The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs: Zombie Night 2: Reunion Boogaloo
The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs wraps up season five with another double feature of delicious horror. Fans say goodbye for now to the informative, and sometimes on-topic, rants Joe Bob delivers during breaks in the films. His co-host, the intelligent and beautiful Darcy the Mailgirl, has done her best to keep him under control this season, but he is one hard to wrangle cowboy. The Drive-In can be watched on AMC+ and Shudder. Stay tuned for future news about specials and seasons.
This week on The Last Drive-In, Joe Bob brings the season full circle by ending on another zombie night. You may remember the season premier features Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (1979) and The Beyond (1981). The finale brings the dead back with the Spanish-Italian film The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974) and George A. Romero’s Day of the Dead (1985). The episode also treats viewers to an incredibly charming cast reunion of Day of the Dead.
You Are What You Wear
Thankfully, Shudder seems to have resolved the major server issues plaguing the site/app last week. Joe Bob opens the episode asking why children are told to keep their elbows off of the table while they eat. An interesting question given zombies are perhaps the least polite diners.
Joe Bob seems hopeful viewers have specifically requested Manchester and Darcy has to break it to him that it just isn’t true. He alone is responsible for the crusade to bring this movie to our screens. As he describes the plot, he says the zombies were “created by flat cappers.” Darcy makes the mistake of asking for clarification and Joe Bob is off describing European hat culture.
Manchester is written and directed by Jorge Grau and tells the story of George (Ray Lovelock) and Edna (Chrisina Galbo) as they plead with local law enforcement (Arthur Kennedy) to believe them about the zombie threat created by a new piece of farming equipment promising to eliminate crop pests.
The Drive-In Totals include but are not limited to: 13 Dead Bodies, 16 Undead Bodies, 5 Dead Undead Bodies, zombie toast, bloody psychotic infant, gratuitous streaker, and lantern fu. This movie earns four stars and high praise from Joe Bob. He says Grau figured out how to “outdo Romero with Romero-type zombies.”
I Hate Spanish Zombies
No movie presentation is complete without a history lesson. Joe Bob explains the economic and political climate of Spain under the rule of General Francisco Franco. Franco controlled most everything about life in Spain, including which films could be produced and released.
His hardline stance against horror was loosened with The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962). However, any Spanish horror films had to be filmed outside of Spain and feature foreign actors in unsavory roles.
These limitations result in Kennedy as the only American in the cast playing the over-the-top authoritarian police inspector. The inspector is actually never given a name, and Joe Bob says this is because Grau is using Kennedy’s character as a stand-in for Franco. Joe Bob disagrees with those who say Kennedy over-delivers his lines. “He’s just delivering exactly what this movie demanded.”
Manchester probably wins the award this season for the movie with the most alternate titles. Titles include but are not limited to: Weekend of the Dead, Don’t Disturb the Sleep of the Dead, Zombi 3 (no relation to the Fulci films), and Let Sleeping Corpses Lie.
New Rules
Joe Bob says Manchester is almost ““the true sequel to Night of the Living Dead (1968).” Giannetto De Rossi is responsible for the zombie design in the film. Both he and Grau studied Night intensely before making Manchester.
They receive high praise from Joe Bob when he says, “You could say that Jorge was the European George Romero and Giannetto was the European Tom Savini.”
When he goes into the more technical aspects of filming, Joe Bob apologizes for giving too much detail. These deep dives into various aspects of filmmaking keep us coming back for more so please don’t apologize, Joe Bob.
This movie does not really have a character you could describe as the hero. As with many zombie movies, Grau imbues this film with socio-political commentary. Joe Bob points out city folks will find “There’s no escape from the hypocrites and the liars,” out in the country. According to the ending of Manchester, there may never be an escape at all.
My rating for The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue:
(4 / 5)
Mail Call
There is only one mail reading in this episode and boy is it a doozy. Content warnings for SA, DV, SI for this portion of the episode.
I honestly do not feel comfortable recapping it or commenting on it. I’ll just leave Joe Bob’s words here, ““Some of these letters sound like they should be sent to a psychiatrist, you know, or a priest.”
Get Down to Business
Joe Bob gets right to it with and immediately starts talking about George A. Romero’s Day of the Dead. He begins with the start of the trilogy and says Night of the Living Dead is “the foundation film of modern horror and Dawn of the Dead is “the kind of spectacular pinnacle of that genre.”
Unfortunately by the time of Day of the Dead’s release in 1985, Joe Bob says Romero was already “made obsolete by movies he inspired.”
The movie we end up watching is a much different version from Romero’s original vision, with the working script being nearly one third of the length of the original script. Continuing, Joe Bob points out the criticisms levied against the film and Romero at release and says he still doesn’t understand the ending.
For those unaware, Day of the Dead tells the story of a group of scientists working in an underground facility guarded by soldiers attempting to solve the zombie pandemic ravaging the world. Power struggles cause chasms in the group and their plan to save the world falls apart.
Come on Down!
Before the guests start to come out as part of the cast reunion interview, Darcy appears in a beautifully shot homage to Lori Cardille’s opening scene as Sarah. Darcy awakens on set and tries to warn Joe Bob about a bad feeling she’s having. He brushes her off and tells her to “have a mushroom.”
Cardille enters the set and her presence is hard to describe. Her voice is low and soothing and she brings a measure of unexpected calm. Joe Bob starts by asking her about her father William “Chilly Billy” Cardille before moving to the film.
Her father stars as the reporter in Night of the Living Dead, though this connection is not entirely responsible for her role as Sarah. She reveals she had been approached by Romero with the original script for Day of the Dead after seeing her in a stage production of Reckless.
When Joe Bob asks about the “backyard” set up in the mines by John (Terry Alexander) and Bill (Jarlath Conroy), Cardille draws a comparison to the trailer set of The Drive-In. This obviously makes Darcy happy as she lets loose an adorable “Yay!”
Down and Out
One of the most pressing questions throughout the interview is about the gay subtext between the characters of John and Bill. When Cardille is asked, she says she doesn’t think the two of them are covert lovers.
Alexander is the next of the cast to enter the set for the interview. Joe Bob praises his delivery of the speech about the meaning of life in the face of a zombie apocalypse. He then asks Alexander if he thinks there is gay subtext between John and Bill.
When answering, Alexander is animated and lively. He puts his whole body into his answers and he smiles as he recounts a story in response to the question. According to him, Romero once joked he was going to make a movie called Gay of the Dead.
Cardille keeps reassuring everyone “that would be ok” if the two characters actually were gay and her earnestness is so endearing.
The final guest is Conroy and he certainly knows how to make an entrance. He confidently strolls across the set, grabs Alexander’s face in his hands, and plants a kiss right on his lips. The set erupts into cheers and laughter as Alexander sits with a slightly shocked look on his face.
Despite this, Conroy says he never thought about there being gay subtext in John and Bill’s relationship. Joe Bob says audiences have almost been trained in the last 30 years to look for gay subtext and this is a frustrating trend.
It is so very important to have loving and intimate examples of straight male friendship. It is something that is sorely lacking in current media and reality.
Down Bad?
The interview is not entirely focused on the big gay question. It also touches on the various working conditions of filming. There is also an entire Holiday Inn portion which brings me back to Cassandra Peterson revealing she was a go-go dancer at a Holiday Inn once upon a time.
The camaraderie is obvious as the cast sits together and the interview is the most entertaining of the season.
My rating for Day of the Dead:
(4.5 / 5)
Spill Your Guts
Lest you forget, this is the season five finale. Joe Bob has said multiple times that we never know how much time The Drive-In has left. While season six has been confirmed by the hosts, there has yet to be an official announcement from Shudder or AMC. The current state of streaming is a disaster and it remains to be seen how this will affect things in the future.
In that vein, the final segment of the episode features Joe Bob alone on set. Calling out for Darcy, he receives no response. Left alone, he begins to wax poetic about the ending of Day of the Dead. He sums it up as, “The struggle, that’s what we do.”
As he continues, zombies shamble out and surround him. He falls to the ground and begins singing a John Brennen original “See You on the Other Side.” The song sounds melancholy but as Joe Bob reminds us, “This is not the end. Oh, not goodbye.”
Much like the zombies in the films featured in the episode – the drive-in will never die. Joe Bob has a smile on his face as the zombie feast on his guts, after all.
My rating for the season five finale:
(5 / 5)
We have come now to the finale of season four of The Boys. And while it didn’t have the literal blood fireworks I wanted, someone did get ripped in half in the air. So, that’s pretty close.
As a note, I will try to avoid spoilers as much as possible. This ending was a hell of a gut punch that should be experienced as blindly as possible. That being said, I will not be able to avoid spoilers and still give a full legitimate review. Proceed at your own risk.
The story
The main storyline for this episode is the attempted assassination of President-Elect Robert Singer. The Boys join forces with the Secret Service to protect him. But, as we learned last episode, Annie has been replaced with a shapeshifter. A shapeshifter that was welcome not just into Hughie’s anus, but into the protective bunker in which the President-Elect is hiding.
What worked
The first thing I want to discuss about this episode is the ending. But we need to do this carefully.
The important thing here is that the ending breaks your heart on so many levels. So many terrible things are happening to characters that it’s almost hard to keep track. And each moment is significant to each character.
I cannot give a specific example. But no matter who your favorite character is, you’re going to weep for them.
Unless your favorite character is Sage. And this is the next thing that made this episode so fantastic.
I don’t think I’m spoiling anything to say that Sage’s plans worked out exactly as she wanted them to. And she got exactly what she wanted.
What she wanted wasn’t power. It wasn’t money or fame or vengeance. It wasn’t to win the love of anyone. She just wanted to see if she could do it.
That is a terrific, terrifying motivation! Because all she wants is to play a massive game of chess with people as pieces. She doesn’t care about anyone. She just wants to see how many people she can manipulate. She just wants to set things on fire to see if she can.
Fantastic. A plus villain work.
The next thing I want to discuss is a cornerstone of the whole series.
The morality of The Boys shifts through the series. While it’s very much a battle to save the world from overpowered super monsters, it’s also a battle for the souls of our real heroes. And in that battle, there are two warring factors. We have Hughie, always trying to bring everyone up to a better level. And we have Butcher, who has no problem at all hitting rock bottom with a shovel in hand to do some more digging.
In this episode, we saw almost every member of The Boys challenged. Will they rise to their higher angels, or sink with their demons?
On a similar note, I am so glad that the writers kind of addressed my issues with Annie. They did this by having the shapeshifter get right into her face and accuse her of thinking that she’s better than everyone.
While that was devastating for the character, it was a little cathartic for those of us who felt like Annie was a little too good of a good guy.
What didn’t work
This is a small matter, but it is an issue that I want to address. After Annie finds out that Hughie slept with her doppelganger, she is furious at him.
In addition to this being unfair, it’s also a very cliche element to add. In almost every instance of a lookalike in fiction, there’s a moment where the love interest of the victim is fooled. Or almost fooled. And it’s always the same fight. It’s just played out and predictable. I’m just glad that it didn’t last very long.
Now that we’ve come to the end of the season, I can officially say that it was amazing. The story was deep and rich. The special effects were a stomach-turning good time. The character development was spot-on and satisfying. And, of course, it left me just about gagging to see what happens next. Unfortunately, it looks like we’ll have a bit of a wait. Because as of right now, the fifth season isn’t expected until 2026.
(5 / 5)
We’ve reached the second to last episode of The Boys, season four. And, as is appropriate for the penultimate episode of any show, things have to get a lot worse before they can get better.
Let’s discuss.
The story
Christmas is coming, and the whole world is getting ready. Ryan, despite being very clear that he didn’t want to appear on any TV shows or movies, has been strong-armed into participating in a Vought puppet Christmas special. He draws the line, though, when asked to sing about turning one’s parents in if they start talking about woke things.
Meanwhile, The Boys are trying to keep each other together. Butcher decides to take Sameer to the rest of the team. He also gets Frenchie out of prison, hoping they can make the Sup virus necessary to finally take down Homelander. Instead, this decision means disaster for one member of the team.
What worked
I first want to talk about Ryan’s speech near the end of the episode. Because it was exactly the moral of this whole story.
Ryan’s dad is a monster. His stepdad is also kind of a monster. But Ryan is a good kid. He cares about people, about family. And while he loves Homelander and Butcher, he doesn’t want to be like them.
Even better, this speech sounded like something a kid would say. Ryan didn’t open his mouth and start sounding like a college student all of a sudden. He sounds like a kid who misses his mom and wants to live up to the good standards she set for him. And I think that’s terrific.
Speaking of Homelander, he shot himself in the foot in this episode. I said earlier in the season that his hubris was going to be his downfall, and I was right. Without Sage, he just has the same weaknesses he’s always had. He’s going to fail because he just isn’t clever enough or patient enough to succeed.
Without Sage, I think a win is in the bag for The Boys. This isn’t to say that Homelander by himself isn’t dangerous. It’s just that he’s more like a wildfire than a controlled burn. He’s going to cause a lot of damage, but not get anything he wants out of it.
More’s the pity for him and everyone else who has to share his world.
Finally, I am thrilled with A-Train’s redemption story. I love that he wants to be a good person not to save himself, but to be a good person. His honest, pure and warm reaction to that little kid smiling at him in the last episode was heartwarming. It changed him in a moment, bringing to light a goodness that he’s been keeping under wraps for a long time.
This, along with Ryan’s courageous speech, proves once again what The Boys does so well. Yes, it’s gruesome. Yes, there’s blood and balls and batshit events. Yes, someone occasionally gets ripped in half. But there is a true human goodness in the story. One that we catch glimpses of. There are good people among the monsters. There is hope for redemption.
What didn’t work
Of course, so few things in this life are perfect, and this episode was no exception. For instance, I was irritated by the insinuation that Butcher cheated on his wife.
That just doesn’t make any sense. We’ve seen flashbacks of Billy and Becca. They were happy. He was happy. He was head over heels for her. And I don’t think it’s realistic or necessary for the character to throw in that he cheated. It does nothing to add to the story, it’s just a weird and offputting moment.
Doesn’t Butcher have enough to hate about himself? Can’t we just give him that at least he was a good husband?
Finally, I kind of hate that we ended up with Annie being caught. It’s just cliche, which is something I don’t normally say about this show. It feels lazy unless they do something very clever with it in the last episode. Which, I suppose, they might.
Next up is the season finale. And with this season being as insane as it has been, I’m expecting nothing short of bloody fireworks. And I mean literal fireworks of blood. At this point, would it surprise anyone?
(4 / 5)
Episode six of The Boys was one of the most surprising episodes of the series so far. And that is certainly saying something. Because this season has so far been bonkers.
The story
Our episode today revolves around a party at Tek Knight’s lovely mansion. Yes, it does look just like Wayne Manor.
The Boys know that Tek Knight is working with Homelander on something, but they don’t know the details. So they decide to send Hughie in to bug the mansion.
Because that’s worked so well the other two times he’s tried to hide a bug!
It should surprise no one that this time goes no better. Hughie finds himself in Tek Knight’s basement. And by that I mean his BDSM dungeon.
Meanwhile, the party upstairs is no less disturbing. Homelander and Sage are trying to convince some well-off political donors to support a cue after the election. When pressed for details on his plan, Homelander freezes. He looks to Sage for help, but she wasn’t recently shot in the head and still in the junk food stage of her healing.
Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your point of view, Neuman jumps in and saves the day.
What works
If I’m going to say one thing about this episode, it didn’t hold back at all. I didn’t expect them to show a character masturbating, sitting their bare behind on a cake, or spraying breastmilk into someone’s face. But every time I thought they’d cut the scene and let something be left to our imagination, they did not do that.
This is a dangerous move. Whenever you show the monster, you run the risk of them not being scary enough, or gross enough. As Stephen King says in Danse Macabre, to leave this sort of thing to the imagination if the reader makes things so much worse. So when they finally experience the monster, they might say that this isn’t so bad. It could have been so much worse.
But in this case, they managed to avoid that by making the scenes, especially the ones in Tek Knight’s dungeon, so much worse than I imagined it would be.
What doesn’t work
While this was a deeply disturbing episode in many ways, there was one really innocent and sweet moment.
And yes, I did have a problem with it.
Confronted by Firecracker, Annie decides to apologize for spreading rumors about her when they were kids. She tells her that she is genuinely sorry.
And I believe her. I don’t think Firecracker did, but I did.
So why is this an issue? Because I’m starting to think that Annie is maybe too nice. She is too good.
I know that Annie is our good guy. But every one of the other good guys has flaws. Hughie let his pride get in the way and took Temp V. MM hid himself from his daughter instead of teaching her to work through her emotions. Kimiko is far too closed off and has a hard time trusting others. Frenchie numbs himself with drugs. And well, what hasn’t Butcher done?
It is unrealistic that Annie is just so kind and so flawless. We all have shadows in our personalities. We all have weaknesses, we all mess up. We all do things we wish we could take back. The fact that Annie doesn’t seem to have anything like that is not just unrealistic. It’s infantilizing.
Give her some deep dark secrets. Give her something real to regret.
This was a shocking episode, even for someone fairly jaded like me. I wasn’t expecting the sort of weird sexual depravity, though I guess maybe I should have seen it coming. It was dark, upsetting, tense, and funny as hell. And with just two episodes left in the season, I can imagine the stakes are only going to get higher.
(4 / 5)
By the way, if you like my writing you can get my short story, Man In The Woods, on Smashwords and Amazon.
