You're Drive-In Me Crazy! The Drive-In: Multiplex (ed. Christopher Golden & Brian Keene)

 

I try to keep this blog interesting and entertaining for non-horror readers as much as horror fanatics, but, fair warning, this is going to be inside baseball. In the late 1980s, Joe R. Lansdale wrote The Drive-In: A 'B' Movie with Blood and Popcorn, Made in Texas. In that novel, a few thousand people are trapped inside the massive Orbit Drive-In theater during one of its all-night horror shows when a toothy comet cuts the theater off from the rest of the world. Addled on a diet of soda, popcorn, candy, and splatter films playing on an endless loop, the patrons of the Orbit soon deteriorate into cannibalism and murder. And, once the two-headed mutant Popcorn King and his living tattoos appear on the scene, things get worse. . . The book was a cult hit, and Lansdale wrote two sequels (which we'll discuss next week).

In 2024, Christopher Golden (who helped adapt The Drive-In for a comic book mini-series) and Brian Keene published The Drive-In: Multiplex, a star-studded tribute anthology celebrating one of the wildest, weirdest, and most influential modern horror novels. Today, we're covering the first half, which is all stories set around the events of the first book. Later this week we'll get even weirder. . .

Note: I know that some of the movies I'm using for the "what drive-in movie" is it are anachronistic given when they came out vs. what the heyday of the drive-in theater was. Trust me, I know. . .

The Celebration of the Orbit by Gary A. Braunbeck

Synopsis: A righteous prose poem in which The Popcorn King reminds us of the mayhem that has happened, the mayhem that is, and the mayhem that is eternally to come (HALLELUJAH).

What Drive-In Movie Is It? Night of the Living Dead (1990): A sizzle reel remake of an all time cult splat classic, which doesn't have the same raw power as the original but is slick and entertaining and captures more than a little of its progenitor's magic.

Thoughts: Braunbeck starts the book off right with a musical number/sermon from the Popcorn King. This kicks ass in its own right, and it's a good callback to one of my favorite bits of the original novel, where the Popcorn King gives his subjects that good old time drive-in religion in the form of a hellish gospel routine (including call and response between the two heads of the beast). Braunbeck's the man to do it; there's always power behind his writing. His words are like magnum bullets--they have that extra powder and that extra punch that the rest just don't have. This also doubles as a good 'heads-up' to readers who haven't read the novels but are curious, in terms of establishing the tone and the content. If you don't like what Braunbeck serves up here, you may as well put this book down, because that's what we've got from here on out.

Hoppity White Rabbit Done Broke Down by Joe R. Lansdale and Keith Lansdale

Synopsis: Juju escapes from the Orbit into an amusement park run by Jack the Ripper. Together with Paper Wad Man, Piece of Shit Bear, and Hoppity White Rabbit, she sets out to defeat Jack and set the world right.

What Drive-In Movie Is It? Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday: An off-the-wall wrap-up of a long-running horror franchise that goes wild directions, involves an element of cross-over with a similar horror franchise, and sees a famous serial murderer get ripped to pieces.

Thoughts: The Lansdales (Joe and his son Keith) return to Joe's world for another installment. This one, wisely, doesn't expand further on the 'main' Drive-In continuity following #3, but instead does a lateral move into a new world.

It does, however, bring in a figure from Lansdale's other mythos: The God of the Razor. The God of the Razor is the top-hatted grotesque deity of murder and blades, who counts among his acolytes one Jack the Ripper. At one point, he tangled with Batman. I haven't read all the GotR stuff (just The Nightrunners and a few of the short stories), so I don't know if the Jack the Ripper theme park is 'canon' or not.

Anyway, the story is fun and entertaining. It turns out that vulgar teddy bears are intrinsically funny, and that helps here. Also, it taps into the bedrock of fantasy, with clear nods to Alice in Wonderland and Baum's Oz books, and there's something almost cozy, in a childhood way, of learning the rules of a new magical land from a bunch of new magical friends.

Even if one of them is a teddy bear who wants to reach the magical clock tower so he can get a dick.

One could, I suppose, object that it really isn't a Drive-In story at all, and that Juju could have gone down the rabbit hole in any other setting. Still, there are enough similarities to the Orbit (crowds of lost souls lining up for their concession stand food while being stalked by a demigod) to make it work.

The Night We Made it to the Horror Show by Stephen Graham Jones

Synopsis: A young man tries to rescue the object of his (unrequited) love from her role as a jock's beer-addicted concubine.

What Drive-In Movie Is It? TEENSPLOITATION DOUBLE FEATURE: Slaughter High & The Last American Virgin. The former, because it's a mean-spirited teen movie that involves a nasty beer-related trick and revenge without catharsis. The latter, because it's a fun coming of age tale that's a riff on an earlier genre classic and that ends with a downbeat, didn't get the girl ending.

Thoughts: In a cheeky bit of world-building, Jones connects this story to Lansdale's seminal "Night They Missed The Horror Show," in which a pair of high school shitkickers ditch on seeing Night of the Living Dead because it has a black hero, and settle for the next best entertaining thing--dragging a dead dog around with their car. And that's just, like, the first page. Missing the horror show doesn't go too well for them in Lansdale's original story; Jones posits that those who made it to the drive-in didn't fare much better.

Otherwise, this story is its own thing, but also nails the Lansdale tone. It's nasty and sleazy, but also fun; there's a part towards the end that introduces some gonzo violence in a direction that seems like it's going to be a little too over-the-top in a way that the story up to this point hasn't been. I hesitate to say "too over-the-top" when talking about The Drive-In, since that's the point, but you still need to maintain some tonal consistency (this is my one quibble with Janz's story, below). However, the story doesn't go too far that direction.

The Beast With 69 Eyes by S. A. Cosby

Synopsis: A white-passing biracial man, on the run from his past and his abusive white father's legacy, finds temporary solace with a hot date at the Orbit. But everything changes when the comet arrives...

What Drive-In Movie Is It? DOUBLE FEATURE: I Passed For White and Scream Bloody Murder: The former, in keeping with the tradition of exploitation and sleaze in being tasteless and politically incorrect when dealing with social issues, but by that same token sometimes able to hit on deeper truths than more polished and polite message movies. The latter, for having an unhinged, farm-based patricide that sends its protagonist on the run into a world of sleazy adventures.

Thoughts: One element that's in a lot of Lansdale's writing, from the sensitive ("Cowboy") to the queasy ("Night They Missed The Horror Show") to the hilariously provocative ("Letter from the South, Two Moons West of Nacogdoches") is race and racism. There's not a ton of that in The Drive-In beyond the first chapter or two, but Cosby brings it in here. There's a line early on that I found particularly striking--in a taxonomy of the types of white people at the Orbit, the narrator mentions two types of rednecks. There are the "mean ones," who don't even speak their hatred but just glower with it, like heat radiating from a stove. And then there are the "kindly but ignorant ones who would call a black guy colored or worse but didn't really mean nothing by it."

Maybe not a novel observation, but our narrator doesn't let the 'lesser of two evils' off the hook. Speaking of the ignorant ones, he says, "[t]hey just told themselves they didn't know any better." Which belies the whole 'aw shucks' thing, of course, since if you know you don't know any better, well, you actually do know better. You just don't care (at least, not enough). It's a good point (and one that doesn't just apply to rednecks, fictitious or otherwise), and Cosby slips it in with economy.

Which is not to say this is some sort of 'eat your vegetables' kind of message story. There's no vegetables here, just popcorn: Cosby brings the Lansdalian goods with shocking images of decapitated mothers, de-everythinged fathers, and (knuckle) shuffling hordes of self-pleasuring horror fans. Moreover, the themes of identity mesh with this story in an interesting way: Our narrator is a white-passing biracial man who is hiding what he's inherited from both of his parents: He's trying to hide the black party of his race and identity (which he received from his mother), and what seems to be hereditary insanity at best (and downright homicidal psychosis at worst) from his white father. It's a double-strain, and the insanity of the Orbit pushes him over the edge (not that they're not actually out to get him, either). This is assuming that the visions of his dad on the movie screen are a hallucination and not "real", and while it's dangerous to assume anything isn't real in the Orbit, that was the way I read it.

She Never Saw the Show by Rachel Autumn Deering

Synopsis: A heroin addict on the run crosses paths with a pregnant, abandoned dog the same night everything goes to hell at the Orbit.

What Drive-In Movie Is It? Christiane F. This isn't really a drive-in movie (although, out of curiosity, I googled it and it looks like some people said they saw it at a drive-in, so THERE), but a gritty, realistic (and, in fact, based on a true story),depressing tale about a young woman succumbing to heroin addiction and prostitution with a rock and roll backdrop.

Thoughts: The first story that doesn't quite feel like it belongs, which is not to say it's bad. It is well written and emotionally engaging, and I enjoyed reading it. Well, not "enjoyed," exactly. You know how it is with things like this (see also: Massie's story, below). The first couple pages are more in the redneck violence groove we'd expect at this point in the anthology, with our heroin heroine looting smack and Dr. Pepper from the abusive drug dealer she's just blasted in his trailer. Then it settles into melancholy and self-loathing, but with a dark redemptive core.

The Humpers at the Threshold by Jonathan Janz

Synopsis: After Ricardo Montalban ruins his marriage (seriously), East Texas chump Arlo falls under the spell of a sexy scientist who takes "The Shadow Out of Time" very seriously.

What Drive-In Movie Is It? From Beyond: Kinky, campy Lovecraftian shenanigans involving sex-crazed mad scientists and mysterious doohickeys.

Thoughts: Almost great; let down by an overly goofy ending. The image of Twyla and Arlo making The Beast With Two Backs in the back of an old car while lightning flashes at a drive-in movie theater is great; it's like every Rob Zombie song ever. I was a bit worried that this was going to be a reductive origin story that made the Orbit and the comet just the byproduct of the Cthulhu mythos but it's better than that. Twyla is also a lot of fun; she reminds me, more than anything, of Maude Lebowski.

And then...

I get what Janz is doing with the ending, and he sets it up in a fair way, but it's just too 'zany' for me. Not that the rest of the story, or the whole dang Drive-In setting, isn't zany. But whereas the zaniness of "Hoppity White Rabbit" is at a consistent level throughout, the goofy ending here feels a bit different than everything that's gone before. Like it's a Family Guy cutaway gag, or something. And those have their place, but it didn't hit right for me.

It's Only a Movie by Cynthia Pelayo

Synopsis: A young girl's obsession with George Romero brings her to the Orbit, but she and her dog find themselves in a real life nightmare.

What Drive-In Movie Is It? Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things. The title is apt, but the parallels go beyond that: We have a nasty-minded, post-NOTLD zombie story that taps into some of what made the zombie touchstone great, including meanspirited bickering among a group of survivors and a scary, downbeat climax where it isn't only a movie, after all.

Thoughts: The psychological decay of the "Poodle Girl" in the original novel is one of the more disturbing parts; it's fun (and harrowing) to see Pelayo flesh out (heh heh heh) her story. I also appreciate that it's in a different tone than some of the rest. And, that's nice because an entire book of the same tone could get a little boring, and part of the fun of anthologies like these is seeing how different voices sing the same song. It also makes sense--this is a story from the eyes of a somewhat odd young girl; she shouldn't be talking with the same beautiful vulgarity as the grown-up rednecks in the other stories.

This helps the story, by the way, because the different tone means Pelayo plays this straighter; there's much less comic relief here (the idea of a sweet little girl who's memorized the opening credits to Night of the Living Dead is at least a little inherently funny, though), and the fate of the Poodle Girl is even more chilling here than it is in the original novel.

Blood Harmony by Chet Williamson

Synopsis: The Roots of American Music Tour's bus full of rockabilly relics and younger disciples gets trapped at the Orbit. This is bad news for all of them, especially because alcoholic jerk (and country music legend) Ike Lowder's attitude is only getting worse.

What Drive-In Movie Is It? HICKSPLOITATION DOUBLE FEATURE! Shanty Tramp and The Burning Hell. The former gives us any amount of Southern sex, sleaze, and violence, along with some provocative racial elements and rock and roll. The latter captures the sort of down-home, fire and brimstone exemplified by Satan Is Real by the Louvin Brothers (Ike Lowder is an obvious stand-in for the similarly turbulent Ira Louvin).

Thoughts: Lansdale gave us one outrageous look at alternate Elvis history; Williamson goes even further.

Williamson wrote a solid drive-in horror story of his own in Silver Scream ("The Return of the Neon Fireball"), but this is both better and different than that one. Instead of movies, he goes all-in on music: Country, gospel, blues, folk--all the stuff that blended together to give us American rock'n'roll. It's tons of fun, and while I never thought of myself who held Elvis in reverence (I like his music, I respect him, but I don't revere him), there's a part in here where I straight-up gasped in delighted, offended shock. Recommended.

Optimism at the Orbit by Josh Malerman

Synopsis: An eternally-optimistic canned peach salesman tells his life story and explains his plan to escape the Orbit.

What Drive-In Movie Is It? What's Up Front?: A dorky doofus has an inexplicably successful career as a door-to-door salesman.

Thoughts: Like many of the stories here, this is essentially a comedy. And, it's funny: My favorite part is the narrator saying that he finds the end of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre inspirational because the heroine lives another day, while his wife points out that Sally Hardesty has seen her friends and family butchered and is now a mad, shrieking shell of herself. That comedy is disarming, because it puts what happens to the wife in stark, harsh relief.

But, you know, I think there's just a little something more here. Optimism and the power of positive thinking is a distinctly American civil religion; it goes along well with the American focus on self-reliance and personal responsibility and entrepreneurship. On the one hand, all of this can be a good thing: Our narrator and his wife are comfortable and well-fed in the Orbit, versus the starving have-nots outside. Sound familiar? Here's where the dark side comes in, because he's able not only to justify his own position vis-a-vis the rest of society, but rationalize away abandoning his wife to the horde. Canned food for thought.

Give to Me Your Leather by Elizabeth Massie

Synopsis: Bonnie's life has been one of poverty, abuse, and thwarted dreams. Now, trapped in the Orbit, she listens to Stevie Nicks over and over and dreams of stardom. But she's about to attract a very different sort of fanbase.

What Drive-In Movie Is It? DOUBLE FEATURE: Hairspray and Gimme Shelter. The former isn't really a drive-in movie, but it features a large girl with amazing hair who dreams of stardom and lives in a surreal milieu of perversion and mob violence. The latter...isn't really a drive-in movie, either. But it's the perfect fit: Rock and roll dreams transmuted into the ultimate bad trip by chemicals and violent bikers.

Thoughts: It's Elizabeth Massie, not Elizabeth Missie, because she always hits and never misses. This is an excellent story. It joins "She Never Saw the Show" for being one of the two grimmest stories of the first half of the book. However, I think it's a bit better than the Deering: In that story, the mayhem of the Orbit doesn't have that much to do with the action--it's just the logical consequences of the protagonist's life playing out.

Speaking of logical consequences...something I appreciate with Massie's stories (I think I mentioned this a couple weeks ago when I discussed "Abed") is that, when she goes to extreme territory, it's because it follows "naturally" from the scenario. Sometimes with hardcore horror you get the sense that the writer is spinning big wheels of sexual perversions and torture methods and writing out the answers. Not here. Which is not to say this is any less hardcore. I've spent a lot of time in the world of the Drive-In the last few weeks, and I've built up an even stronger than normal tolerance for gore and depravity as a result (it helps that the sex and violence in the Drive-In books and these stories is mostly cartoonish). Still, I wasn't ready for this.

The fact that the ending might, if you squint, be vaguely redemptive is even more horrifying.

Behind Screen 4 by Owen King

Synopsis: A pervert convinces his long-suffering wife to drive him around, nude and in the trunk. When she decides to go to the Orbit, and then abandon him, things get weirder.

What Drive-In Movie Is It? Mondo Freudo. A colorful romp through the annals (heh) of human perversion. Nothing too hardcore (and if anything really upsets you, don't worry, it's probably just fake).

Thoughts: This is just a hoot of a story; actually laugh out loud funny (I laughed several times, not least when the narrator wonders if the Orbit calamity is just an elaborate, Christmas Carol ploy to scare him back into the confines of vanilla sex). We have another dimwitted but essentially likeable guy, in the vein of Malerman's and Janz's tales, but I think he's the most likable of the three. He's a pervert, sure, but an honest, harmless pervert. There's a fun bit of irony in the fact that the narrator and the other people in the community behind Screen 4 are weirdos by normal standards, but straight-laced and civic-minded by the standards of the Orbit.

Inasmuch as a man wearing only a bowling-ball bag and a used pair of panties, walking into an uncertain, dinosaur-infested future, is hopeful.

You know, I think that's the perfect note to end part one on. See you later this week!