Customer Reviews

The Drive-In: A Double-Feature Omnibus

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Joe R. Lansdale is true pulp fiction: fast, cheap and out of control. Known mostly for hard-bitten, outrageous crime novels featuring Hap and Leonard, and a bunch of extraordinarily grim, nasty, bleak horror stories, Lansdale spent most of the late 80s/early 90s in genre obscurity. Writers with a higher profile but less raw talent left him in the dust. With "Mucho Mojo" he finally got what he deserved, and NOW "The Drive-In" novels are back in print, hallelujah, the Good Lord be praised! This is cheesy schlock in the best sense--a mind-boggling Texan SF misadventure featuring the Popcorn King, an all night horrormovie marathon, creatures from outer space, mechanical dinosaurs, the end of the world and naked boobies. Lansdale does it all here. Quirky, off-beat and strange don't do it justice. Just buy it, and discover what a unique, comic, horrifying and flat-out entertaining writer Joe Lansdale is!

This book is flat-out hilarious! One day Jack and his friends are typical boys on the verge of adulthood, the next they are caught in a nightmarish, other world created when a comet near-misses the drive in where they are enjoying an all night horror show. Stuck in the dark world of the drive in, watching only violent bloody horror movies over and over, eating only concession-stand food, Jack narrates a world that is terrifying but not without its humor. And that's just part one of this incredible tale. It continues with our intrepid heroes getting out of the drive-in to explore the next evolution of their new world. (a world in which a baby dinosaur is automatically named Toothy before it gobbles down an unburied corpse) It would take me too long to describe the numerous quirky, scary and surreal characters and happenings in this omnibus. I was glued to this book until I finished it. It's hilarious, it's surreal, it's chilling, and I kept shaking my head saying "no way!" before I plunged right into the next chapter.

Lansdale is one of the few authors who can take grisly events and plant a sarcastic, hilarious slant to them. And succeed! I laughed out loud throughout while also cringing from some of the word pictures Lansdale creates here. Make no mistake, this is horror at its best. But it's also a witty look at what happens to us when we lose the most basic of worldly trappings. Reading Lansdale is always like stepping into a roller-coaster world, and any of his books are more than worth your time.

Ten years out of print has been way too long for this gem to be hidden away from the reader (I had to hunt three years to find a thrashed used copy). This book was written for the thinking man who, deep down in his heart, loves bad, cheesy horror movies. You know,the kind you rent with a group of friends, order pizza, drink cheap beer, and make fun of throughout the duration. Lansdale, one of our finest, most creative writers has an obvious love for this genre of trash cinema. He creates an apocolyptic world where four teenages become trapped in a drive in theatre during an all-night festival of trash films. Their lives become the most horrifying film of them all. This novel is a definite must-have for those nights when your friends are out of town, the pizza parlor goes out of business, and the beer has gone flat.

Ths book introduces the reader to a group of four teenage boys who spend their Friday nights at the Orbit Drive In Movie Theatre. A meteor passes overhad and allcontact with the outside world is ceased. What happens next is a study of the "Group Dymnamics" of people who are thrown togther in a situation with no escape. My Socology Professor at Univesity would have loved this book!!! This book takes me back to my wild, misspentyouth at the Drive In Movie Threate where for $3.50 you could see two movies (that used to be called a "Double Feature" for all you youngpeople readingthis) and at Intermission you could risk food poisining by eating a soggy hamburgr from the Concession Stand. "Cold beer and hot nights" as Billy Joel once sang!!!

Really wunnerful, cheesey pulp stuff. You will laugh your behind off. Has the really outrageous Lansdale humor but some genuine scares as well. Like Shannon's novel 'Night of Beast' it is a tribute to the gory glory days of horror fiction the 70 and 80's

The Drive-In and its sequel, The Drive-In 2 are both extremely strange tales that border on absurdity and lunacy with equal measure. Joe Lansdale writes things that require an extreme ability to suspend disbelief and if you read these two novels you will happily comply with his wishes. A jam packed Texas drive in, showing an all night horror film festival, is suddenly dropped off the face of reality when a smiling comet flies overhead. At first it's just weird and then it gets scary as survival instinct kicks in for those stuck inside the drive in. And then it gets weird again... This two-for-one edition is a nice way to experience a truly talented and imaginative writer's take on human nature under the worst of circumstances. The book(s) are even better if you're a fan of slasher films and really gross scene description in Horror novels. Not for every taste, or for every Horror fan, but if you like weird, original ideas and take butter on your popcorn well then check this baby out!

I give this book four stars. THE DRIVE IN would get five stars. THE DRIVE IN 2 would get three. As with many sequels, the second one didn't kick as well for me. But the first one was terrific and inventive and twisted and funny and cool. Think of this like a nice double feature. If it were GHOSTBUSTERS and GHOSTBUSTERS 2, you'd love the first movie and you'd enjoy the second. Same thing holds true with this double feature. But see, you get both for one price, so you actually get an awesome deal (kinda like you snuck in a guest in the trunk--just don't let the popcorn king find out!).

About 9 years ago I was in jail, and I came across a copy of The Drive In....ever since it has been my favorite book. I could not find a copy anywhere until now....It definitely is required reading!

I've had this double-dipping paperback on my shelves for almost a decade now, siting unread, until my friend Peteee started asking questions about Lansdale's newest Orbit Drive-In book, THE DRIVE IN: THE BUS TOUR......So I figured "Self, what better time to crack that puppy open then right now?" So it was written, so it shall be done!

Well, it's done, and all I can say is (And I'm paraphrasing the great existential philosopher Eric Cartman, here...) "What's the big deal?"

THE DRIVE-IN centers around a, you guessed it, drive-in. Various & sundry Texans are trapped there when a group of extra-dimensional filmmakers snatch The Orbit Drive-In from our reality, plop it God-only-knows-where, start some weird stuff, and sit back and film the ensuing hijinks. Which include cannibalism, regurgitated popcorn eating, rape, dismemberment, B-movie watching, nude guy sitting on another nude guy's shoulders getting hit by lightning and fusing together, and other such fun doings. THE DRIVE-IN 2 features the survivors plopped into ANOTHER b-movie setting, the Jungle movie.

OK, first things first: Lansdale has an addictive writing style. I could read his dialogue forever and still be laughing my butt off at least once a paragraph. The problem is, these books feature what they call in Hollywood, a "High concept", which means that the story is seriously out-there. It's weird, for weirdness' sake. The concept is entertaining, and would have made a GREAT short story.
Not a novel.
Certainly not 2 novels, and if the first 30 pages of the 3rd book are any indication, not three novels.
To make matters worse, the second book made me feel like Lansdale was sitting at home laughing at me for reading it, because NOTHING HAPPENED FOR THE WHOLE BOOK.
NOT.
ONE.
FREAKING.
THING.
The survivors build a house, and a woman comes driving down the road. She tells them her story in a loooooong flashback.
In the middle of THAT flashback, we get ANOTHER character's flashback, which is even longer.
Then they talk.
Then they go off to the big showdown, which lasts ONE PAGE.
Oooo-kay.
These books are touted, according to the cover copy of the 3rd book, as brilliant social satire.
I must have missed all of that. I just read some weirdness that was tolerable because Lansdale has one hell of a gift for dialogue.

I just wanted to jump on the bandwagon of clapping this book on the back. Six stars!