So, it’s the most crucial scene in the movie. The scene where the voice over the phone tells the pretty teenager that those calls are coming from inside the house. The pretty teen reacts to this news by slowly dropping the phone and going wide-eyed while sinister music goes “WEET WEET WEET!” to let you know that scary stuff is happening.

The camera pans in on the starlet’s face while, behind her, a shadow is crawling down the stairway. The WEET WEET WEET is getting louder and you just know that any second now, the pretty teen will try to run, only to fall down 16 times, breaking her pretty ankle a little bit more with each spill. Crippled beyond repair, she will run into the woods because everybody knows that the woods at night are the safest place to be when there’s a deranged killer afoot.

This is spellbinding stuff, my friends. Unfortunately, you don’t get to see any of it because right before the WEET WEET WEET started, some jerk in a minivan decided to drive across the lot with his high beams on and his radio blasting country music. You reacted to this by reaching for the volume knob but accidentally hit the windshield wiper controls. Bright blue washer fluid squirted across the windshield and now your wipers are smearing bug guts from one end to the other, making everything on the big screen appear as though you’re viewing it through a plate of corned beef hash.

Somewhere on the other side of those delicious bug guts, the pretty teen screams. Your friends will tell you later that it was the best nude scene they have ever seen in a motion picture. You’d punch your friend in the jaw if you weren’t still half blind from that jerk’s high beams.

“Let’s go out to the kitchen. Let’s go out to the kitchen. Let’s go out to the kitchen and have ourselves a snack!”

Welcome to the drive-in, the only way I will go to see a new movie in spite of the occasional inconveniences. It’s an American tradition and it’s fun for the whole family. Unless the movie stars Megan Fox, in which case you’ll have to instruct the kids in the back seat to cover their eyes and not open them again until the moaning stops.

Before you pack up your blankets and lawn chairs and cheap popcorn and crappy candy you got at the dollar store, there are a few things you should know about the drive-in.

Every time you go, a certain wife will say something to the effect of: “Wouldn’t it be nice to turn the car around and sit in the back? We can open the hatch and prop ourselves up with blankets! Oh, it will be delightful!”

Five minutes after you’ve taken the exhaustive steps to make it happen, a certain wife is complaining because with the hatch open, bugs are free to fly into the car and go for your veins. “Gosh,” she will say, punctuating every other words by slapping bugs on her (or your) neck. “There are so many BUGS out tonight.”

Who knew that when you mow down 5 acres of Maine forest and put in a giant movie screen, there might be an insect or two in the area, huh? You’d have to be Nostradamus to predict that.

So, you slather yourselves up with so much bug spray, a flick of a Bic would probably send you to the moon. The bug spray smells so strong, your eyes water and suddenly everything on your left side is tingling. That’s OK, though, because all those midges and mosquitoes have gone off to suck blood from somebody else’s neck and you can finally enjoy the movie.

The next thing you know, you’re seeing red. You think it’s just more brain damage from the bug spray, but no. The dolt in the car in front of you keeps stepping on his brakes and the brake lights seem to be flashing Morse code at you. Dot-dot-dash-dot-dash, it says over and over. When you look it up, you will find that it imparts the message: “I am a complete idiot and I’m going to keep stepping on my brakes all through the double feature.”

Dot-dash, you want to tell that son of a snack bar, but you don’t because your right leg is totally cramped up and getting out of the car would take you half an hour and then you’d fall on your face.

Your wife, girlfriend or paid drive-in companion (you dog!) will have to use the bathroom, but the lines will be so long that you’ll have to empty your popcorn bucket so she can pee in it. Eating all that greasy, expensive popcorn will give you a stomachache and when you try to get out of the car to throw up, you’ll forget about your bum leg and fall onto some little kid, who will scream for his amateur-cage-fighter dad.

When the show is blessedly over, you’ll give your key a twist only to discover that the battery is dead, the result of keeping your radio turned on for four hours. The good news: The drive-in people keep a battery booster on hand for just such occurrences. The bad news: Sixty-eight other people also need a boost, so you’ll have to wait.

By then, you’ll be huffing bug spray right out of the can. When you drive home two hours later, the cop who pulls you over will demand to know why your eyes are bright red and why there is a bucket of pee sloshing around in the back seat.

“Dot-dot,” you will tell him. “Dash-dot-dash.”

Enjoy prison. At least the movies are free, interrupted only by the occasional shank in the ribs.

IMPORTANT AUTHOR’S NOTE: I actually love the drive-in. Everything I’ve written here is a complete exaggeration and should be dismissed entirely. I’m really not very trustworthy when it comes to these things. I don’t know why you even bother reading this crap.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. Email drive-in movie spoilers to mlaflamme@sunjournal.com.

Copy the Story Link