Drive Ins of Death

If there is one US cinematic experience completely alien to the UK viewer, it is the 'Drive In'.  Which, probably, is why I find films set against the background of this uniquely American experience quite fascinating. While we in Europe might have films about ghostly presences (Phantom of the Opera or Argento's Opera) or mad killers lurking around theatres (Theatre of Death), giving an excuse for interpolations of 'high culture' in order to 'legitimise' the horror, making it safe for discerning 'highbrow' audiences, US exploitation film makers have tended to prefer the Drive In cinema as a background for such shenanigans, with some B-movie happily playing out as the atrocities unspool.  All it all feels so much more, well, cinematic, not to mention egalitarian: no pretensions of 'art' or 'culture' here.  I watched two such films over this past weekend, both from the seventies.  While Curtis Harrington's Ruby (1977), with its semi-name cast,  draws clear inspiration from a slew of seventies 'possession' films such as The Exorcist, not to mention drawing on the gangster milieu popularised by the Godfather films, Drive In Massacre (1976) is unashamed schlock played out by a no-name cast, with its tale of psychopath chopping up patrons of a shabby drive in drawing inspiration from just about every shabby psycho-on-the-loose picture ever made.

Both, in their own ways, are enjoyable pictures, although springing little in the way of surprises in plot or characters and neither exhibiting much originality, they each bring a certain style to their subjects.  Although a Dimension Pictures release, Ruby has the feel of a latter days AIP production about it, when they were trying to move 'upmarket' with slightly better casts and production values, but still not able to disguise the fact that they were producing exploitation films.  With Curtis Harrington in the director's chair, Ruby moves along briskly enough, with its various set-pieces - strangulation with film stock, impaled on trees, blood pouring from the soft drinks dispenser, some Exorcist-style possessed teen antics and so on - effectively staged and a real sense of atmosphere and menace being built up around the run down Drive In and adjacent swamp. Nevertheless, the whole production has a certain rough-around-the-edges feel, which ultimately works in its favour, making it feel akin to the B-movie (in this case Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman), which is constantly playing out on the tatty big screen.  Although this firmly dates the film's setting to the fifties, it could just as easily have been set twenty years earlier,  Indeed, for Piper Laurie's titular gangster's moll turned backwoods Drive In proprietor, time has stood still since her mobster squeeze Nicky was gunned down in the nearby swamp by his associates.  Unfortunately, his vengeful spirit, believing that Ruby betrayed him, returns to torment her, manifesting himself via their now sixteen year old mute daughter (born as he died) with a series of violent poltergeist phenomena, which results in the deaths of several of her ex-mobster staff.  Laurie receives decent support from the ever stalwart Stuart Whitman and Roger Davis (who earlier had the thankless task of replacing Pete Duel in Alias Smith and Jones), who both help sell the script's more bizarre digressions.

While the titular venue of Drive In Massacre is every bit as shabby and moth eaten as that in Ruby, it is located firmly in the then present day and the middle of a city.  The film itself is precisely the sort of grainily shot, poorly poverty row production the title might suggest.  While it has its fair share of gore, as patrons of the Drive In have limbs and heads hacked off with a sword, it quickly settles down to be a blackly comic police procedural, as a pair of middle aged, overweight wise cracking police detectives chase down various leads.  All of which lead to dead ends.  This, however, is where the film frustrates, as a large part of its seventy four minute running time is taken up with them following and questioning various weirdos, (not to mention shooting a psycho with a machete menacing a little girl), none of whom is the culprit, rather than actually following the activities of the killer.  It is, after all, called Drive In Massacre, leading the casual viewer to expect some kind of cheap ass slasher movie.  But the biggest sin committed by the film is that we never actually have the killer revealed to us, the makers instead opting to climax it in 'meta' fashion, with an announcement that the Drive In killer is on the loose, targeting Drive Ins all over the US.  In fact, he is suspected to be in this Drive In right now.  (Obviously designed to echo the sequence in William Castle's The Tingler, where Vincent Price warns the audience that the Tingler is loose in the theatre and that they need to scream in order to save themselves).   Despite this let down, Drive In Massacre maintains its interest with some good performances, a sleazy atmosphere and some decent dialogue from the detectives.  One can't help but suspect that some of its inspiration might have come from Peter Bogdanovich's Targets (1968), in which a sniper menaces a Drive In showing a retrospective of the movies of an old-time horror star (Boris Karloff).  But whereas Targets smartly tried to explore the relationship between real and make believe violence on screen, while never losing sight of itself being a B-movie exploiting screen violence and horror, Drive In Massacre, knowing its limitations, settles for being just an exploitation quickie.  Not that it is any the worse for that.