Joe Bob Briggs has been around the block when it comes to horror movies.
Briggs hosted “Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater” on The Movie Channel for eleven years in the 80s and 90s, before moving on to “MonsterVision” on TNT in 1991. Both shows functioned as places where horror fans could watch old horror movies, cult classics, and other B-movie delights in a communal, albeit virtual, setting. Briggs continued the tradition when he started “The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs,” which is produced by the company Not the Funeral Home, in 2018. The show’s seventh season premieres March 7 at 9 p.m. eastern on the horror streaming service Shudder TV and AMC+ TV.
This season of “The Last Drive-In” was filmed in Georgia, and will feature monthly horror movie double features. Ahead of the first episode, Rough Draft Atlanta talked to Briggs and “The Last Drive-In” producer Matt Manjourides about the evolution of the show and what fans can expect this season.
Coming into season seven of the “The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs,” could you talk about how the show has evolved since it started in 2018, and what you’re looking forward to going into this season?
Joe Bob Briggs: Well, we have a new format, and this is our 17th new format since we started the show [laughs]. We started the show with a 28-hour marathon. Then, it’s like, well okay – what is the show? Is it weekly? Is it one movie? Is it two movies? Is it four movies? So we’ve tried various things over the years, and we’ve settled on what we think people will love, which is – they know exactly when it’s going to be on, which is the first Friday of the month, and it’s a double feature. Some people on the East Coast kinda complain about the double features. They say they go too late, and then they have to work the next day. So we tried to do single features for a while, and it turns out people like the double features more. So we’re going to do the double features and satisfy the people on the West Coast for a while instead of the East Coast [laughs].
It just feels more like an event, when you have the double features. In addition to that, we’ll have specials scattered through the year. We’re excited about this new format. I’m excited about it.
That’s a very East Coast problem to have, I think, worried about things going late. It’s interesting you bring up what the fans want – I’ve read interviews with you guys where you talk about how involved the audience is, and how they sort of have a hand in creating the show, in a way. You’ve said this comes into play with the format this year, but where else do you see audience feedback come into play?
Briggs: Every sort of way. I mean, they talk to us all the time. The fans talk to us constantly. On social media, at live events. The most interesting thing to me is they’ll say, “Why don’t you play this movie? It’s my favorite movie.” I’ll say, “Well, how many times have you seen it?” “Oh, I’ve seen it 50 times.” And I’ll say, “Well, then why do you want us to play it? Don’t you want to see something new?” [Laughs]
They want to experience the movie with our environment that we’ve created. That’s really cool to me. That’s the coolest thing about this show, is that we have this community that wants to watch the movie, often a favorite movie, but they want to watch it together. We call it the mutant family. That’s why we do such deep dives into the movie. In many cases, people have seen the movie. They just want to know more about the movie.
They contact me all the time, and sometimes complaining – but most of the time just saying, Please show this movie! Please show this movie.
Matt Manjourides: The interaction that Joe Bob and Darcy [The Mail Girl, a personality on the show] have online with their fans is one of the main reasons why we have zero loss in audience retention over our seven years, which is probably unheard of in TV shows. I mean, for something to be in season seven, and really not have lost an audience at all – the numbers don’t really go down – is really amazing. It just shows how dedicated the fans are, and how much the interaction between Joe and Darcy and the fans really creates the family.
Briggs: What it really proves is they’ll forgive us for a turkey [laughs]. If we have a show that’s not quite up to speed, they’ll go okay – the next one will be better.
Manjourides: I think a lot of the credit to what we do at the show also has to do with the fact that, since we’re not on linear [television], we’re not on the same schedule, we’re not limited by time, we’re not limited by having to cut into commercial breaks in our main show – we get to sort of play around with the format a bit. If Joe Bob wants to do a 25-minute intro because of the deep dive into something about the movie, we can do that. If we want to have a really long gag, or we want to have four guests on, or five guests on at the same time and have a healthy sort of back and forth with guests in the middle of the episode, we can do that. That’s something that a lot of you know shows can’t do, because they’re limited by the constructs of a time frame.
Briggs: One thing we have coming up this season is one of the days that we’re going to be on happens to be the birth date of the drive-in. That’s going to be a huge thing, where we celebrate the birth of the drive-in. That’ll be in June. June 6 is the birthday of the drive-in, in Camden, New Jersey in 1933.
Matt, you mentioned the retention rate for the show. I think that’s something that I’ve noticed as being pretty specific to horror fans. Even when theaters are doing well, you can always count on people to come out for a horror movie. What do both of you think it is about the horror genre, or that fan base, that keeps that commitment going?
Manjourides: It used to be such a small group, and I think that there’s the idea that horror is still a small group of people that get together, and feel isolated, maybe, from other people or other genres and whatnot. But I think it’s grown now to where it’s bigger than most people think, and that’s the fact that it’s become much more mainstream.
It’s one of the few things that does really well with a group audience, where you want that live reaction. It’s like going on a rollercoaster. You want that group reaction. You want to feel everybody else’s reaction during something. You want to have that shared experience. And I think horror is one of the few things that really retains that shared experience feel.
One of the biggest things with Shudder and our library of six seasons of episodes is that they very frequently are replayed by groups of fans that have watch parties. In between our brand new episodes, they’ll have watch parties. Joe Bob and Darcy host their own watch parties. [Fans] want that interaction. They want that gathering. They want to feed off each other’s reactions and so forth.
Briggs: It’s the only genre that’s communal like that. People don’t do that with dramas and comedies and action. It’s only with horror that you feel, this is a community thing. Horror films are better with a community. They’re meant to be shown in a spooky place where everybody screams.
Speaking of movies, and I don’t know how much you guys want to get into this, but can you talk about some of the movies you have planned for this season? I believe there’s a 100-year celebration of one in particular?
Briggs: We don’t give out titles in advance. That’s sort of a tradition of the show. But for this Friday night, for the first show, we’re having a 100th birthday party. Anybody who’s a hardcore horror fan knows what movie was made in 1925, so it’s kind of an open secret what we’re going to show on Friday night. And then the second movie we’re going to show is a kind of crazy remake of that movie 80 years later. On this particular show, because the star of the movie is a legend, we’re going to have Spencer Charnas – the lead singer of Ice Nine Kills, which is a metal band that’s kind of horror adjacent – we’re going to have Spencer Charnas come on and our own makeup artist – who teaches that all makeup derives from Lon Cheney – is going to turn Spencer into the ugliest man alive. They’ll have about four and a half hours to do it while we’re in the show. And Spencer Charnas is a very handsome man [laughs], so we’ll have that additional fun thing going on while the show is going on.
I have an idea of what movie it is, but I’ll keep it to myself.
Briggs: [Laughs] Everybody knows, we’re just not talking about it. But that movie has such a resonance through the whole culture that there’s just thousands of things to talk about. We had to really cut down what we talked about, and I’m still going to talk for a long time.
When you make a double feature, what are the most important things to you guys in deciding how to pair up those movies? With this one, it’s an older film and a remake – what are some of the other things you consider?
Briggs: Sometimes, if it’s a really heavy, disturbing movie, then we want to put it with one that’s cotton candy, you know? So we might schedule it that way. Other times – I mean, we showed the original “Nosferatu,” and then we showed a remake of “Nosferatu” back to back. That was a big decision, because you’re showing a silent film – people sometimes turn away from silent films – and then you’re showing a subtitled film. So you’re showing an intertitled silent film, and then you’re showing a subtitled film. I’m happy to say that the audience stayed with us for the whole night, of our deep dive into “Nosferatu.” We didn’t even have the usual people that [drop] out because they have to work the next day [laughs].
In that case, we were just doing the same theme throughout the whole night. So it depends on what’s available to us, to tell you the truth – what we can show, and how we can talk about it, and what we’re enthusiastic about.
Manjourides: We try to theme things together for the most part. Obviously what’s available, like you said. But themes are very important. We do try to look at when an episode is going to air and match it to maybe a specific holiday, or something that may be unappreciated or lesser known. We’ve claimed certain holidays, which we keep doing over and over again throughout all the seasons. We try to have some sort of through line.
Briggs: The example I gave you before, the night that’s the birth of the drive-in? I identified the peak year of the drive in, when there were the most drive-ins, and they were thriving and they made the most money. That year is 1958. So I can guarantee you we’re going to show a 1958 movie that night.
This article has been updated with the name of “The Last Drive-In” production company, Not the Funeral Home.