The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs: Dinners of Death

Cody looks back at a Joe Bob Briggs Thanksgiving special.

Legendary movie host / drive-in critic Joe Bob Briggs thought the dusk-to-dawn-to-dusk marathon he hosted on the Shudder streaming service in July of 2018 was his farewell to movie hosting – but that marathon proved to be so popular that it shook the pillars of Heaven (or at least, it overloaded the Shudder servers) and opened the door to a new era of Joe Bob. The Last Drive-in became an on-going series that would mix full seasons with regular specials – and the first special to come along after the marathon was Dinners of Death, which premiered on November 22, 2018. That happened to be the day of Thanksgiving that year, which is why there’s a family dinner theme to most of the movies that were shown on that special.

Dinners of Death gets started with a brief clip of Joe Bob sitting outside at an old drive-in, talking about exactly how long Wild Turkey should be aged for... and, not being a drinker, my first thought when he says “Wild Turkey” is of the type of bird that gets feasted upon at Thanksgiving time. But, of course, he’s talking about the bourbon whisky that I have never tasted.

Following the title sequence, we find Joe Bob on the usual set, sitting outside a trailer home with his pet lizard Ernie. He gets the show proper started by joking about Shudder’s server failures during the July marathon, saying that Shudder’s master computer is a Commodore 64 that’s housed in an underground location in North Dakota and is manned by a troubled fellow named Larry. And what do you know, Larry happens to be a fan of Wild Turkey. The alcohol, not the bird. Once he’s done talking about Larry and his drinks, Joe Bob promises this special will be showing us “four of the nastiest dinners ever put on film, including the greatest Thanksgiving-themed horror film ever made.” Then he mistakenly says that the movie he’ll be showing is the only Thanksgiving-themed horror film ever made, which is not even close to being true... although I would agree that it’s the greatest. Joe Bob gets some grief about his Thanksgiving horror oversights during the viewer mail segments - featuring Darcy the Mail Girl - that come up during the special.

Of course, once he has mentioned Thanksgiving, Joe Bob uses this as an opportunity to dig into the history of the Thanksgiving holiday, complete with maps and a pointer so he can tell us all about travelling groups of bigots throughout history, including the bigots (or were they bigots-to-be?) that threw the first Thanksgiving dinner. It’s a fun bit... and even if you don’t find this lengthy presentation to be entertaining for its entire 7-minute-or-so run, you might still be impressed by how many times Joe Bob manages to say the word “bigot” while telling the story.

MOVIE #1: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974)

And then it’s time for Joe Bob’s pick for the greatest movie ever made. It’s common knowledge that Joe Bob’s favorite film is the 1974 classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, according to the credits and the copyright) – in fact, while I write this, Joe Bob is writing a book about the making of that film, which also happens to be one of my personal all-time favorites. The movie was never shown on The Movie Channel or TNT during Joe Bob’s years of hosting shows for those networks, so he never got to host a broadcast of his favorite movie until he got to Shudder, which had the streaming rights to the film. So just as this new era of his career was getting rolling, he got to host an airing of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, enthusiastically sharing the classic with his viewers. 

Joe Bob says there are few things he can consider himself an expert on, but he does consider himself to be an expert on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the one thing in the world he can say he knows everything about. While he promises to be “real nerdy” during the hosting breaks, he drops some background information on the film into his introduction, discusses the reactions to the film when it was first released in 1974 and the fact that it “shocked the world,” says people are always trying to tell him that Leatherface was a real guy, defends the film against claims that it’s “artless and crude,” and mentions that this was the most financially successful film in the history of Texas. His love for this movie really comes through in the way he talks about it and how much praise he heaps on it... and we’re just getting started!

When Joe Bob gives his Drive-in Totals, it’s absolutely no surprise that he chooses to give The Texas Chainsaw Massacre a perfect score of four stars (adding, “If I could give it five, I would!”). There aren’t many movies I would give a perfect score myself, but The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is definitely one of them. It’s a simple story of a group of young friends out for a summer afternoon drive on a scorching hot day, having the worst experience of their lives. Not only do they have to stop by a cemetery to make sure a loved one’s corpse hasn’t been disturbed in a recently discovered spree of grave robbings, but they pick up a hitchhiker who turns out to be a blade-wielding weirdo, and then they’re in danger of running out of gas because the gas station they stop at is already out of gas, waiting for the supply truck to come along. And that’s all just a walk in the park compared to what happens when they try to get some help at a house out in the countryside (it has a generator running, so they must have gas there...) and find that it’s inhabited by a family of cannibalistic maniacs, including one who’s called Leatherface and chops up bodies with a chainsaw. Sure, we’ve seen plenty of movies with similar set-ups, but Hooper brought his take on the set-up to the screen with mind-blowing style, and his cast turned in incredible performances. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is truly a work of art.

The film doesn’t have a huge cast, so when he breaks in for hosting segments, Joe Bob is able to talk about nearly every single person who has a speaking role, giving information on who the actors are and how they got involved with the movie. From opening narrator John Larroquette, a cameo appearance by John Henry Faulk, the actors who play the cannibal family, those who play victims, and final girl Marilyn Burns, they all get some coverage. Joe Bob also calls The Texas Chainsaw Massacre a precursor to the youth-oriented horror films that would soon dominate the genre, questions whether pork counts as barbecue, talks about the fact that the gas station and the farmhouse used in the movie have both become tourist attraction restaurants, confirms that Hooper was hoping to get a PG rating for the movie (it’s rated R), reveals the current locations of two of the three masks Gunnar Hansen wore while playing Leatherface, and stands up for the misunderstood Hooper, who didn’t get many lucky breaks in his career. Joe Bob has a whole lot to say about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – so much, in fact, that the TCM portion of this special takes up 158 minutes, even though the movie only has a running time of 83 minutes. Joe Bob does over an hour of talking in this segment, then brings in Darcy the Mail Girl to deliver some fan mail – and while she’s doing so, she shocks Joe Bob by confessing that she prefers the Chainsaw remake over the original film. Blasphemy!

MOVIE #2: THE HILLS HAVE EYES (1977)

But I also think it’s blasphemy that a lot of people prefer the 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes over director Wes Craven’s 1977 original... and not only does Darcy prefer the remake in this case as well, Joe Bob says that he does, too. Just due to the upgrade in effects and some of the acting. Joe Bob... how could you? The Hills remake may have flashy special effects and bigger and more plentiful action, but it drops the ball in most other categories. But that’s beside the point. The remake isn’t the one that was shown during Dinners of Death, the original was. And I love that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes ended up being paired in a Thanksgiving special called Dinners of Death, because back in November of 2015 I wrote a JoBlo article in which I had the two movies face off to decide which cannibal family would be better to visit for Thanksgiving dinner.

Joe Bob makes up for liking the remake better by giving The Hills Have Eyes ‘77 a perfect, four star rating, as he should. During his introduction, he gives information on exactly how Craven and producer Peter Locke ended up making this movie out in the desert after Locke convinced Craven that he shouldn’t be trying to distance himself from the horror genre after making his feature directorial debut with The Last House on the Left, he should be diving right back into it. And the back story involves an association with “Cats in the Cradle” singer Harry Chapin and the fact that Locke has been married to actress/singer Liz Torres for decades. (Torres is not in the movie, though.) To really give us all the necessary information, Joe Bob also has to dig into the supposedly true story of a cave-dwelling, cannibalistic family that terrorized Scotland in the 1500s and then got a torturous comeuppance when the authorities of civilized society caught up with them. It’s the story of Sawney Bean, and Joe Bob needs a map of Scotland and his pointer to tell it right.

The Hills Have Eyes takes the basic idea of Sawney Bean, that of a cave-dwelling, cannibalistic family, and moves the setting to 1970s Nevada. An Ohio family on a road trip makes the mistake of driving through the wrong territory and ends up being tormented by a pack of cannibals who starts picking them off and abducts the infant they have with them – with their intention being to have some baby meat for dinner. To survive (and rescue that baby), the civilized family has to respond to the cannibal family’s violence with violence of their own, and it’s a wild ride. While Craven’s later movies with Freddy Krueger and Ghostface get a lot more attention, this is my favorite entry in his filmography.

One great thing about this movie, and this is an area where the remake is severely lacking, is that Craven shows us how both the civilized family and the cannibal family function and interact. The cannibals aren’t really characters in the 2006 film, they’re just monsters. Here, we know who these cannibals are – and the most memorable of the bunch is a fellow called Pluto, played by Michael Berryman. A genre icon for his role in this film, Berryman is also one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet, so I loved seeing that he was a guest on this special, showing up at the trailer home to have a chat with Joe Bob during the hosting segments. Berryman talks about his experiences working on The Hills Have Eyes, the birth defects that gave him his unique looks, working on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, working on and being cut out of The Crow, being in The X-Files, what it was like being in a Mötley Crüe music video, getting his acting career started with Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, and the fact that his acting career derailed his plans to be a homesteader in Alaska. As the Berryman interview wraps up, Darcy has the nice idea of having Berryman sign a doll version of his Hills character so it can be auctioned off to benefit a charity Berryman supports.

When he’s not talking to Berryman, Joe Bob also gives us info on several other cast members, most of whom are primarily known for being in this movie. One exception is Dee Wallace, another genre icon who still works on multiple movies every year. Oddly, Wallace wasn’t included in Joe Bob’s “Drive-in Academy Awards” list during the introduction. We also hear about Craven’s unexpected history, which includes the fact that he had never even seen a movie until he was in college, and that The Hills Have Eyes’ theatrical run was disrupted by the massive box office hit Smokey and the Bandit. One of the best movies ever made. Joe Bob covers the fact that The Hills Have Eyes ran into trouble with the ratings board and was nearly given an X rating, reveals that some of the animal bones seen in the film are left over from the set of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (with which this movie shared art director Robert A. Burns), and notes that the shrieking cast member Susan Lanier does in her final moments can be very irritating. Those shrieks are an assault on the ear drums, and when I caught a theatrical screening of The Hills Have Eyes during a 24-hour theatrical marathon one year, I did see a fellow audience member expressing displeasure at the sound of Lanier’s screaming dialogue.

MOVIE #3: DEAD OR ALIVE (1999)

Things were going so well. We just saw Joe Bob present two of my favorite movies back-to-back. Then we randomly get a Japanese yakuza action movie dropped into the midst of our Thanksgiving celebration. Or, as Joe Bob describes it, it’s a “crime horror yakuza triad music video torture porn gross-out fantasy film.” Whatever you call it, it doesn’t fit in with the other movies in this special. And yet, here it is, part of Dinners of Death, slipping through because there is indeed a scene that mixes dinner and murder. Joe Bob gives a gross-out warning up front, advising any viewers to set their food aside while watching Dead or Alive, and mentions that Japanese filmmakers often cite American horror films as their source of inspiration. To which Joe Bob asks, “Really? Did you watch them in reverse during an LSD trip?” He also tells us that we’re not likely to understand what’s going on in this movie. It’s too weird.

Joe Bob had mentioned at the start of the special that he was hoping to talk about probiotics, but wasn’t able to work that rant into his Texas Chainsaw Massacre preamble. That’s okay, because he manages to fit it in before he gets to the drive-in totals for Dead or Alive, and it goes on for quite a while, so Joe Bob doesn’t get to the drive-in totals until 14 minutes into this segment.

A three star blast of insanity from director Takashi Miike, the movie involves a group of low-level gangsters stealing money from a yakuza boss who has been working out a deal with a triad gang... so, of course, this leads to a whole lot of violence. And that violence doesn’t just involve the usual shootouts or swordfights. There’s also a moment where someone is drowned in a pool of feces, and a bugnuts ending where a character is revealed to have supernatural abilities, and when they use these abilities on an enemy carrying a bazooka, it results in the whole planet getting blown to bits. Because why not, and who cares? This is not my type of movie at all, as evident from the fact that, while I have watched the other three segments of this special in their entirety more than once over the six years since it aired, it took me six years to actually give watching this movie an honest try. Sure enough, as expected, it managed to lose me within minutes.

The only thing Dead or Alive has going for it, as far as I’m concerned, are the moments when Joe Bob breaks in with his hosting segments. Takashi Miike has a lot of fans, the guy has 115 directing credits as of this writing, but it’s rare for me to be able to get into any of his movies, aside from Audition. Joe Bob talks about Miike, compares Japanese and American films, tries to make sense out of some of the weird moments, confirms that there’s a lot in this type of movie that goes over the heads of viewers outside of Japan (he has been told you can’t get anything from the subtitles, as the lines are all about the inflections), and guides us through a movie that I found to be really off-putting, uninteresting, and annoying. Since there’s reference to someone in the movie having penis issues, Joe Bob also makes a called to a “mangled dick expert,” Sleepaway Camp star Felissa Rose, who was a guest on the show during the marathon. Rose doesn’t have a lot to add about these penis problems, but it’s nice to hear from her nonetheless.

MOVIE #4: BLOOD RAGE (1987)

Joe Bob isn’t an enamored with the ‘80s as most horror fans are – but he knows his viewers are enamored with the films of that decade, so he made sure to wrap up this special with a slasher that was not only released (sort of) in the ‘80s, but it also happens to be a Thanksgiving slasher... and I think most of us know, the best way to celebrate any holiday is by watching a slasher movie that’s set on that holiday. Blood Rage is a movie that flew under the radar when it was released in the ‘80s, and it didn’t help that it took four years from production to release and the fact that it was released under multiple different titles (it became Blood Rage, Slasher, and Nightmare at Shadow Woods after being filmed under the title Complex). This one didn’t get its due until it was unearthed in 2015 and given a Blu-ray release... and it truly turned out to be a hidden gem, but it is an awesome slasher movie that has been in my viewing rotation ever since I first watched it six years ago, about a week before Joe Bob showed it on Dinners of Death.

Before he gets to the drive-in totals, Joe Bob takes some minutes to discuss the importance of watching movies as a communal experience, which is why Shudder takes the “must see TV” approach to airing live premieres of The Last Drive-in specials instead of just dropping them into the archive immediately. They always wait a couple days after the live premiere before making the specials and episodes available in the archives.

Then we get to Blood Rage, which Joe Bob under-scores with two and a half stars. I would have flipped the ratings of this one and Dead or Alive around... if I could even bring myself to give Dead or Alive two and a half stars. Anyway... Directed by John Grissmer, who never directed again, Blood Rage starts in the ‘70s, when a young boy named Terry decides to kill someone with a hatchet while at the drive-in with his twin brother Todd, their mom, and her boyfriend. Then he framed Todd for the murder, and since Todd went catatonic when he saw Terry commit the murder, he can’t defend himself. He just gets locked up in a mental institution. Jump ahead to the ‘80s. Todd is no longer catatonic and is now ready to convince people of his innocence. He escapes from the mental institution and heads to the apartment complex where his mom and Terry live... and since mom has just gotten engaged, Terry has turned homicidal again, so he starts slashing his way through people who cross his path at the apartment complex while his twin brother makes his way home. And while Terry racks up a body count, we get to witness some really fun gore effects.

During his hosting segments, Joe Bob talks about cast member Louise Lasser and her expertise at playing characters who are having a nervous breakdown, discusses some of the other cast members and characters, talks about those impressive gore effects (and is especially impressed when a severed hand clutches a beer), filming locations, the abundance of universities in Florida, the music that was composed for the film, and the bad kissing in the movie, then starts overthinking some things toward the end of the film. And there’s even some reference to the works of Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer along the way.

Then we’ve reached the final moments of the special. Darcy does some Ted Raimi condom salesman Blood Rage cosplay and Joe Bob reads one last piece of viewer mail before ending with the last in the series of groan-inducing jokes he dropped throughout the special (and throughout everything he hosts, pretty much). At this point, Joe Bob was aware that his movie hosting career had entered a new era, so there’s no talk of him saying farewell. It’s just a “see you next time,” because a Christmas special was already planned for the following month.

While I would consider showing Dead or Alive to be a misstep, as it wasn’t necessary for this special and it’s not something I really needed to (try to) sit through, I’m sure it was enjoyed by some fans who tuned in for Dinners of Death, so that works out... and that movie aside, I got to watch Joe Bob present three movies I absolutely love, so I can’t complain. Even with Dead or Alive, this was a great special and something to be thankful for on Thanksgiving. And, of course, I was left wanting to see a whole lot more of Joe Bob on Shudder, so it’s great that they’ve been delivering ever since.