Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
VHS Fest has taken place on the second Friday and Saturday of July in previous years, but this year's event has been expanded to a three day weekend with nine films. Anyone who has been to this event can tell you that the announced movies are only the beginning of the madness that you will experience on the big screen. The trailers and intermission reels that typically play between movies at the Mahoning are replaced with a live Found Footage Festival performance by Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, who share some of the compilations of oddities that they've discovered on tape over the years.
The t-shirt for VHS Fest 8 was designed by artist Tom Bifulco. There are two color variations, both of which feature the weekend's headline special guest, actress Brinke Stevens.
Brinke Stevens was a VHS Fest legend long before she ever set foot on the lot. Her filmography includes some of the most entertaining and loved horror flicks of the VHS era, including The Slumber Party Massacre, Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity, Sorority Babes In The Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, Nightmare Sisters, Teenage Exorcist, and my favorite horror comedy of all time and the movie that kicked off my love of horror films when I was a kid, the 1989 Jim Wynorski movie Transylvania Twist.
Ms. Stevens is an incredibly nice person. She and I talked about Transylvania Twist. She's not one of the main stars of the film, but her scene is memorable. She plays a vampire in the Victor Van Helsing flashback scene, and the vampire hunter tricks her into drinking holy water from a flask when she attempts to change him into a vampire. Ms. Stevens told me that the car that they're sitting in for that scene was her car at the time, which is a very cool fact to learn.
She also signed the cover of my Transylvania Twist VHS. Incidentally, if you want to watch this movie, it's available to watch on YouTube, and I highly recommend it. I think it's right up there with Airplane, The Naked Gun, and Spaceballs as one of the funniest parody films ever made. Like those three films, the humor is way over-the-top, and it just keeps piling puns and visual gags on top of each other, and unlike a lot of the lazy parody films that came out in the 90's, it doesn't just rely on making a pop culture reference without using it to tell a joke. In other words, even if you don't get the reference, it's still funny.
Two of the other special guests were Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher of the Found Footage Festival. They did a performance with clips of their tape compilations on the big screen before each of the movies on Friday and Saturday night.
The guys from the Found Footage Festival interviewed Brinke Stevens before some of her films as well. One of the things that I learned during this part of the weekend is that Ms. Stevens has a masters degree in marine biology, which is pretty damned cool!
The Found Footage guys also helped to facilitate before the screening of Blood Harvest on Saturday night. They told the audience that they were giving away a cardboard standup of Mr. Nasty and a mystery box to two lucky winners whose names were being drawn from a list of each of the ticket holders. The whole thing was a setup to bring this man and woman up to the front of the screen. I guess my first clue should have been the fact that they said they were giving away a Mr. Nasty stand-up because who in the hell would ever create such a thing! The mystery box contained the engagement ring that he proposed to her with, and she said yes.
Speaking of Mr. Nasty, his tapes played as they do every year at VHS Fest. In the hours before the start of the films, Tom, Mike, and I talked about the fact that Larry Pines (aka: Mr. Nasty) works as an astrologist and he wanted to come back this year, but they weren't able to bring him out. How cool would it be if Mr. Nasty set up an astrology booth and gave customers their reading while he stays in character! It would be a massive hit!
There's a lot of other things that happened over the weekend, both on and off of the big screen, but I have to cut it off somewhere, so the last thing I want to mention before I get to the movies is the Pizza Party Massacre trailer. Hayden Hall, the man who created the VHS Fest poster, has written and directed a low budget horror film that was shot on VHS. 
The world premier of Pizza Party Massacre will be at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater on Friday, September 13th, and I will absolutely be in attendance. This looks exactly like the kind of low budget horror schlock that we used to watch on late night television in the 80's and 90's, and I'm sure it's going to be a hell of a lot of fun!
One of my favorite weekends at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater is their annual tribute to VHS and the direct-to-video flicks that we used to pick up at our local rental shops in the 80's and 90's. Part One of this write-up was about the vendors and the incredible selection of rare tapes that were available on the lot this past weekend, so this second part is about the event itself and the special guests who were in attendance. I had intended to discuss the movies as well, but this got to be a bit longer than I expected, so I'll save the movies themselves for Part Three.
VHS Fest has taken place on the second Friday and Saturday of July in previous years, but this year's event has been expanded to a three day weekend with nine films. Anyone who has been to this event can tell you that the announced movies are only the beginning of the madness that you will experience on the big screen. The trailers and intermission reels that typically play between movies at the Mahoning are replaced with a live Found Footage Festival performance by Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, who share some of the compilations of oddities that they've discovered on tape over the years.
Jen took this awesome photo of a full rainbow that appeared over the lot after the rain stopped on Friday night. Angie was on the lot with me on Friday, and Mike joined me on Saturday. Tom, Jen, and Jaxon were there all three nights like I was, and of course Rob and Krista were in attendance as well, so the pre-shows were spent with good food and good company.
We were supposed to get heavy thunderstorms on Friday night, but thankfully the storms never came. There was a mild drizzle that started at about 6:00 pm on Friday and lasted for about an hour, and that's the only precipitation that we had for the entire weekend. The only downside is that it was oppressively hot for pretty much the entire day on Saturday and Sunday with temperatures in the mid 90's. That made it necessary to stay hydrated and to take frequent breaks in the car with the air conditioning cranked up, but I'll take heat over wind and rain at the drive-in any day of the week. It was an extremely pleasant temperature at night when the sun went down. In fact, I'd say that I found the nights of VHS Fest 8 to be the comfortable climate I've ever experienced on the lot.
The t-shirt for VHS Fest 8 was designed by artist Tom Bifulco. There are two color variations, both of which feature the weekend's headline special guest, actress Brinke Stevens.
Brinke Stevens was a VHS Fest legend long before she ever set foot on the lot. Her filmography includes some of the most entertaining and loved horror flicks of the VHS era, including The Slumber Party Massacre, Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity, Sorority Babes In The Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, Nightmare Sisters, Teenage Exorcist, and my favorite horror comedy of all time and the movie that kicked off my love of horror films when I was a kid, the 1989 Jim Wynorski movie Transylvania Twist.
Ms. Stevens is an incredibly nice person. She and I talked about Transylvania Twist. She's not one of the main stars of the film, but her scene is memorable. She plays a vampire in the Victor Van Helsing flashback scene, and the vampire hunter tricks her into drinking holy water from a flask when she attempts to change him into a vampire. Ms. Stevens told me that the car that they're sitting in for that scene was her car at the time, which is a very cool fact to learn.
She also signed the cover of my Transylvania Twist VHS. Incidentally, if you want to watch this movie, it's available to watch on YouTube, and I highly recommend it. I think it's right up there with Airplane, The Naked Gun, and Spaceballs as one of the funniest parody films ever made. Like those three films, the humor is way over-the-top, and it just keeps piling puns and visual gags on top of each other, and unlike a lot of the lazy parody films that came out in the 90's, it doesn't just rely on making a pop culture reference without using it to tell a joke. In other words, even if you don't get the reference, it's still funny.
Two of the other special guests were Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher of the Found Footage Festival. They did a performance with clips of their tape compilations on the big screen before each of the movies on Friday and Saturday night.
The guys from the Found Footage Festival interviewed Brinke Stevens before some of her films as well. One of the things that I learned during this part of the weekend is that Ms. Stevens has a masters degree in marine biology, which is pretty damned cool!
The Found Footage guys also helped to facilitate before the screening of Blood Harvest on Saturday night. They told the audience that they were giving away a cardboard standup of Mr. Nasty and a mystery box to two lucky winners whose names were being drawn from a list of each of the ticket holders. The whole thing was a setup to bring this man and woman up to the front of the screen. I guess my first clue should have been the fact that they said they were giving away a Mr. Nasty stand-up because who in the hell would ever create such a thing! The mystery box contained the engagement ring that he proposed to her with, and she said yes.
Speaking of Mr. Nasty, his tapes played as they do every year at VHS Fest. In the hours before the start of the films, Tom, Mike, and I talked about the fact that Larry Pines (aka: Mr. Nasty) works as an astrologist and he wanted to come back this year, but they weren't able to bring him out. How cool would it be if Mr. Nasty set up an astrology booth and gave customers their reading while he stays in character! It would be a massive hit!
There's a lot of other things that happened over the weekend, both on and off of the big screen, but I have to cut it off somewhere, so the last thing I want to mention before I get to the movies is the Pizza Party Massacre trailer. Hayden Hall, the man who created the VHS Fest poster, has written and directed a low budget horror film that was shot on VHS.
The world premier of Pizza Party Massacre will be at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater on Friday, September 13th, and I will absolutely be in attendance. This looks exactly like the kind of low budget horror schlock that we used to watch on late night television in the 80's and 90's, and I'm sure it's going to be a hell of a lot of fun!
Part Three will be posted tomorrow, and it will be focused on the movies that played on all three nights of VHS Fest 8.
