The Last Drive-In is back! To celebrate this supersized sixth season, Joe Bob Briggs and “Darcy” Diana Prince filmed a live double-feature tribute to the legendary Roger Corman during their recent jamboree in Las Vegas.
“Of the hundreds of people I have interviewed and met over the years, there are just two or three that I’m in awe of. One of them is Roger Corman. We gave him an award engraved on a Chevy hubcap 40 years ago, so we had to come up with something better. We gave him an award engraved on a Cadillac hubcap because we don’t do foreign cars.”
Joe Bob Briggs has had many memorable moments over the last five seasons of The Last Drive-In and across his career. But this particular night was special in a way that Briggs counts as a favorite career highlight. “It was great that Roger, at 97 years old, agreed to come out to the Drive-in and spend that night with us; it was magic. I will never forget it, and I was trying to get Roger off of his game. He’s got standard responses for a lot of questions that people ask him over and over again, and I think I was partially successful at getting him to talk about things that I haven’t heard him talk about before. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever done.”
It’s rare for anybody to do anything for the span of 70 years, and Joe Bob pinpoints celebrating Corman’s 70 years in filmmaking as an ultimate The Last Drive-In moment.
“Roger Corman comes out on that stage, and we’re celebrating his 70th year, not his 70th year as a person, but his 70th year as a film producer. There are very few people in any aspect of motion pictures who have worked for 70 years. There are some actors who started as child actors and worked into their old age and have probably worked for 70 years. But aside from that, there are no producers, there are no directors. Roger’s first movie was a movie that he made in Las Vegas in 1954. He was the producer on it, and he’s still planning movies. He has three movies in development. He does not know the meaning of retirement.”
Proving Joe Bob’s point, Corman announced an upcoming reboot of The Little Shop of Horrors with Joe Dante set to direct. The news was officially announced following The Last Drive-In special.
In the age of on-demand streaming, where everyone essentially watches things movies on their couch at their own pace, The Last Drive-In has managed to create a weekly event. Fans tune in simultaneously, religiously, on Friday nights and share a sense of community via social media. “That’s the main thing that I love about it, we created appointment TV on streaming, so we got the best of both worlds. We have the big event time when we’re all together and communicating online, but then we’re also available two days later. You can watch the show on your phone by yourself if you want to. That’s not the way I recommend celebrating these movies. It’s not so much the movie as the celebration of the movie and the way we talk about it and the way we either honor it or sometimes deconstruct it.”
Celebration is the key here. So much of being a movie fan, but being a horror movie fan in particular is about evangelism. We all do it, regardless of whether you’re a film critic, a journalist, a mechanic, or an accountant — what’s the first thing you do when you see a great movie? Tell everyone within shouting distance. Spread the word. Get noisy about it. Joe Bob is the head cheerleader when it comes to getting noisy about movies in danger of getting left behind in the digital age.
“When we show a movie like Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker or The Baby, movies that have been forgotten over the years, we can recreate that time when you could make anything. We’re not in that time anymore. There are too many gatekeepers controlling what we can watch. It’s great when somebody says, ‘This is my first time watching.’ It’s even greater when they say, ‘This is my first horror film,’ or ‘This is my first time really enjoying this type of film.’ There’s converting people to the movie, then there’s converting people to the genre, and that’s great.”
Joe Bob definitely knows a thing or two about converting fans to the dark side. “I love it when people come up at the conventions and say, ‘I’ve been a horror fan for years, and I’ve watched all your shows, and my boyfriend is new.’ And I’ll say, ‘Oh, she dragged you here, didn’t she? You’re infected now.’ I love it. You say it’s evangelism. It is evangelism. People are converting their significant others to horror. I love that aspect of it.”
As for what’s in store for the rest of the season, Joe Bob and The Last Drive-In crew have some surprises up their sleeves, naturally. There may be a summer marathon on the horizon. And we definitely have what’s being dubbed a “Comfort Food Night” to look forward to. “I’ve picked what I think is the comfort food movie of the ’80s. It’s comfort food for people who were in the ’80s, but also a comfort food movie for people who just love the ’80s, and we’ll see if people agree. It’s a movie that everybody has seen, or at least everybody in our world has seen. It’s still kind of politically incorrect and controversial after all these years, but you watch it because… I don’t know why you watch it.” Well, because it’s comfort food! We have some guesses of our own, but we’ll keep those to ourselves for now.
Joe Bob’s infamous drive-in totals kick off each movie with a quick tally of sex, death, and noteworthy moments. While Joe Bob ranks Corman’s Deathstalker pretty high on his list of favorite drive-in totals, he ultimately gives the prize to Phil Tippett’s Mad God. “The drive-in totals on that thing were incredible. They went on forever. They went on longer than the movie. The guy worked on the movie for 30 years, so I think those were probably the most amazing drive-in totals ever.”
The Last Drive-In Walpurgisnacht episodes are becoming something of a tradition. This season will mark the show’s third Walpurgisnacht celebration, and Joe Bob hopes the holiday will finally catch on in the US. “We are trying to bring Walpurgisnacht from Europe to America and have the second Halloween and really celebrate it. Now it’s a difficult transfer because it’s about getting really drunk and dancing naked and having sex with the devil.”
Some of us would argue that actually sounds like a pretty easy sell, but Joe Bob insists it’s been an uphill battle trying to bring this to the States. And if we look around this Walpurgisnacht (April 30), we’ll likely see a severe lack of dancing “nekkid.”
“This will be our third or fourth year to celebrate Walpurgisnacht on the show, and we have totally failed in our mission. It has not caught on in America. People are not having Walpurgisnacht parties. I think I’m going to hit it really hard this year on social media, though. Get your alcohol. Here’s what they drink in Sweden. Here’s what they drink in Germany. Get all this stuff, get Maibock. Maibock is the beer you drink on this day because it’s the Festival of the Witches. Who wouldn’t be into that?” Who indeed.
“They do this thing halfway to Halloween. What the fuck is that? Do Walpurgisnacht. It is exactly halfway to Halloween. We should have Walpurgisnacht festivals. When the Pagans did it, they would sacrifice virgins and shit. We don’t have to go that far.”
As Joe Bob explains the trials and tribulations of bringing Walpurgisnacht to America, I see what the problem may be. If we’re going to do Walpurgisnacht, we’ve got to go all in—not a watered-down, half-assed version. Round up the Maibock and a few willing sacrifices or bust. Let’s get authentic with it and remain true to the spirit of the holiday. Joe Bob remains optimistic for this year’s Walpurgisnacht festivities. “We’re going to keep trying.”
The Last Drive-In season 6 premiered on March 15 on Shudder. You can catch new episodes streaming live every other Friday night, with the replay available on Sundays.
Watch our full interview with Joe Bob Briggs below.
