Stay Gold Ponyboy

A Couple A Coppola: The Outsiders / Rumble Fish
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
Saturday night at the drive-in was a double feature from one of most well-respected directors of the 20th century, Francis Ford Coppola.

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

Show poster designed by Sarah Derr

Francis Ford Coppola has directed over twenty films in his career, with the first released in 1963 and the most recent coming out in May of this year.  Although I would not call either of them my favorite mobster movie, I enjoyed The Godfather and The Godfather: Part 2, but none of his other films have ever really had much of an impact on me one way or the other, so I pulled onto the lot excited for the opportunity to see if I could get on board with what all the hype is about when it comes to this legendary director.

The first movie of the night was the 1983 coming of age film, The Outsiders.  Until tonight, I had never watched West Side Story, Grease, or The Outsiders before, and the three of them have kind of melted together in my mind as a single movie that I didn't have all that much interest in ever watching.  My perception prior to tonight was that they all were about greasy motorheads in leather jackets who spend their nights in gang rumbles when they're not too busy singing, crying, and/or screaming about their soap opera love affairs.  This picture in my mind is about as far from my film interests as you can possibly get.

If I'm being completely honest, both West Side Story and Grease still exist in this bubble in my mind, and although I'm sure my perception is less than fair, I'm still not interested in seeing either one of them.  The only reason I gave The Outsiders a chance is because it was on the Mahoning calendar, and my wife and two of our friends wanted to see it.

I'm not going to pretend that I loved The Outsiders, but I thought it was a very good movie and I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected.  It's got an all-star cast and all of the performances were incredible.  I probably would have enjoyed it more if there wasn't a race at the Mahoning Valley Speedway that drowned out a good portion of the dialogue, but it wasn't so bad that I couldn't follow the plot.  This movie is going to be a one-and-done for me.

The second film of the night was the 1983 drama Rumble Fish.  I had never heard of this movie before and had no idea what it was even about, but Virgil mentioned that it was one of his favorite movies of all time and he booked The Outsiders solely to give him an excuse to screen Rumble Fish as the second half of a double feature.

What I learned is that Virgil and I have very different opinions on what a good movie is.  Rumble Fish just came across to me as a pretentious artsy fartsy mess.  It was filmed in black and white, and the cinematography reminded me a little bit of Sin City, but with a far less interesting story.  It stars Matt Dillon as "Rusty James", whose full name you will hear spoken about 83 times in the first ten minutes of the film.  He wants to be a bad ass gang leader, but people don't like him.  They do like his older brother, "The Motorcycle Boy" (played by Mickey Rourke), though I can't imagine why because all he ever seems to do is show up places and look off into the sky with a bored expression on his face.  The character has all the charisma and screen presence of a wet mop.

Anyway, to make a very long story short, Rusty James spends the entire film throwing a pity party until his brother breaks all of the animals out of a pet store and gets shot by the police, after which Rusty James takes his dead brother's motorcycle and follows the river out to the California coast.  The end.

Movies like this are catnip to film students and critics, but they sometimes aren't all that impressive to a paying audience.  It bombed at the box office back in 1983 grossing $2.5 million on a $10 million dollar budget, and it bombed on the Mahoning lot, with dozens of cars leaving during intermission before it even began, and dozens more checking out before the film had reached the halfway point.  We stayed until it was over, but neither my wife or our friend Mike liked it any more than I did.  If I had to pick the least enjoyable movie that I've ever watched at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater, it would have to be Rumble Fish.

And that's a wrap on A Couple A Coppola.  I wish that I had something more positive to say, but I guess that I just don't really dig Francis Ford Coppola all that much.  Plenty of people do.  He's widely regarded as one of the greatest directors of all time, but his work is just not something that connects with me all that much.

Who Gets The Last Slice

Pizza Party Massacre
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
Tonight's movie at the drive-in was the world premiere of Hayden Hall's first full-length feature film which was shot entirely on VHS: Pizza Party Massacre.

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

Pizza Party Massacre was seven years in the making.  Its production began seven years ago while Hayden was living in New York and continued with changes to much of its cast and crew when he moved to Philadelphia.

There was some merch available at the screening of the movie, including t-shirts, posters, stickers, and pizza cutters.

 

The special concession item for the night was the Pizza Face Pizza Burger, which was a cheeseburger topped with pizza sauce and mozzarella cheese.

The movie absolutely had a micro-budget feel with extra cheese in the performances and special effects, but it was a hell of a fun movie.  It reminds me of the kind of things that my friends and I would rent from Heights Terrace Video to bring home and watch on a Friday night.

One of the fun surprises in the film was that it featured Virgil in a role as the father of Pizza Face, who was played by Hayden's younger brother, Ethan Hall.

The cast and crew had a Q&A on the lawn under the screen after the credits rolled, in which Hayden revealed that his car was stolen twice during the production of this movie, which resulted in one of the prop heads being lost.  He also shared that the movie is not going to be available to purchase on home video or to stream, but will first be taken on a road show as they work to find a distributor.

The attendance at this event was pretty good, but I'm hoping that this will be included in next year's VHS Fest to reach a wider audience of folks at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater.

The Blood Wasn't The Only Thing That Was Red

The Shining
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
Tonight's screening was one of Stanley Kubrick's greatest films, and although the author disagrees with my opinion, the best film adaptation of a Stephen King novel to ever hit the big screen; the 1980 horror classic The Shining.

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

I haven't missed a Thursday night screening yet this season, so The Shining was the tenth punch on my Thursday Thread-Up card.  That means that my next Thursday night movie will be free of change.  You can't beat that deal!

 

The pre-show included a 35mm presentation of a 2002 animated short called Gone Nutty, which features Scrat from Ice Age.  We've seen this cartoon at the Mahoning before, but this is the first time that it played this season.  The ice and snow made it an excellent appetizer for the winter horror film that followed.

The reel that was played prior to the film also included a 35mm print of the 1988 Dr. Pepper commercial that uses a version of Robert Palmer's Bad Case Of Loving You. These are a nice touch that I'm always happy to see.  The only example of this commercial that I could find online was pretty small, but here it is.

The Shining hit the screen at sundown, and I apologize in advance, but I'm going to have to rant for a bit.  One of the things you learn pretty quickly as a repeat visitor of the Mahoning Drive-In Theater is that if the 35mm print was provided by Exhumed Films, there's a chance that it's going to be red with washed out colors like this print of The Shining.  It wasn't as bad as the Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan print that we saw here a couple of years ago, but it wasn't good.  While I appreciate getting to see an original 35mm print of a horror classic like, the atmosphere of being at a beautiful drive-in theater and the opportunity to see a classic movie on the big screen with my friends in an audience of movie lovers are the things that matter the most to me.  The medium that they're projected from is secondary.

Since I have Dr. Pepper on the brain after seeing that commercial, the analogy that springs to mind is having the choice of a glass of soda from a fountain or from a can.  If all things are equal, I'd prefer the fountain soda, but if the fountain is dispensing flat or flavorless beverages, I'll take the can.

I know that if the drinks coming out of a fountain don't taste very good, they're probably running low on CO2 (flat soda) or syrup (bad flavor).  Just as I know that there's no problem with the fountain machine itself, I know that there is nothing wrong with the dual-Simplex projectors at the Mahoning.  If the movie is red, the problem is with the film that's being put into it.  However, not every customer is going to understand that this is the case.  I wonder how many people have visited the Mahoning for the first time on a night where one of the red Exhumed Films prints ran and assumed that all of the films shown here look that way.

If you're selling soda and you're out of syrup, the smart thing to do is tape an "out of order" sign on the fountain and move a cooler with some cans of soda up to the front until you get a shipment of syrup.  You get to keep selling soda. the customer gets a quality product (even if it's not exactly in the format they had in mind), and your reputation to the customers remains intact.  What you don't do is sell a poor quality drink out of a commitment to staying true to the history of fountain soda.

Likewise, if you have a 35mm print that looks like this, the smart thing to do is to make a brief announcement prior to showtime that the film print isn't quite up to par, and then show the film digitally.

I'm sure that there are some staff and customers of the Mahoning who would disagree with my opinion, but I really don't think that I'm in the minority here.  Last month, they held a screening of The Crow which was advertised as a digital presentation and tickets sold out.  I'd be shocked if there were a dozen paying customers that night who really cared all that much that the movie wasn't shown from a 35mm print that night.

 

Red film prints notwithstanding, it was still a fun night out at the drive-in and I appreciated being able to see one of my favorite horror films of all time on the big screen.  This image of Jack Torrance at the end of The Shining is a pretty accurate representation of what it feels like in my lawn chair by the time the end credits roll this time of year.  I could always sit in the nice warm car, but I'm a stubborn bastard who would rather bulk up with three layers of clothing and a full bedspread on top of me.  If you notice a tall lump of blankets with what looks like a head peeking out when you're pulling off of the lot, please try not to run it over.

The Living... The Dead.. Can They Coexist?

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Warner Bros (2024)

The legacy sequel has almost become a genre unto itself at this point.  I have enjoyed most of the ones that I've seen with a few notable exceptions, like The Matrix Resurrections and Clerks 3, but this film is a new experience for me.

I've been very familiar with the source material for most of the legacy sequels that I've seen, but I was extremely late to the party when it comes to Beetlejuice.  The first time I watched the movie in its entirety was at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater in October 2021.  I loved it, but since I didn't see it until my early 40's, it doesn't hold the same nostalgic glow for me that I'm sure it does for most moviegoers who are around my age.  I was looking forward to seeing how a legacy sequel would land for me when it's only a few years removed from my introduction to the original.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was a lot of fun, but I feel like they tried to cram three movies worth of plot devices into a single film which made each of the stories that it told feeling rushed and not as fulfilling as they could have been.  The piece that I think should have been removed altogether was the Rory character.  It would have been a stronger film if Lydia's story was focused on connecting with her daughter and coping with the loss of her father and the reintroduction of Beetlejuice in her life without the dopey fiancé storyline continually eating up screentime.  Removing Rory would have allowed time for the Astrid/Jeremy story to breathe, and it could have allowed for a bit more of a satisfying ending to the Delores character.  She's built up throughout the film as an incredibly cool foil to Beetlejuice, but their confrontation at the end is almost handled like an afterthought.

I don't mean to suggest that this is a bad movie by any means.  The story is overflowing with dark humor and bizarre visuals.  Winona Ryder, Jenna Ortega, and Catherine O'Hara play off of each other perfectly, Michael Keaton did a great job bringing his character back to life, Willem Dafoe was absolutely incredible as he always is, and the Danny Elfman score was the glue that held it all together.  It's a very good movie that is definitely worth seeing, but it could have been a great movie if the screenwriters would have cut Justin Theroux's character in an early draft and spent more time on the rest of their ideas.

The cross-promotional campaign for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has approached Barbie levels of saturation, and I am absolutely here for it.  It's shown up in the soda aisle with Fanta in special packaging that features Beetlejuice (haunted apple), Astrid (orange), Lydia (strawberry), and Delia (pineapple).

The orange, strawberry, and pineapple are just regular Fanta flavors in special packaging, but Haunted Apple is a new limited edition spiced apple flavored soda.  It's very good, but it's exactly the kind of flavor that is best when it's a limited edition or seasonal product.  It's the kind of thing that I think I'd get sick of pretty quickly if I drank it more than a few times.

Denny's has also jumped on the Beetlejuice bandwagon with a menu inspired by the film.  This includes the Say It Three Times Slam, the Afterlife Melt, the Beetlejuicy Burger, and the Cookies N' Scream Shake.

We stopped at Denny's for dinner as soon as we left the theater and both had Beetlejuicy Burgers and Cookies N' Scream Shakes.  The burger is a triple bacon provolone cheeseburger topped with lettuce, tomato, onions, and pickles, and a smoky sweet sauce.

The Beetlejuicy Burger is pretty damn tall, so unless you can unhinge your jaw like a python, you're going to have to come up with a strategy to eat it.  Some might settle for the knife and fork approach, but this tubby middle-aged gentleman made a makeshift bun out of the french fries to eat one of the burger patties before tackling the rest of it as a very tasty double cheeseburger.

I think I got cheated out of the crushed Oreo Cookies pieces in our Cookies N' Scream Shakes.  They're in the picture on the menu and mentioned in the menu, but the only cookie pieces in ours was mixed into the vanilla ice cream.  It's all good though.  It was still tasty, and the last thing that my belt needs to contend with right now is more cookies.

Funfest '84

Funfest
Hazleton, PA  (1984)
This article from the Standard Speaker was published 40 years ago today.  It describes the sixth annual Funfest street fair which began in 1979 and continued to be held in downtown Hazleton on the weekend after Labor Day every year until its cancellation in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.  It has not returned since the pandemic ended.

I was four years old during Funfest '84.  I remember watching the parade with my parents and grandparents, but I don't think that my grandfather took any pictures that day.  This video of the Funfest Parade on Broad Street on September 9th of that year was recently shared by Rotogravure.

Standard Speaker - Hazleton, PA  (September 8, 1984)

This giant Philly Phanatic balloon stood at the intersection of Broad and Laurel Street during Funfest '84.  It was three stories tall and 45 feet in diameter.

Standard Speaker - Hazleton, PA  (September 10, 1984)

The above clipping is the continuation of the story by Natalie Purak at the top of the page.  The clippings below appeared in the Standard Speaker on September 8th and 10th.