopt as a regular fashion statement. Did anybody ever really dress like this in the 80's? Everyday? I find it hard to believe. It looks like somebody exploded a Debbie Harry album in this movie.
All and all, Dead End Drive-In is a bad movie, but at least in it's own way it's entertaining, so I recommend you watch it at least for a good laugh. If you actually want to buy it, you'll be happy to know that it is available in a double feature release by Anchor Bay Entertainment. It's been paired up an un-cut version of the film Cut and Run
Such a delightful combination of movies was found at my local Wal-Mart, who is known for their family friendly selection of entertainment (Har har har.)
