Dead End Drive-In (1986) Review
Dead End Drive-In (1986)
Kicking off with a typically trashy, generic and instantly forgettable Eighties score, and littering the screen with images of shockingly attired youngsters loitering outside video shops — including an advertisement for Rambo 8: Rambo Takes Russia — Dead End Drive-In initially looks as though it might develop into one of those guilty pleasures from the decade that fashion forgot. Unfortunately, despite an intriguing concept and the occasional bout of titillation, there’s very little plot, character development or interesting subtext to secure it a place in the collection.
Set in Nineties Australia — which, when the film was made, was still the future — the film presents a world where the economy has collapsed, unemployment is rife and crime is spiralling. Enter Crabs (yes, really, that’s our hero’s name), who borrows his elder brother’s ’57 Chevy and heads to the local drive-in with his date, Carmen (Natalie McCurry).
As is usually the case when you take someone else’s car out without permission, trouble soon follows. At the drive-in, Crabs is given a choice of two admission prices: one for the employed and a cheaper rate for the unemployed. He opts for the latter, inadvertently condemning himself and Carmen to permanent imprisonment inside the drive-in, effectively turning the place into a concentration camp populated by those who have taken advantage of the cheaper admission.
There’s an immediate problem with this premise. What happens to those who pay the higher price? More importantly, why would anyone pay more when they could simply claim to be unemployed and gain entry at the cheaper rate? Unless the management has some miraculous system for checking employment status, it seems rather too easy to cheat the system. Most people, employed or otherwise, would presumably opt for the cheaper fare.
Once inside, Crabs and Carmen discover that their new home comes complete with fast-food vouchers, drugs, alcohol, New Wave music and a film on the giant screen every evening. Most of the occupants seem perfectly happy with this arrangement, embracing their new existence within the confines of the drive-in. Crabs, however, wants out and is determined not to spend the rest of his life imprisoned there.
The film does eventually attempt to spice things up with the arrival of a couple of busloads of Asians, which causes discontent among the few hundred punk youngsters who have already made the drive-in their home. It’s here that the film’s potentially interesting racism subplot could have given the story some much-needed depth, but instead very little actually comes of it. For a film that is supposedly intended as social satire, everything remains remarkably one-note.
The distributors’ decision to label Dead End Drive-In a “cult movie” is certainly no guarantee of quality or must-see status. Nor does Quentin Tarantino’s claim that it is his favourite Brian Trenchard-Smith film necessarily make it so. Let’s face it: this is a turkey. Made for a relatively modest $2.5 million, Dead End Drive-In spectacularly failed to find an audience, taking a paltry $68,000 at the Australian box office and effectively killing off Trenchard-Smith’s plans for a sequel.
Trenchard-Smith has described the drive-in as an allegory for the junk values of the Eighties, which is an appropriate interpretation given that he even includes footage from his own Turkey Shoot (1982) among the films being screened there. Unfortunately, knowing what the director intended doesn’t necessarily make what appears on screen any more effective.
The film also seems to take for granted that we understand the sinister reason why the occupants are being kept permanently inside the drive-in. It is vaguely alluded to rather than properly explained, and had I not read the accompanying press material, I doubt I would have understood what was supposed to be going on. Worse still, instead of allowing the viewer to switch off and enjoy the exploitation nonsense unfolding before them, the film leaves you pondering the holes in its own premise.
It never really convinces as a vision of the future either. Everything looks unmistakably Eighties, from the fashions to the cars to the general aesthetic. It is also difficult to believe that hundreds of people would genuinely regard this lifestyle as preferable to their previous existence, particularly when they are effectively imprisoned and have no meaningful future beyond the drive-in’s walls.
There is potential here, but Dead End Drive-In never manages to capitalise on it. The premise requires an awful lot of swallowing, while the supposed exploitation elements are surprisingly restrained. The nudity is minimal, the fistfights are few and far between, and much of the running time consists of Crabs wandering around trying to work out how to escape.
If car stunts are enough to make you pee a little with excitement, however, you’ll probably get a considerable thrill from the spectacular stunt at the end. Performed by stuntman Guy Norris, the truck jump covered 163 feet and held a world record at the time. It’s an impressive piece of stunt work, although rather more exciting than most of what precedes it.
Trenchard-Smith was brought in as a last-minute replacement to direct Dead End Drive-In and claims he was unfamiliar with Peter Carey’s short story Crabs, on which the film was based. The lack of preparation time may well explain some of the film’s problems, but it doesn’t excuse the fact that what could have been an interesting piece of social satire instead becomes a rather aimless tale about a bloke searching for replacement tyres while irritating a bunch of largely non-threatening punks who spend their time chatting in the gents’ toilets.
A film about a dystopian future, social division and the disposable values of the Eighties could have been considerably more interesting than this. Instead, Dead End Drive-In is a missed opportunity dressed up in fluorescent Eighties clothing. Dumb, occasionally amusing and boasting one hell of a truck jump — but hardly the cult classic its reputation would have you believe.
