It’s a good thing I don’t like fish because I damn sure wouldn’t be eating any for a good long while after reading this.
The survivors of the first twoIt’s a good thing I don’t like fish because I damn sure wouldn’t be eating any for a good long while after reading this.
The survivors of the first two books have been stuck in the remains of the drive-in which was transported to a weird jungle where hungry dinosaurs roam. The people are living like savages in the remains of the cars and things are bad enough that eating a baby is frowned on as a minor social faux paux like burping at the dinner table. But hey, the movies are still somehow still showing at night so at least they’ve got entertainment!
Some of the folks decide to head out in an old school bus they’ve modified, and their journey leads them out on a vast sea where eventually they get swallowed by a giant catfish. That’s when things really get weird.
I didn’t like this third book in the Joe R. Lansdale’s Drive-In saga nearly as much as the others. The first book was grounded in it’s average Texas location at the start and that carried over at least a little into the second book. Here, things start out at crazy town banana pants and escalate from there. Plus, when the characters have already gone through so much it gets harder to make things worse although Lansdale gives it a mighty try by reducing them to rag clad starving wretches who have to deal with things like how best to poop out a school bus window.
Things just got a little too strange, filthy, gross, and overall bat shit (Or fish shit in this case.) crazy for my taste. This was headed for a 2 star ranking, but I did kind find some of the crazy imagery and ideas at the end interesting, and there’s still some quality Lansdale style dialogue that can be both sad, funny, and disgusting all at the same time so that bumped it up to 3....more
You gotta admire Joe Lansdale’s gumption. If you write one short crazy-ass horror novel about an entire Texas drive-in filled with people being trappeYou gotta admire Joe Lansdale’s gumption. If you write one short crazy-ass horror novel about an entire Texas drive-in filled with people being trapped in the limbo of an endless night that devolves into a frenzy of violence and cannibalism that pales in comparison to the horrors unleashed in it by the supernatural Popcorn King, then most writers might put their pencils down and not try to follow it up. So how do you top that madness? Easy. Add in some dinosaurs!
Three survivors of the first story leave the ruins of the drive-in only to find that the highway now leads through a prehistoric wilderness complete with the occasional T. Rex sighting. After some traveling and recuperating they eventually run across a woman named Grace who also lived through the terror of the never ending movie marathon but met something even worse afterwards in the guise of a deranged guy whose head has been turned into a television and calls himself Popalong Cassiday.*
* It'd been a long while since I read this, and I'd completely forgotten about Popalong Cassiday. Now I'm wondering if Brian K. Vaughan might have drawn inspiration from this for his robots with televisions for heads in Saga.
Grace is determined to return to the drive-in and stop him, and the guys agree because one of them has the hots for her and real friends don’t let a buddy go alone to confront a psychopathic guy with a TV for a head while trapped in an episode of Land of the Lost. I’m pretty sure that’s in the Guy Code somewhere, or if it’s not, it should be. Anyhow, hilarity ensues.
Like the first Drive-In this bizarre set-up sounds like it might be something meant to be comedy-horror, and there are some good laughs since Lansdale can create dialogue and descriptions to make the most awful of people, events, and circumstances funny. However, despite the goofy premises both books have a seriously dark streak of nihilism and misanthropy. The ending is a bit anti-climatic by design with Lansdale deliberately trying to stand a lot of the tropes of TV and movies on their heads. There’s a real anger and ugliness lurking just below the surface of these books, and that makes them interesting.
However, I liked this one slightly less than the first one because there the story begins with the normality of a bunch of people going to the movies and then descends into chaos. Here, the story starts off as crazy town banana pants, and then tries to take that up a notch. Once you’ve shown that people are shit who will cheerfully shed the thin veneer of civilization in the midst of a bizarro meat grinder then it’s really hard to make that any worse although Lansdale gives it a mighty effort.
It’s still a short and disturbing horror novel that will make you laugh at inappropriate times, and I’m curious to get to the third book to see how it gets wrapped up....more
With a new Hap & Leonard book out and the TV series based on their adventures coming soon it seems like Lansdale Fever is sweeping Goodreads these dayWith a new Hap & Leonard book out and the TV series based on their adventures coming soon it seems like Lansdale Fever is sweeping Goodreads these days. I blame Dan for infecting me with this particular strain of the virus.
I’d read the first two parts of The Drive-In saga way back in the ‘90s when I first discovered the Champion Mojo Storyteller, but I’d forgotten most of the story and never even gotten around to checking out the third installment. Then Dan spread his contagion all over the place, and I found myself rediscovering the gruesomeness of the Popcorn King all over again. Thanks a lot, Dan!
During the late ‘80s in Texas four young men head out to the local drive-in where they plan to spend the night watching a horror movie marathon. In the middle of their films a comet with a smile roars by, and the entire drive-in is suddenly surrounded by an inky darkness that dissolves anyone who tries to leave. With no other options the trapped patrons watch the movies over and over in an endless night as the food starts to run out. That’s when things get even weirder and more horrible.
This is a very short book, and that’s a good thing because I don’t think spinning the concept out much longer than 150 pages would actually work. (Although I’m sure Stephen King would have taken a 700 or 800 page swing at it if he would have thought of this idea first.) What really sells it is that Lansdale quickly provides the details that ground things in reality among the most mundane circumstances of people going to the movies before unleashing the batshit craziness. Then he uses the most terrible of creatures, human beings, to set the stage for the real horror show which becomes a gory supernatural B-movie spectacle.
Lansdale mainly uses two characters to represent different points of view. Our narrator Jack holds the desperately hopeful belief that there is some inherent goodness and meaning in humanity’s existence, but the counterpoint is his buddy Bob who operates under the basic assumptions that people are just bastard covered bastards with bastard filling and that believing in anything other than yourself is a waste of time. This is pretty much the same dynamic that defines the soft-hearted Hap and the pragmatic Leonard so you can almost see Jack and Bob as an early trial run at those two characters.
The part that really got to me this time was that period before things really go sideways when everyone is just stuck watching the movies over and over again while living off concession stand hotdogs and popcorn. While drive-ins were pretty much dead in my area by the time I was a teenager I’ve attended some movie marathons, and I think Lansdale really nailed that weird dreamy limbo state that sets in if you spend hour after hour staring at a screen in a theater as you shove popcorn or candy into your mouth.
Like most things Lansdale it’s got some funny stuff mixed in with some sharp edges that unsuspecting readers might cut themselves on. Overall, it’s weird and gory in ways that are different than most horror stories you’d read, but it’s also got an ugliness to it that definitely cuts into the fun factor you might expect from something this bizarre. ...more
Loading...
