Editorials
“Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater” Was Our Original Introduction to Joe Bob Briggs [TV Terrors]
For this month’s installment of “TV Terrors” we revisit the Joe Bob Briggs series “Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater,” which aired from 1986 through 1996 on The Movie Channel.
“Joe Bob’s Drive In Theater” came along before the internet, before cell phones, before Wikipedia, and hell, before Google. Joe Bob Briggs, with his garish cowboy outfits, self awareness, and love for beer, was a professor of genre cinema who made movie watching feel like an educational community experience. Even if you didn’t like what he was premiering on “Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater,” you at least got to learn something from Uncle Joe Bob, and he was always informative and entertaining. He always came prepared with one of his signature rants, and a nigh endless supply of movie facts that made every show special in its own way.
While “USA Up All Night” delivered the goods in classic schlock, horror, and trash cinema, Joe Bob Briggs offered up an education with his movie watching, which was (and still is) an absolute delight. Even in the digital age, there’s nothing like hearing Joe Bob educate about various filmmakers and the origin of certain sub-genres. Joe Bob Briggs is the pen name and persona of John Irving Bloom, a highly acclaimed and well respected movie critic, journalist, and provocateur who spent much of his days writing reviews for drive-in movies, and discussing modern America. Along with penning some highly coveted books exploring film, Bloom took Joe Bob Briggs to massive heights, including an entertaining stand up comedy special entitled “Dead In Concert.”
“Joe Bob’s Drive In Theater” ran from 1986 to 1996 with Joe Bob initially serving as a guest host and offering up comedic relief. Later in June 1987, Briggs was made the permanent host of the series. Eventually he was given input in the movie acquisitions by 1991. Format wise, “Joe Bob’s Drive In Theater” originally ran on Friday nights, before airing on Saturdays in 1988. Additionally, the show began with only one film per episode, before transitioning to double features in 1991 and then triple features in 1995.
On The Movie Channel, Joe Bob was allowed to be as silly and risqué as possible. All the while he educated his viewers on some of the greatest and or most obscure horror (and various other genre) films ever made. “Joe Bob’s Drive In Theater” garnered an excellent treasure trove of cult films that ranged from horror, science fiction, exploitation, erotica, and various other sub-sub-genres. Among some of the gems that Joe Bob viewed during the series’ run (many of which are still out of print!) the offerings included classics like Syngenor, Savage Streets, Basket Case, the Bikini Carwash Company movies, Small Kill, the nigh endless Emmanuelle movie series, Night Eyes 3, and the painfully underrated Jim Wynorski horror action comedy Hard to Die.
The features were often grouped together into themes (Nick Cassavetes Night, Emmanuelle Week, Post Apocalypse Month, Attack of the Killer Queen B’s Month) which helped elevate the novelty, and often featured special guests. Among them were Linda Blair (for Linda Blair month!) in which Joe Bob viewed many of her films, including the much derided comedy Repossessed. He also brought on fellow horror hosts like Zacherley, Elvira and Ghoulardi, and had great conversations with horror titans and various cult stars like Frank Henenlotter, Jim Wynorski, Robert Forster, Gary Busey, and Julie Strain, respectively.
And who can forget the buxom Honey the Mail Girl? She was later succeeded by Reno, Kat, Rusty, and currently the one and only Darcy for Shudder’s popular “The Last Drive-In.”
One of the more notable episodes of “Joe Bob’s Drive-In” featured Joe Bob screening the original Night of the Living Dead and Tom Savini’s fantastic remake. He was accompanied by surviving cast members of Romero’s original as well as Savini himself, all of whom contributed informative and fun anecdotes and recollections. Joe Bob is noticeably awestruck during these segments and everyone gets to offer their own discussion about working on the original classic. Savini also can’t help boasting about Romero’s masterpiece, amounting to what feels like a once in a lifetime experience.
For years, “Joe Bob’s Drive-in Theater” became the network’s highest-rated show and was twice nominated for the industry’s Cable ACE Award. The series sadly ended when The Movie Channel changed its format in early 1996. Joe Bob was off the air for only four months before joining the TNT network, where he hosted the equally loved “MonsterVision” for four years. As many know, “MonsterVision,” under Joe Bob’s lead, carried much of the format and humor over from his Movie Channel series, offering a great unofficial sequel. “MonsterVision” ended in 2000 when TNT also decided to change its format.
For many, “Joe Bob’s Drive In Theater” was their introduction to Joe Bob Briggs, a persona who was and remains an excellent source of horror movie knowledge, general wisdom, and sheer, unparalleled enthusiasm for the drive-in.
Is It On DVD/Blu-ray/Streaming? Many of the movies presented on the series can be found streaming or on physical media, while many of the movies featured still haven’t had an official release (Hard to Die, please!). Sadly none of the full original shows for “Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater” are available on any physical format. However, a massive collection of the segments shown before, between, and after the feature presentations are available in full on YouTube. You can also access fully restored footage on Joe Bob’s official Patreon Page, “The Lost Drive In.”
Horror and science fiction have always been a part of the television canvas, and constant attempts have been made over the years to produce classic entertainment. Some have fallen by the wayside, while others became mainstream phenomena. With “TV Terrors,” we take a look back at the many genre efforts from the 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s, exploring some shows that became cult classics, and others that sank into obscurity.
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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