meathookcinema I'll always have a soft spot for this movie. An obscure horror film made in America in the 70s and set in a drive in. Whats not to like?Could it be the mentally challenged employee there called Germy who could be the killer? Or the local sex pest we see the cops interview? ('I didn't do anything wrong! I was just at the drive in to beat my meat!')Yes, its slow in places, yes there are obvious filler scenes to pad out the running time. But its full of character and is pretty scary.I first saw this on VHS and then DVD in the 80s and both released through VIPCO. It was the worst print used for a transfer EVER. The film is now on Blu ray through Severin Films and looks amazing after a long lost print was found, where else, but in an abandoned drive in. Life imitates life. Or something.

Rainey Dawn The movie is awful, cheesy but kinda fun to watch. It's better than I expected it to be - I thought it might have been a grindhouse style of film but it's not. It's a slasher, bloody but not a lot of that going on... it's main focus is on two cops trying to solve the murders! The best thing about the film are the two cops who could pass as brothers! Really, their facial features look similar to one another and similar build to their bodies.. only real difference is one is slightly shorter than the other!! I could see these two in a spin off 1970s TV show playing the same two cops and still solving murders. LOL! It's not a film to seek out - even for a die-hard horror fan - but it is an OK watch if you happen to catch it on one night or acquire it in a film pack as I did.3/10

KtheC2001 Drive In Massacre is the tale of a police investigation into a series of slayings taking place at a local Drive-In theater. Although this film may be billed as a horror film, I'd say this is more of a crime film, as about 3/4ths of the movie is focused on the police investigation. There are a couple of gory scenes, especially the first two killings, but the movie is rather tame overall.The two cops (played by John Goff and Bruce Kimball) stumble through the investigation to the point where you wonder whether or not these guys could catch a cold, much less a mass murderer. The main suspects are a pair of employees at the theater, the manager (Newton Naushaus), who hates, well everything, and a janitor named Germy (Douglas Gudbye), a dim former sword swallower who is pleasant enough, but seems a little off. With the possible exception of Gudbye, the acting in this film is either phoned-in, or in the case of Naushaus, way too over the top.The sound is horrible, as there are many points where you can't make out the dialog, and the soundtrack is subpar at best, as some of the songs sound as if it were composed with a Casio keyboard. There's a couple of scenes in this movie that have hardly any connection to the plot and seemed to be tacked on just to fill out the movie. The ending is different, at least, but I wouldn't say it was very good either.Overall, if you're a fan of 'So Bad It's Good' movies, then Drive-In Massacre could provide a few laughs. If you're a fan of horror movies, well I'd recommend you stay away from this one.

Bezenby How many corpses count as a massacre? Never been quite sure of that. The film takes place (just in case you don't get it from the title) in a Drive-In. We didn't have drive-ins in Glasgow (we didn't even have electricity until 1987), but I'm fairly sure I would have enjoyed visiting these places. Anyway, Drive-in Massacre is aimed squarely at Drive-in audiences, ensuring it's immortality and safe in the knowledge that Drive-ins would be a permanent feature on the US landscape. This means that people (or more truthfully, tired old men like me) will sit down in front of their DVD player, watch this film's slight seventy-seven minutes, and then proceed to kick the television screen in.It's not a bad movie, per se, at least for the first half hour or so. There's a nifty decapitation and a neck piercing right at the start, and the quirky characters are a hoot, but this film is front loaded and there's an awful lot of padding tacked on to the last half hour. Plus, with that gip of an ending I can't help but thinking I'm only treating this film charitably because of nostalgia reasons. I'll begrudgingly give praise to the fact that there's nary a teenager in sight in this film. Both cops are fat has-beens, one suspect in a ex-circus geek, and another is Mr Johnston, the terminally bitter and angry manager of the drive-in who is the best thing about this film. He's so angry, he doesn't even care about people getting murdered. He gets angry about the cops interviewing him, and he gets angry about the cops interviewing the ex-geek turned cleaner, Germy. The cops try ineptly to catch the killer, of course. They set their sights on a voyeur, dress in drag (Johnston says to the cop the next day: "Say, do you have a sister?"), and then end up, for no reason at all, chasing George Buck Flower around a warehouse for ten minutes in a scene whose link to the rest of the movie is tenuous at best. At least it's better than the "Germy-walking-around-the-carnival-doing-nothing-for-ten-minutes" scene. Now that's major padding!I'll say no more about the film. I don't like to reveal too much about slasher film (unless the killer is revealed about two minutes in), but let me just say that Drive-in Massacre doesn't end too well. You'll be let down. Still, it's not long and isn't offensive. In Scotland it was out on Vipco (defunct) and 23rd Century (defunct). I got mine as part of the Mill Creek 50 Chilling Classics box set.