I sure wish my mother danced and my father rocked. And rolled.
I remember going to a drive-in theater somewhere in Indiana during 1992. We watched a double-feature of Honey, I Blew Up the Kid (which I loved) and Encino Man, which absolutely bored me shitless. While the latter film was playing, I turned around in the car and watched Batman Returns in the far corner of the drive-in.
In the summer of 2000, I visited my girlfriend in South Carolina. We watched the first X-Men film. I’m astonished by the fact that that theater, “The Big Mo”, is still in operation!
When we were young, our parents took us to the drive-in several times a summer, it seems. We saw Mary Poppins, Bambi and other Disney fare. I think we also saw Journey to the Center of the Earth and Cleopatra there.
One time we saw a vampire flick. I have no memory of the movie but they gave out little clear packets, like those you get ketchup and mustard in, as promos. The claim was that it was blood but Pops explained that it wasn’t real. Ours lived in our fridge for several years before we moved and it got tossed out.
The family of one of my first grade classmates owned the nearest drive-in. I had the impression that they lived inside the screen, as there were a few windows on the side that faced the highway. Don’t know if that was true but I thought it would be cool to live there.
The playground was great. We got to go by ourselves while our parents stayed in the car. There was a ramp that went down to the concession stand that seemed kind of strange to me and the restrooms always had lines and the floor, it seems, was always wet.
In the 70’s, they added a swap meet and in the 80’s, they became swap meet only. I have a brass skeleton key that I bought there that has been on my key ring ever since. A Home Depot now stands where the theater used to be.
As we were leaving my boyfriend’s car chose to stall out right over one of those spike strips. About a half mile down the road we had to pull over to change a tire.
We really liked ozoners when we were in our 20s (the 1970s) and went to them frequently. The last time we went to one was in 1989 to see the Clint Eastwood movie “Pink Cadillac.” It wasn’t by choice. I was a newspaper entertainment writer and did an article about a long-closed D-I that re-opened for one last season, and I was there to interview people. The last time we voluntarily went to a drive-in was to see “Purple Rain,” with “Cat People” as the co-feature. There are a couple of them still operating (summer weekends only) within reasonable driving distance, and both of them are very well-attended. We’ve never been motivated to go, but we don’t go to indoor theaters anymore either. Who needs the hassle. We just wait for the video release.
And that’s one of the two reasons drive-ins disappeared, virtually overnight. In 1985, the top Christmas gift was the VCR. No coincidence that 1986 was the last summer for many drive-ins. People just stopped going and stayed home. In tandem with the new-found ease of home entertainment was urban sprawl. Drive-ins were built on cheap land alongside good roads within a few miles of civilization. When civilization began creeping toward them and housing developments were built, the land skyrocketed in value and the companies that ran drive-ins sold out to shopping center developers. Who wouldn’t? Many of the ozoners that still exist are there because they are still out in the boondocks where development isn’t desireable, yet.
We live in the Northeast and in their heyday many in this area were open year-round and showed first-run movies. I recall seeing “Summer of 42” in January, using one of their in-car heaters. It was still cold.
Too bad they went away. I love perusing Google images for pictures of abandoned drive-ins. There are few things quite as spooky and forlorn as a long-abandoned drive-in theater.
oh the memories. San Jose area in the 60’s. We didn’t go a lot, but it was such a treat !
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We’d actually bring our pajamas to change into (we needed “play clothes” to take advantage of the playground at the base of the screen before the movies started). How were we to know we weren’t the only ones stripping out of their clothes during the movies ?
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My mom realized what a ripoff the concession stand was early on, so she would make english muffin pizzas and bring them along for dinner.
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I remember that LONG trek to the (single) bathroom somewhat centrally located in the lot. And the even longer, and scarier trek BACK to the car (which you had to locate in the dark) after you were done ! I remember it being such a big “sign of responsibility” when our mom would let us go to the bathroom on our own (likely because she was tired of the treks).
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We would always be so excited about seeing a triple feature…and inevitably barely make it through the 2nd feature before passing out ! (hence the pajamas !)
One other drive-in period tidbit: do you remember catching glimpses of drive-ins as you sped by (like on the freeway), and trying to figure out what movie you were seeing from the 3 second snippet ? We were always feeling like we got to see “some” movie for free as we passed by !
Sacramento, California also still has an operational drive-in. It’s adjacent to Highway 50, and if you drive past at night you can see some of the screens from the highway. It is tempting to try to figure out what’s playing as you drive by, but that’s probably not a good idea if you’re the one driving. Apparently there were some complaints when 50 Shades of Grey was playing, because OMG what if a child sees a brief glimpse of nudity while driving past?
I’ve only been to see a movie there once, probably over a decade ago now. We sat in lawn chairs, drank beer, and listed to the audio on a boom box someone brought (this theater uses a low power radio station to broadcast the audio rather than those crappy speakers you’d mount in your window). At that time the snack bar and bathrooms felt like a time warp back to the 1970s, but I’ve herd they have made some improvements since then. Back then they kept claiming that the owner had plans to sell the land to a developer who was going to build a shopping center on the site, so this might be the last summer for the drive-in, better come experience it one last time now. Since that never happened I sometimes wonder if that was just a rumor they started to promote the place (Actually the real story apparently is that the deal fell through when the recession hit in 2009).
We had a drive-in in the relatively rural area where I grew up, in the early 1980s. I only have the vaguest of memories of seeing Follow That Bird (starring Big Bird from Sesame Street) there once. According to my parents we also saw The Muppet Movie there, but I have no memory of that. Also according to my Dad, the projectionist who worked there was a notorious drunk who would often load the reels in the wrong order, but I have no memory of that, either. Come to think of it that would have been the only place to see a movie in that area back then without driving 20-30 miles to the nearest big city.
Most everyone is talking about drive-ins like they are no more. Do you Dopers not have them in your neck of the woods?
I live not far from the one **Balthisar **mentioned upthread. They have 9 screens and seem to be doing ok.
mmm
What prompted me to start this thread was stumbling across this film on Amazon: Drive-In Movie Memories. You might get a kick out of it. Make some popcorn and put on your jammies first. 
I’m now in San Diego and there are only 2 left in operation. I know of one where the land is used as a swap meet. But all the rest have been built over - the land is just that much more valuable down here.
There aren’t many left in the U.S., period. Several articles I’m finding online indicate there’s only around 300 or so (down from 4000 in the late 1950s); Wikipedia quotes a source indicating that there were around 330 in 2017.
Also, this article indicates that the theater industry’s switch to digital distribution of films has hit the remaining drive-ins hard; it costs about $70,000 to switch a drive-in projector over to digital, compared to about $35,000 for a traditional theater (as the drive-in needs a more powerful bulb).
And, in direct answer to Mean Mr. Mustard’s question:
There’s apparently only one drive-in left in the Chicago area, in the far NW suburbs (McHenry). There was also one in the far western suburbs (in West Chicago), but this article indicates that it closed earlier this year, and the owner is planning to sell the land.
This article, from a Rockford radio station, lists eleven drive-ins in Illinois (including the defunct theater in West Chicago), but the rest are all several hours away from Chicago.
There’s not a one here in all of the State of Hawaii.
The only time I can recall going to a drive-in was in Fort Worth in '91, the summer after graduating high school. I went with several friends. IIRC, the movie was Terminator 2, but we all had already seen it in a regular theater so I think we spent most of the time just talking.
The only time I remember going to a drive-in was during a trip to southern California in 1984 (post-Olympics). I remember seeing “Cloak and Dagger” and “Red Dawn” at the drive-in in Escondido (not sure if it was a double feature or two separate nights).
According to what I’m seeing on Google, there are only five operating drive-ins in all of Washington state.
There is one a few miles from me that still has a screen but has been swap meet only for a couple of decades now, I believe. And by swap meet, I mean that at least half of the stalls are filled with new stuff bought in bulk from China and not the cool old hodgepodge that was so fun to sort through back in the the day.
And if the Lakewood PD is to be believed, much of the rest “fell off a truck” somewhere.
Closest active one appears to be near Shelton, about 35 miles as the guttersnipe flies (more like 45 miles by road).
Based on this discussion, and looking at lists of still-active drive-ins in a few states, it seems like there are a couple of potential factors for those which have remained (most seem to meet at least one of these criteria):
- In a small town, where there probably isn’t an indoor theater nearby (and where real estate prices aren’t high enough to make the property too attractive to sell)
- In an area of the country where the weather is amenable to year-round operation (or close to it)
- In a tourist area
I lost my virginity in a car at a drive-in theater. It was not a lovely romantic experience.
Don’t remember the movie.
This one’s not a documentary, but rather a comedy about the goings-on in one night at a drive-in theatre:
Not sure if it’s available anywhere any more, but it’s worth watching. It will bring back a lot of memories also.
Swap meets!
~VOW