Summertime, Horror Movies, & The Drive-In
Pure Joy & Great Smells
Listen to “Summertime, Horror Movies, & The Drive-In.”
The older I get, the less I look forward to summer. Long gone are the days when summertime meant three months off for me, and few words more accurately describe summer weather in the Lower Mississippi Delta Region than “oppressive.” But there’s one summertime activity that never ceases to bring me joy: the drive in. This is even truer when horror titles grace the marquee.
There’s a photo hanging in my parents’ house that transports me to summer 2019 — the summer I moved back to southeast Missouri from southern California — every time I see it. It was taken in Van Buren, Missouri. I feel sunshine and humidity and mosquito bites when I look at it. I hear bugs. I smell buttered popcorn and cannabis and freshly cut grass.
In the photo, my mom, sister, and I are standing in front of two vertically stacked signs. The top sign is yellow with red letters: “21 Drive In,” it reads. The bottom sign is a massive, vintage marquee displaying show information: “FRI SAT - IT I & II.” We’re making terrified faces for an iPhone camera, and I’m obviously underweight. My mom and I are recovering from unexpected illnesses; hers the fault of a tick bite, mine caused by dysphagia and severe inflammation among other things. I’m uninsured and living in a camper; my sister’s just been diagnosed with a brain tumor — but for the next few hours, I won’t dwell on any of that.
“It’s an emotional palette cleanser,” is what my sister likes to say about watching horror movies, and I agree. A few summers ago, I told a friend: “When I’m upset and feel like abusing substances, I watch horror movies instead.” More than any other film genre, horror captures my full attention. When I’m watching a good horror movie, I’m not thinking about anything else.
I slept with a lamp on every night for a month after watching It and It Chapter Two at the drive-in, and I’d do it all over again.
