Few names ring as true to a particular crowd of horror-loving folk as Joe Bob Briggs. The man has been an absolute staple to several generations as a movie critic turned horror movie host on Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater from ’86 to ’96, as well as MonsterVision on TNT from ’96 to 2000. I personally have some memories of Mr. Briggs from MonsterVision as a budding genre film fan, but it wasn’t until Shudder brought him back to TV in the streaming era with The Last Drive-In that I truly came to the party. Better late than never has rarely rung so true for me.
As a devoted Last Drive-In fan for the last several years, I was delighted to discover that Briggs was making a trip to my hometown of Austin, Texas for an in-person double feature of The Brain and Don’t Panic, two movies that oh so many cinephiles might dismiss. Billed as Joe Bob’s Indoor Drive-In, the event was appropriately titled Cerebellum Night, given the nature of the double bill. Briggs introduced the films to a packed, passionate house ready for some schlock and awe. I was amongst them. Amongst my people.
Briggs took the stage in his signature cowboy boots and Western-style jacket for an impassioned monologue to open the show. The 69-year-old lover of genre film passionately explained the essential elements of a “brain” movie to an open-eared audience. What are these elements, you ask? Well, a vat that the brain can exist in, electrical current, and, most importantly, a mad scientist. But the runner for the night was the oxygenated saline solution that these films have adopted as the means to preserve a living brain. These elements are all very much in play in 1988’s The Brain, the first movie of the night’s double feature.
The man waxed poetically with the enthusiasm of a tenured professor at a prestigious ivy league school about Donovan’s Brain, the 1942 sci-fi novel by author Curt Siodmak that serves as the basis for the Brain movie as we know it. Briggs knows his stuff. His passion is infectious, and his adoration for the material is impossible to fake. This was never clearer than when he monologued about brain waves, the final essential element seen in these films.
“Brain waves do things to your body, not to anybody else’s body. Fortunately, for the history of art, though, the exploitation writers and filmmakers of the last 80 years said, ‘Well, we disagree with that. We don’t think that’s good enough. We think brain waves do emanate from your brain and fuck with other people. We think brain waves are powerful as fuck.'”
Briggs demonstrates an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject, dating back to the first adaptation of Siodmak’s work, The Lady and the Monster, leading us up to The Brain, aka the “high watermark of brainsploitation.” He speaks like a southern college professor who moonlights as a carnival sideshow hype man who says phrases like “step right up” on the regular. He also drops truthful tidbits that lead to generous laughter from the crowd, such as, “There’s no such thing as a nice disembodied brain.”
What sticks out most when watching Briggs talk is the utter lack of cynicism on display. This man can genuinely find something nice to say about movies that many might refer to as “trash” or “so very bad.” At the very least, this is a person who can make a lecture on movies that are not exactly cinematic classics (at least not in the traditional sense) downright fascinating. I mean, who would have ever thought being educated on the years of Canada serving as a tax haven for filmmakers would be so engaging? That’s what Briggs brings to the table: pure, unfiltered positivity and love for the genre.
Briggs doesn’t linger when discussing movies he’s not overly fond of. He’d rather wax poetically about the likes of Re-Animator. Who among us wouldn’t? Perhaps the most striking thing was the Q&A portion of the evening, between the wild but fun The Brain, and the baffling Don’t Panic. Anyone who has ever been to a post-screening Q&A with filmmakers, or has seen people of notoriety at a convention, knows how these things can go. The light draining from the guest of honor’s eyes as a “two-part” question or a “question that is really more of a comment” lingers. Briggs takes everyone’s questions with patience and answers with true sincerity. He makes everyone feel heard and like they’re in this together.
To further demonstrate a charming lack of cynicism or discrimination for ignored cinema, Briggs was asked what movie he loved that might most surprise the audience. “My aunt used to take me to all kinds of movies when I was very, very young,” he prefaced. “I’m embarrassed to say that I like the 1962 State Fair musical that was filmed at the Texas State Fair.” No judgment from the crowd, only kind laughter. Everyone is here to have a good time, nobody is here to be high-and-mighty or condescending about any of this. That’s the energy Briggs brings with him, the energy film communities of every kind could use more of.
Our second movie of the evening, director Ruben Galindo Jr.’s Don’t Panic, for my money, is so very bad. But it only even halfway works watching it with a crowd like this. Beyond that, Briggs teed up the ball in an impossibly intriguing way by describing it as “probably the greatest movie ever made about a 30-year-old teenager wearing dinosaur pajamas.” He added, “The result is what I would call an agreeably goofy Freddy Kreuger rip-off story if the Hallmark Channel made horror.” Spot-on.
Briggs takes everything in stride and is nothing if not honest. I had the chance to meet him briefly after the show, and he asked my pal Jeff and I what we thought of Don’t Panic. I very honestly told him that I thought it was rough. Briggs merely chuckled rather than take any offense, genuinely seeming to enjoy the varied opinions from those who took part in his evening of hand-picked ’80s flicks.
Even when discussing the state of modern horror, Briggs is endlessly optimistic. Not only does he name-check the likes of Jordan Peele (NOPE) and David Gordon Green (Halloween Ends) as filmmakers to be optimistic about, but he sees the decadent era we’re experiencing as a good thing – even when it’s not.
“We’re experiencing a period of a lot of money being spent on horror, and the reason for that is The Shape of Water won the fucking Academy Award in 2016. That’s what you have to do for anybody with money to notice. Since then, we’ve had all those big-budget remakes. Horror is becoming like Broadway musicals. We have all these Broadway musicals from the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s, and we just revive them every five years. We never invent a new one. Horror is a little bit like that now, where every Stephen King film gets remade five, six times. Or, you do a series of sequels. That means it’s a decadent period in horror. But it also means that people are throwing cash at horror like never before, which means it filters down to the indie guys. So, it’s a good thing. It’s not a bad thing.”
Most importantly, be it through The Last Drive-In or these live shows, Briggs is fostering a communal experience in cinema at a time when that is becoming less common. Even in the streaming era, The Last Drive-In is appointment viewing for thousands who engage with one another positively on Twitter during the show. Twitter is rarely so upbeat. That vibe carries over to the live show, to be certain.
His sentiment is felt. This community is largely and decidedly un-toxic and welcoming. That’s refreshing. That’s Joe Bob Briggs.
Catch up on The Last Drive-In streaming on Shudder.
