Interviews
Joe Bob Briggs Previews “The Last Drive-In” Season 7 and Its New Format [Interview]
Last time I spoke with Joe Bob Briggs, the beloved horror host expressed his frustration with the biweekly — or fortnightly, as he likes to say — schedule that “The Last Drive-In” adopted for its sixth season.
Premiering tonight on Shudder, the seventh season embraces a new, monthly format with a double feature airing on the first Friday of each month — and Briggs is pleased about that.
“I love it. It’s so easy to tell people it’s on the first Friday of the month, and it’s a double feature,” he beams.
“We had all these East Coast people complaining about the double features, that they had to work the next day and they couldn’t stay up that late, so that’s why we went to the single features. And then we got complaints in the other direction. They said, ‘We miss the double features. It seemed like such a more full experience when we had the double features.’
“So I’m happy to be back with the double features, and I’m especially happy to be able to tell people something simple like, ‘It’s the first Friday.’ We’ll also have specials. It’s the same number of movies. It’s not like we’re cutting back on the movies. It’s just that showing them in double feature form makes it more of an event, and it makes it more like the drive-in, which is what we want it to be.”
Although the films shown on “The Last Drive-In” are kept secret, Briggs announced that tonight’s episode will celebrate the 100th birthday of what he calls “the first great American horror film” — leaving little doubt that the 1925 classic silent adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera will air.
“If you’re a horror fan and I say it’s a 100th birthday, you already know what the movie is, so it’s our least secret show that we’ve ever had,” he laughs. “The movie is rich with all kinds of things about film history, American history. There’s just so much to talk about involving that film.
“And then the second film is the weirdest remake of the first film from years later by one of the one of our favorite weirdo directors. I’m really happy that we’re launching the season with this particular double feature, because there’s so much to talk about.”
Spencer Charnas, frontman of the horror-inspired metalcore band Ice Nine Kills, will undergo a special effects transformation on the episode.
“The reason Spencer Charnas is coming on is that our makeup and effects guy, Shane Morton — who is one of the best in the business, and who actually teaches that all special effects makeup starts with Lon Chaney — he’s gonna go to work on Spencer with the goal of turning him into the ugliest man alive,” Briggs explains.
“He’ll have four and a half hours to do it. If you know Spencer, he’s a very good looking man, so it’s a great challenge to have.”
Briggs is part of the Ice Nine Kills cinematic universe as Judge Reinhold, the cheekily named judge presiding over Charnas’ murder trial in the “Welcome to Horrorwood” music video.
“I’m a latecomer to Ice Nine Kills fandom,” Briggs admits. “I didn’t realize all that they were doing with horror. It’s like the ultimate horror band now. They combine metal and horror. Their live shows, they reenact every famous horror film on stage, complete with blood and everything else.”
He continues, “Their music videos are like mini movies. They’re very professionally done. Spencer has a big horror convention [The Silver Scream] in Massachusetts now. He’s a huge horror fan, and he’s being a good sport with allowing us to ugly him up this Friday night.”
That begs the question: what kind of music does Joe Bob enjoy? “I listen to every kind of music. I like progressive country. I like jazz. I like metal. It just depends on what kind of mood I’m in.”
Briggs teased a few other things that fans have to look forward to this season on “The Last Drive-In,” which will include more than 30 films.
“We’re going to do our usual Walpurgisnacht show. I’m the only person that cares about it. Nobody else cares about it. Walpurgisnacht, being the European holiday that we don’t celebrate in America, is kind of the second Halloween, and I’ve been trying to bring it to America. Nobody wants to follow my lead, because it’s too hard to pronounce and too hard to understand. That would be our May show.
“And it so happens that the first Friday of June is the actual birthday of the drive-in. The original drive-in in Camden, New Jersey, was opened in 1932 on June 6. I get to do a deep dive into drive-in history that night, and I have identified the peak year of drive-ins — when there were the most drive-ins in America and when they were making the most money — and that year was 1958. So I can guarantee you we’re going to have a 1958 movie on June 6.”
Briggs is also returning to print, with his 1987 book Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In receiving an updated and expanded hardcover edition from Dark Horse Books on October 15.
“People have asked me for years to reprint the original books that came out in the ’80s that were reprints of my newspaper column when I first started writing about drive-in movies. I was just going to do a regular reprint, and then, through a series of very lucky coincidences, I got hooked up with Dark Horse.
“They had ideas for the book that were tremendous. They wanted to make it into this whole graphic thing, which they did, and it’s amazing. I actually went back and found the stuff that we had left out of the original book, just because it was a quickie Dell paperback, and we put everything in that was in the original column.”
Briggs also penned a new introduction for the book. “I had to explain to people that you’re going to read this, and you’re going to read about all this controversy that it caused, and you’re going to say, ‘What? That caused controversy?’ You’re not going to believe that this caused controversy, but it was the ’80s. It was a different time. The journalism community sort of ganged up on me.”
He explains, “The movies were considered just disposable trash, and it was considered beneath the dignity of a newspaper to even be reviewing them at all, much less celebrating them. So I took a lot of flack. I was always on the verge of being canceled, and eventually I was canceled,” he chuckles.
“It’s very flattering that Dark Horse wanted to do it, because they have the greatest artists and editors in the world.”
Briggs suspects that his other out-of-print books, including the 1990 follow-up Joe Bob Goes Back to the Drive In, will also be reissued, along with some new surprises.
“I wrote a series of articles for Texas Monthly back around the year 2000 that was the complete history of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” he notes. “I think we’re gonna turn that into a book. I interviewed 100% of everybody who worked on Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Let’s put it all in book form and get it get it published. I’ll probably do it with Dark Horse, because I like them.”
Showing no signs of slowing down at the age of 72, Briggs still regularly hits the road for live shows, convention appearances, and the occasional acting gig.
“I’m taking these movies that have been that have been rescued by the American Genre Film Archive and turning them into double features and doing these Indoor Drive-In Geek-Out shows. The most popular one that I do right now is ‘Cult of the Rock Star Night,’ a Bubba Ho-Tep and Rock ‘n’ Roll High School double feature, but I’m gonna start doing new ones. I’m gonna do a Russ Meyer show and some others.”
No stranger to cameos ranging from Casino and Face/Off to The Stand and a deleted scene in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Briggs has been appearing in more indie horror films lately.
Fans-turned-filmmakers have cast him in the meta horror-comedy anthology Scare Package, throwback slasher sequels The Barn Part II and Bloody Summer Camp 2: Red Horizon, anthology creature feature Cryptids, and the upcoming found footage werewolf movie The Fairfield County Four, among others.
“I really only do those when these indie filmmakers asked me to do them. I’m always eager to help indie filmmakers. I’ve gone to some interesting places all over the country and made a lot of new friends by appearing in those movies. Usually I’m either the sheriff or the janitor,” he laughs. “I’m happy to be either one.”
Seven seasons in, Briggs remains surprised and touched by the loyalty and enthusiasm of “The Last Drive-In” fans, loving dubbed the Mutant Fam.
“They continue to feel a kinship with what we do. They trust us, and they show up week after week after week, and they don’t hold it against us if we have a turkey show. They say, ‘Oh, the next one will be better,'” Briggs says.
“We get a little bit of that of that stuff where people say, ‘The show was much better in the first year.’ We occasionally get that, but we don’t get near as much as most shows get. Any show that stays on for a while, there’s eventually that backlash where they say, ‘Well, it used to be good,’ I’ve been amazed, because I’m waiting for it! Occasionally one or two here or there, but we haven’t been afflicted with that.
“That’s why I want us to keep the excitement level high and do things like this show that we’re doing Friday night, so that we so that we don’t just start repeating ourselves and becoming boring. And I hope we don’t, cause I enjoy doing the show!”
“The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs” Season 7 premieres tonight at 9pm ET on Shudder and AMC+.
Interviews
George A. Romero’s ‘Day of the Dead’ Gets New Life After Search for Long-Lost Film Elements
“I was told that this couldn’t be found by some people that I worked with, and that just set a fire in me,” Scream Factory producer Jeff Roland says of the newly restored Day of the Dead in 4K from the seemingly long-lost original interpositive.
The four-disc release, loaded with special features and new interviews in addition to the restoration, arrives almost exactly three years after Roland began his long pursuit of the missing elements that he was warned were lost to time.
It’s a fitting journey for Day of the Dead, the third film in horror master George A. Romero‘s zombie series, considering the film’s long road to reappraisal after its initial failure at the box office in 1985. A huge departure from the popular Dawn of the Dead, the third film set its battle for humanity’s survival in an underground bunker, waged between a small group of scientists and ruthless soldiers.
It was underground where Roland began his pursuit of the missing interpositive elements, starting with the old-fashioned paper trail in Scream Factory’s basement, sorting through records from their 2013 Blu-ray release.
Scream Factory’s Years-Long Quest to Restore a Horror Classic
“So, there I was, going through boxes and boxes and boxes, trying to find this one specific invoice for a delivery company amongst thousands of pieces of paper,” Roland tells Bloody Disgusting. “That was the start. I was able to figure out the delivery service, and from there, it just went into a whirlwind of… drama? Yeah, there was some drama in there at one point; I thought it had been stolen by someone.”
Roland notes of his Indiana Jones-like journey, “the short and sweet of it is, it took forever, I was trying to find leads. Anything. I was seeing ridiculous things online, you know, like it was in a diamond mine in South Africa. I even followed up on that. I thought it would be hilarious if it were actually being kept in the Wampum mine. So I called them, and this poor woman who answered the phone sounded like she got this call every other day.”
Roland notes, “The records, for film vaults and such, aren’t the greatest. I’ll just say that. So, I think that’s, over time, that’s something that we definitely need to improve upon in this business.”
John Harrison Reflects on Day of the Dead‘s Surprising Legacy and Original Vision
While now considered another Romero zombie classic, critics and audiences rejected Day of the Dead at first, especially the Caribbean-style theme music from composer and first assistant director John Harrison.
Few are as surprised by the massive shift in the film’s reception as Harrison. The filmmaker and longtime Romero collaborator reflects, “Now, if you had asked any of us, and George included, that, ‘hey man, you know, in 45 years, this movie’s gonna be considered like a cinema classic.’ We all probably would have said, ‘Oh, we’re making a movie, man. We’re just having fun making a movie, and God, can you believe it, that people are paying us to do this?’ I don’t want to minimize it. I don’t want to say that we were just goofing around.”
Harrison continues, “All of us were really serious about our craft and about what we were trying to do. But I don’t think that any of us, maybe George, hopefully, had some feeling that his films would last for a while. I was a kid, you know? I just wanted to have fun, make movies, and be part of that whole scene. So, it was really disappointing when Day came out, because it was a bomb. I mean, let’s be truthful about it. It was a bomb. And people hated the score. So, 40-some years later, it’s become, for some people, the apogee of that first dead trilogy. The best of the three in its own way.”
Harrison also points out that Romero’s Land of the Dead would later face a similar reception and reappraisal, which was all the more fascinating considering early budget cuts caused Romero to drastically scale back Day of the Dead‘s story. A lot of what was excised was later revisited in Land of the Dead. “That was actually part of the original Day of the Dead concept,” Harrison explains of the 2005 film.
“Because of budget and schedule and so forth and so on, and ratings,” he tells BD. “George couldn’t do it, and that’s why we ended up with the more condensed version of Day of the Dead, which everybody now knows and loves. In a way, I’m kind of glad, because it has a real identity being trapped in those caves, and the end of the world, the two sides of society. Going at it, headbutting, to try and survive. But the whole Fiddler’s Green idea and all of that stuff that ended up in Land of the Dead was part of the original Day.”
George Romero Predicted Social Media and Modern Culture
Suzanne Romero, founder & president of the George A. Romero Foundation and the late filmmaker’s wife, breaks down the film’s trajectory even further. “The original Day of the Dead script, I think, at one point, it was written for a $12 million budget, and it was basically cut in half. And it’s a great script. But that’s what happens with filmmakers, and you gotta make do.”
She continues, “But I really think that this film is really for the fans and people who love physical media. And in terms of the foundation, well, anytime George Romero is mentioned is good, because what we are doing is to provide a healthy legacy. We’re uplifting his legacy, we’re supporting the archive, and we’re also supporting the Horror Study Center. So, all of these three things are what the Foundation is striving to do. As far as I’m concerned, the more we say George Romero’s name, the better it is.”
The mention of Land of the Dead brings up one recurring theme of Romero’s work: the filmmaker’s ability to keep his pulse so thoroughly on the current social climate in a way that feels prescient.
Roland agrees, “I think one of the most amazing things that doesn’t get talked about enough is in 2007, he came out with Diary of the Dead. That pretty much predicted YouTube culture. I mean, we’re going through it right now, the exact things that were happening in Diary of the Dead. It’s incredible.”
“Well, that was intentional,” Harrison says, “because I was part of that and worked with Peter [Grunwald] and George on developing that whole script and production. And that was definitely intentional. There was nothing accidental or, ‘Great timing, guys!’ It was not like that at all. It was intentional.”
Suzanne Romero agrees, “[George] was very wary of social media, but very wary of the internet. He was always very suspicious and thought that we ought to beware; we ought to be walking very carefully into this space.“
“Which we haven’t done, of course,” Harrison adds.
“No, of course not,” Romero responds. “And AI. I mean, he would be writing about AI right now and thinking, danger! What the fuck are you doing, people? But not only that, but he also did it in a layman’s way. You know, he really brought it to very familiar language, and people that spoke to each other, it was in a very natural way, and it was the way he developed characters. The way he evolved with how his women were more powerful, because he kind of regretted that in Night of the Living Dead, [Barbra] was weak. He always thought the women ought to be much stronger, and I think it started with Season of the Witch.”
Everyone Wanted to Be a Zombie in a Romero Movie
George A. Romero’s legacy certainly looms large over Scream Factory’s impressive new release, offering a comprehensive look at Day of the Dead through a dizzying number of new audio commentaries, featurettes, and interviews detailing everything from the “mine fever” that spread among the cast and crew to Ernest Dickerson‘s high-pressure day on set running the second unit camera.
That’s also reflected in Romero’s zombies themselves, dating back to 1968’s Night of the Living Dead.
“In Pittsburgh, it was a badge of honor to be a zombie in a George Romero movie,” Harrison recounts. “Everybody from the Dean of Students at Carnegie Mellon to the presidents of corporations. I had a story that came out of Dawn. I was pitching a commercial for my own little company, and I’d done a bit for George as ‘Screwdriver Zombie’ on Dawn. I didn’t get cleaned up enough, and I went to this meeting at the first thing in the morning. The vice president of this bank is looking at me, going, ‘Is there something wrong with you?’ I said, ‘No, no, that’s what I know? I’m fine.’ He said, ‘Well, you’re bleeding out of your ear.’ Okay, so then I had to tell them the whole story. And he listened to it, and I thought, well, this is gonna be ridiculous. I’m coming in talking about being a zombie in a movie, and I want to sell him this, like, multi-thousand-dollar commercial that the bank is gonna pay for. He listened very carefully to me, and he said, ‘Well, listen, we’ll talk about the commercial, but do you think I could be a zombie in one?”
That hasn’t changed in the present, either.
Suzanne Romero confirms, “We’re producing George’s film, Twilight of the Dead, and we get requests, ‘Can I be a zombie in this film?’ So, even today, people are very interested, and yet it’s terrible. I mean, it’s hours and hours of makeup.”
Scream Factory’s Day of the Dead four-disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray Collector’s Edition releases on June 16.
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