This past Christmas, I happened to see an episode of Joe Bob Briggs’ The Last Drive-In on Shudder. And what a gift that turned out to be! Since his new weekly series premiered a couple months ago, I have been watching his double features almost every week. Showing everything from Q to Deathgasm, Joe Bob is most definitely one of the most charismatic hosts on television...ever. Not only does he seem to remember practically every fun-fact in existence about the movies he selects, but his opening monologue and mid movie tangents always leave me laughing, or cringing, or downright impressed.
However, while Joe Bob may be new to me, I have come to learn that he is definitely not new to the horror community at large. Starting out as a movie reviewer for a number of Texas newspapers, Joe Bob would move on to hosting a variety of film-centric TV shows, most notably TNT’s MonsterVision from 1996-2000, where his double feature format was first established. Complete with mail girls and drive-in totals, MonsterVision was the show that first really hooked horror fans on Joe Bob. In the summer of 2018, Shudder revived Joe Bob’s show, under the moniker of The Last Drive-In, when he hosted a 26 hour marathon of his favorite horror flicks. After two more successful marathons on Thanksgiving and Christmas, in March 2019 Joe Bob’s show became a weekly Shudder staple, where viewers could watch the series live every Friday night.
Last weekend, the first movie on The Last Drive-In was Joe Giannone’s 1982 slasher, Madman. Staring Gaylen Ross of Dawn of the Dead as the quazi-Final Girl, Madman tells the story of Madman Marz, a killer who stalks the woods of a camp for gifted children, killing anyone who speaks his name above a whisper. However, Madman does not seem to adhere to classic slasher trope. This is partially because the slasher as we know it today did not yet exist in 1982, but it still feels worth mentioning. The reason why I refer to Betsy (Ross) as a “quasi-Final Girl” is that...she isn’t. Not only does Betsy break the Final Girl rules (she’s blonde, sexually active, and well, dies), but she is also survived by two other characters in the film, Max and Richie.
Honestly, it's pretty amazing Richie was allowed to survive at all. Not only was he the one to summon the Madman in the first place, but he spends the entirety of the film wandering around the woods until coming across the house where Marz killed his family. Richie even makes an accidental trip into Marz’ body dump/torture basement, and lives to tell the tale. He makes it back to the main road, encounter’s Max, and declares in a hilarious close up shot of his eyes, “Madman Marz...he’s real!” I really couldn’t tell you whether this was actually a subversive plot point, or simply lazy film-making.
Aside from a pretty unbearably cringy hot tub scene and extremely questionable decisions made by practically every character, I was pleasantly surprised how well this film held up in 2019. It was fun, funny, and had a number of creative kills. Of course, it was greatly improved by Joe Bob’s frequent intermissions and the truly staggering number of fun facts he delivers. But I’m going to have to agree with Joe Bob on this one...Grace says, check it out!
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