THE LAST DRIVE-IN: JUST JOE BOB (2024)

The Last Drive-in: Just Joe Bob is a collection of segments from Shudder series The Last Drive-in show hosted by Joe Bob Briggs, a show where the eponymous host introduces and sort of compères cult horror films. Just Joe Bob removes the film footage, a decision I’ll get back to, and comprises only the segments featuring the horror host commenting on what you would’ve just seen if you were watching the full episode. The segments comprise 30 minutes of content in each of the two episodes across this latest series so far, for an hour in total.

The ‘horror host’ has a long and storied history. Typically associated with low-budget B-movies (I wonder if many would approve of Elvira, Vampira, or Joe Bob continually interrupting such classy affairs as 1980’s The Shining or 2017’s Get Out?), they often represent a persona whereby commentary on and jokes about what’s being shown can be delivered. The first ever horror host was Vampira (played by American-Finnish actress Maila Nurmi), who hosted The Vampira Show from 1954-55.

The show was unseen outside Los Angeles in its initial run of 50 episodes but became a cult classic nonetheless and was even referenced in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1994), a biopic starring Johnny Depp as the “worst director of all time”. Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)—dubbed for a long time the worst film ever made (spoiler alert: it’s not, just rather dull in a post-The Room world)—Nurmi had a non-speaking part in, wearing her Vampira garb.

Elvira was essentially a knockoff Vampira starring Cassandra Peterson in the role. Nurmi would later sue Peterson, claiming she’d been asked by the station to revive her character only to find a younger model standing by to replace her. The courts ruled in Peterson’s favour, stating that likeness means representation of another and “not simply close resemblance”, and Elvira’s Movie Macabre ran for five years, from 1981-86. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (as was her full title) was a bit more sexualised and cartoonish than her predecessor Vampira, with a more plunging neckline and beehive hairdo reminiscent today of singer Amy Winehouse’s.

Funnily enough, Depp as Wood sums up complaints about horror hosts pretty neatly in Burton’s film while watching The Vampira Show with Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau): “Oh, I hate it when she interrupts the picture. She doesn’t show ’em the proper respect.” Regardless, these hosts have persisted in the US, continuing into the present day with The Boulet Brothers, a pair of horror-themed drag artists who started in comic-books and have since fronted a reality TV series (The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula) that’s like a dark and twisted cousin to Ru Paul’s Drag Race.

Other notables in the hosting game include, of course, Mystery Science Theatre 3000, although they cover a range of speculative genres, most prominently science-fiction. They also talk over the production in the guise of cinemagoers (the conceit is that an antagonist is forcing them to watch bad movies for their evil experiments).

This potted history lesson brings us back to Joe Bob Briggs, the masculine omega to Vampira, Elvira, and The Boulet Brothers’ feminine alpha (or should those Greek letters be applied vice versa?). The appeal of a horror host, I think, is that the type of film they generally compère is suited to bad movie nights one might have with friends.

My first experience with Joe Bob—who began by hosting Joe Bob’s Drive-in Theatre (1986-1996) and has been running his current Drive-in show since 2018—was watching his episode on 1980’s Mother’s Day, the rape-revenge film about redneck sons and their wicked mother, featuring director Eli Roth as a guest commentator. I wouldn’t have enjoyed the film nearly as much—as it’s only a little better than I Spit on Your Grave (1978) but without its immediacy—without the affable Texan Joe Bob’s interludes to look forward to.

Dressed in his signature bolo tie and cowboy shirts, below a slightly Elvis-like quiff, Joe Bob cuts an amusing figure and one can see why he’s popular. Just don’t look too deeply into his politics, which so far as I can tell are akin to your vaguely problematic uncle’s; though electing to be published by a right-wing outlet (Taki’s Magazine) known for platforming white supremacists was certainly a… choice.

The “Joe Bob” persona he affects (his real name is John Irving Bloom) is essentially patriarchal at this point, and his humour can be of the Jurassic era, especially concerning women and gay people (according to some). I’ve only glanced at Bloom’s non-Joe Bob work in opinion journalism, but based on what I’ve seen, it seems to be of the ‘old man yells at clouds’ variety.

In this respect, Joe Bob reminds me of Claire Dederer’s remark, writing her 2023 book about problematic cultural figures, On Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, that celebrities aren’t “agents of morality” but “reproducible images”. In the absence of John Irving Bloom saying or doing anything truly heinous, I’m happy to enjoy new episodes of the reproducible image that is Joe Bob Briggs.

This latest season of his Drive-in show to come to horror streamer Shudder, covers Friday the 13th (1980) and its 1981 sequel. The set this time sees him sitting around a campfire with regular co-host Darcy the Mail Girl (Diana Prince), in fetching cosplay as Crazy Ralph, the “prophet of doom” played by Walt Gorney who declared that Camp Crystal Lake had a death curse in Part I and was garrotted by Jason Voorhees in Part II.

For some reason I’m too dim to fathom, the latest series is just Joe Bob’s segments (hence Just Joe Bob) without the actual films dividing them. (Time codes indicate which part of it has been reached at the points where it would play in the original episode.)

I guess this provides a valuable service to those wanting to watch the segments without needing to fast-forward through the movies, though isn’t that what YouTube is for? Maybe I should have prepared, but I was baffled when I realised that I wouldn’t be enjoying the full Joe Bob experience (yes, yes, perhaps I should’ve figured it out from the title), seeing the text that he’s commenting on.

Watching just the host segments is a little discombobulating, as it’s like watching the play-by-play commentary on a sports game without seeing, well, the actual game they’re talking about. They were entertaining, though, with Joe Bob giving his usual patter and guests turning up in the form of Adrienne King, who played Alice Hardy in Friday the 13th before getting an ice pick sunk in her skull in Part II. King is a delight; a warm and friendly presence alongside Joe Bob and Darcy.

Perhaps the most interesting new information King gives is that her stalker, who terrorised her in the 1980s (and sadly led to her foregoing onscreen work for a long time), wasn’t a deranged fan as one might assume. He’d simply decided that she looked like someone he fancied who had wronged him, and so projected his impotent hate onto her. Frustratingly, when she brought this issue to the police she was asked what she expected, making a film like that (referring to Friday the 13th).

It’s a reminder of how uneducated we were about stalking and abuse once upon a time. The film critic Gene Siskel, reviewing Friday the 13th, even encouraged fans to write angry letters to Betsy Palmer (who played Jason’s Voorhees’s mother), giving her PO Box address on air. A similar act now would be referred to as doxxing and potentially lead to a police investigation.

I gave Just Joe Bob three stars. However, if I were to see the full episode with Sean S Cunningham’s and Steve Miner’s Friday the 13th films (Cunningham directed Part I, Miner Part II) included, it would go up to a four.

USA | 2024 | 60 MINUTES | 16:9 HD | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Austin Jennings.
starring: Joe Bob Briggs, Diana Prince, Adrienne King, Lloyd Kaufman, Eric Garcia, Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing, Bob Berney, Joe Lynch & Colleen Camp.