THE DRIVE-IN: A B-Movie with Blood and Popcorn, Made in Texas
Joe R. Lansdale
The end of the 1980s. Drive-in movie culture is mostly dead with one significant exception: THE ORBIT DRIVE-IN. A drive-in theater so large it houses multiple stories-high screens that fill the sky, and can hold four thousand cars and all the people who can squeeze in them. It’s a lit city that fills to the brim on Friday nights, crowds gather for the Dusk-to-Dawn Horror Shows. Horns honk, BBQ grills sizzle, people yell and act the fool, ready for the marathon of one low-budget horror film after another. But then suddenly the world changes in front of their eyes, not on the screens. A comet, red and smiling with jagged teeth, flashes across the sky. People try to leave but find they are trapped by some acidic goo surrounding the entire drive-in. They grow hungry, homicidal and suicidal. Then along comes the Popcorn King, a jiving, rhyming creature formed by blue-white lightning, with four arms and a popcorn bucket on its head. A monster as strange and dangerous and mesmerizing as the creatures and villains on the screens. It offers the starving masses food, but there’s always a price to pay for survival. And THEN things start to get wicked…
