It’s the beginning of the end for The Last Drive-In. On Friday night, Joe Bob Briggs and Darcy the Mail Girl ushered thousands of horror fans through a double feature that consisted of Messiah of Evil and The Last Horror Film, as they’d done some many times over the course of seven seasons of this beloved show on Shudder. Unfortunately, this marked the final episode of The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs as we know it, marking the end of an era.
While Joe Bob isn’t done quite yet, it’s time to say goodbye to this beautiful thing that was. The Last Drive-In isn’t technically done yet as Shudder has ordered four specials, but those will be the last ones produced with Joe Bob for the streamer, and there will be no more full seasons of the show coming our way. Joe Bob referred to them as being “guests of Shudder” for the four specials, but this is the beginning of the end for what fans like me had come to know and love over these last seven years.
For many horror fans out there, there is nobody like Joe Bob Briggs. Dating back to his days on Drive-In theater and MonsterVision, Briggs had been a staple of celebrating horror – particularly horror that isn’t highlighted as often in the mainstream. I absolutely have memories of watching Godzilla movies on MonsterVision, with Joe Bob as my guide. But when The Last Drive-In came to Shudder, it became appointment viewing for me. That’s because there isn’t anything quite like it in modern television.
As a live-streamed show, it represented a chance for horror fans to gather around the proverbial campfire for a communal experience. In the era of streaming where nobody seems to watch anything at the same time, it was most welcome. We never knew what was coming. Sometimes it was great. Sometimes it was not-so-great. It was always fun. It will be sorely missed.
And it’s not as though Shudder could just revive The Last Drive-In with a new host, or even a new show with a similar concept. There’s a magic to the man that is Joe Bob Briggs, and Darcy complimented him perfectly. There was something special about it. After I saw Joe Bob live in Austin, Texas a few years ago, I wrote a piece celebrating him as the king of bucking cynicism.
There’s something wonderful about a guy who can find the beauty in what many people (people I probably wouldn’t like very much) might call “trash.” Joe Bob can talk about low-budget exploitation cinema as art, sharing his insights with all of us, the so-called Mutant Fam. I didn’t intend to become a member of this family, it just sort of happened. I’ll miss it so. I know I’m not alone.
Joe Bob handled the whole thing with dignity, leaving his chair with a shot of Wild Turkey in his hand and a bad joke for us to remember the show by. Even though Darcy tried to offer up a more positive outlook, letting us know there are more shows to come this year, Joe Bob seemed to understand that this is the end of an era and, quite possibly, the last era he will have as a full-time host on television. I hope to have as much grace when the day comes that I must leave the thing I love with all my heart behind.
There are far bigger shows on television, but The Last Drive-In was one of the best. There are more important things going on in the real world. Yet, I mourn the loss of what was a true communal experience centered around movies, which is increasingly rare these days. As Joe Bob so eloquently put it in his final remarks, shows like this one are important, as they offer us an escape from the hardships of reality.
“The world needs movie hosts. The world needs sanctuaries from chaos and meanness. The world needs places where people gather to talk about joyous topics, like double decapitation and character actors who love their mommas too much.”
Grab your Lone Star and raise it high while you remember the immortal words of one Mr. Joe Bob Briggs; the drive-in will never die.
