Movie Details
| Title: | Dead End Drive-In | |
| Director: | Brian Trenchard-Smith | |
| Year: | 1986 | |
| Genre: | Trapped in Crazytown | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 11.12.23 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (5)
- BMX Bandits
- Drive Hard
- The Man from Hong Kong
- Stunt Rock
- Turkey Shoot
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 11.12.23 | Internet | This Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2023 This has been on the list ever since seeing that Ozploitation doc way back when at Fantastic Fest. From the visuals it looked like a post apocalyptic thing but it seems more like a bizarre future of gearhead punk rock and the drive-in is less of a fort or outpost or whatever I might've thought and more of a surreal prison where people can't leave. I liked it ok although I do have to say that I had a problem with the logic of it. The whole premise is this guy takes his brother's(?) car to the drive-in on a date with his girlfriend but the cops steal two wheels while he's fooling around. He's got one spare but without that second wheel he's stuck. Except there's like a drive-in's worth of cars there and many obviously have wheels. He says he needs a Chevy wheel, I guess to return it in good condition, but pretty quickly the car gets tagged with graffiti so... just get out of there, man. But then he gets a chevy wheel off a different wreck but he's run out of petrol. Same deal. He's gotta gas can and a siphon tube and there are cars literally all around him. One of them has to have gas? Just get out of there, man! Then his brother's(?) tow truck shows up in the drive-in to drop off wrecks! Wave him down! Hop a ride! Just. Get. Out of there. Man!? To be fair, I think they used that red and white tow truck more out of budget necessity than story, and really the mechanics of why he's stuck there I think are not supposed to be paramount compared to the commentary that's being made about society within the drive-in... i get all that, but I still couldn't help but see all the wheels everywhere constantly all around him. I will say, this was a pretty bizarre and ambitious aim for a genre picture. I can see the meeting with the financiers: Brian Trenchard Smith: "So yeah, we're gonna have weird hacked vehicles with roll-bars kinda like Mad Max and they're gonna be in this crazy future where tow trucks race to pick up the carnage of wrecks while roving gangs of gearheads swoop in and raid cars for parts, but then it's gonna be this great allegorical purgatory that they get stuck in and these immigrants will be bussed in and there will be racial tension." money men: "will it have two sets of tits and a car chase?" BTS: "...yep, it'll have those as well." MNM: "sold!" |
