Rating of
0.5/4
Little Girl?
Drive-In Massacre - wrote on 05/28/09
I'm just going to jump right into it: Drive In Massacre a movie directed by Stu Segall, simply has to be one of the worst/most entertaining movies I've ever seen, (By the way, I am never going to call "Drive In Massacre" a "film" anytime during the review. It really doesn't deserve that title).
For some reason or another, this movie has never really gained a cult fan base and is never on one of the "worst movies ever made" lists, (I assume that it's due to the fact that it was never spoofed on Mystery Science Theater 3000, they probably would have, but it's much too gory for a basic cable t.v. program, but it would have made a great episode). It's easily as bad as any Ed Wood movie, and as a youtube friend of mine, barringer82 put it:"It's *Manos of the 70s."
Ok, *sigh*....Basically, this movie is about a Drive In movie theater (go figure) that becomes the scene of a double-murder. The man who runs the theater and at the same time despises his job is a guy named Austin Johnson, played by one time actor, Newton Naushaus. Johnson inexplicably leaves the theater open the day right after these 2 horrible murders take place.
Two cops (who are both even worse at acting than Naushaus), and ONLY two cops during the entire movie, investigate a serial murder case! The very day after the first murders take place, (SUPRISE!) 2 more occur. So, basically this pattern goes on for 70-minutes straight, with the exception of 2-scenes.
The first being a really poorly shot sequence of a character who walks around a carnival , which you can tell was a real carnival that just so happened to be going on at the same time as the shooting of this movie. The filmmakers thought the movie would look more high budget if they shot at the carnival with a camcorder. It has little to relevance to anything in the movie... Oh, by the way it's obvious they didn't have a shooting permit while shooting that scene because it's the worst lighting I've ever seen in anything, ever.
The other the scene that was added just to put another 5-10 minutes to the movie, was a scene were the cops have a possible suspect for the murder , and for an unbearable amount of time we follow a man (played by George "Buck" Flower) who is chasing around a "little girl" (I put that in quotes because the man who chases the little girl around, screams "LITTLE GIRL?" literally 10-20 times during the scene) around an abandoned storing facility. We have never met these two characters before, and after being unbelievably confused, the audience finally the two cops we've been familiar with and we learn that the man with the "little girl" was just an idiot who escaped from a mental hospital earlier that day.
By the end of the movie we learn nothing, as it just so happens that "THE KILLER WAS NEVER CAUGHT" and ***spoiler warning*** as we presumebly see the corpse of Austin Johnson (because it's really hard to tell if it's even a corpse at all due to the atrocious lighting throughout the film), a description pops up in front of the screen explaining: "The killer was never found and still on the loose killing people in movie theaters across the country." After this we hear a voice over a loud speaker saying, "May I have your attention please! There is a killer loose in the theater. I repeat. There is a killer loose in the theater. Everybody please stay calm" (I love how they didn't even think to as far as the home-video release), a gimmicky ending that goes back to the films of William Castle.
Okay. Yes, Drive in Massacre is bad, really bad, unbelievably bad. It's one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my entire life. My opinion will never change on how bad I think the movie is. HOWEVER, D.I.M. (I like that abbreviation) is bad in the way "MANOS": The Hands of Fate is.
I first saw DIM about a month ago. I was with four of my friends and we still all talk about it on a nearly daily basis. We constantly quote lines like "Do you really wanna talk to that piece of puke?", "All he does around here is jerk off!", "It could be your bad breath", "You've got the brains of a piece of we liver", "YOU EITHER CHARGE ME AND LOCK ME UP OR GET OFF OF MY BACK!!!", "Man, you smell like you've been sleeping in a pig pen!", "LITTLE GIRL?", "Let's go get that bald headed garbage can!", "There is a murderer loose in the theater", and "You know what that Ing--- you know what that is Ingleson?" (a moment in which a flubbed line is kept in). So, it has a special place in my heart when it comes to atrocious movies, and if I ever make a top 100 favorite movie characters list, Austin Johnson would easily make my list.
So, I don't know, check it out if you want to laugh for 70 minutes, as well as enjoy the company of Newton Naushsaus....I'm amazed I was able to write a review this lengthy about DIM because, honestly, I was speechless for a good 15 minutes after seeing it for the first time.
