Mahoning Winter Meetup
Pocono Cinema & Cultural Center - East Stroudsburg, PA
A few weeks ago, it was announced to members and staff of the Mahoning Drive-In Theater that they would be hosting a winter gathering on February 16th at a small theater in East Stroudsburg where we could all get together to catch up with each other, hear some of the plans for the upcoming 2024 season, and enjoy a screening of a surprise film.
We didn't get any pictures of our front row crew. Everybody was kind of bopping all over the theater meeting up and chatting with each other before and after the screening, so an opportunity really didn't present itself, but thanks to Kate, we did get a couple of selfies in.
This year will be the 75th year that the Mahoning Drive-In Theater has been in business, so the theme for the season will be "75 years of 35 mm". There were a few announcements of films and double features that haven't been made public yet, as well as a pre-season 35mm road show, a new sponsor, and a partnership with a major film studio whose name I won't mention. We don't yet know what movies will be screened on the lot as a result of this partnership, but the possibilities are pretty damn cool!
The title of the movie we were going to watch was not announced ahead of time, but we were given a clue that it was a PG film that they've wanted to screen at the drive-in for a long time, but after years of searching, they couldn't find a 35mm print. It was the 1972 disaster flick: The Poseidon Adventure. Virgil and Mark have often joked that they wanted to host a three day weekend of Ernest Borgnine movies at the Mahoning with triple features every night, and an event title of The Borg Nine. I suggested that they spread it out over a season and give us something like the old Subway cards that you would get punched every time you got a hoagie. Fill up your card with Borg Nine and your Borg Ten will be free!
The Poseidon Adventure is an amazing movie. I always assumed that I had seen it before, but I realized at about five minutes in that nothing looked familiar to me at all, so either my memory has really taken a turn for the worse, or I was mistaking this for another disaster-on-the-sea movie that I've watched at some point in my life. I'm pretty sure that it's the latter... at least I hope that's the case. So, as luck would have it, my first time seeing this all-time classic was on the big screen with our friends from the drive-in, which was an awesome experience!
After watching The Poseidon Adventure on the big screen, we had a much less fun experience with The Mazda 3 Adventure on our drive home. We knew that we were going to get some snow, but they were calling for it to start early Saturday morning and last through the afternoon. It must have moved a little faster than expected because we hit a snow squall about halfway down I-80 which made it pretty damn hard to see and to keep the car from slipping. It got even worse once we took the 309 exit and ended up stuck behind a car that didn't seem to know how to drive in the snow. Not gonna lie, it was a bit scary at times, but we made it home safe and sound.
