Kicking off with a typically trashy generic and forgettable Eighties score and littering the screen with images of shockingly attired youngsters outside video shops (including an advertisement for Rambo 8: Rambo takes Russia) everything looks like it’s going to evolve into a guilty treasure from the decade that fashion forgot. What soon transpires though, is that at the expense of a unique concept and the occasional bout of titillation, there’s actually very little plot or interesting subtext (for which there is huge potential with the racism sub-plot) to secure this a place in your film collection.
Set in the Nineties Australia, which at the time of this film being made, was in the future, the world’s economy has collapsed, unemployment is rife and crime is high. Meet Crabs (no, really that’s our lead character’s name), who sneaks out with his elder brother’s 57 Chevy to the local drive-in with his date Carmen (Natalie McCurry) in tow. As is always the case when one tries to sneak out in someone else’s car without looking to be caught, you end up getting into trouble.
Given the choice of two prices to get into the drive-in, Crabs opts for the cheaper unemployed price, as opposed to a higher price for those employed, effectively damning both Carmen and himself to being kept captive in the drive-in (effectively a concentration camp), along with others that took the unemployed pricing with no means of escape. This throws up a huge niggle in that firstly what happens to those that opt for the higher price, and secondly who on earth would pay more to gain entry when they could just lie and say they are unemployed to get the cheaper fare? Most people would opt for the lower price regardless of their circumstances.
By selecting the cheaper price Crabs and Carmen are now held captive till the day they croak, living off fast-food vouchers (for takeaway food), drugs, alcohol, New Wave music and a movie to watch every evening on the big screen. Whereas everyone else seems happy to stay within the confines of the drive-in, including Carmen, Crabs wants out and will do whatever he can to get out of there lest die there permanently imprisoned.
Towards the film’s end, the situation at the drive-in get spiced up with the introduction of a couple of busloads of Asians into the fold. This leads to discontent amongst the couple of hundred punk kids (no unemployed adults?) who have already taken to the location as their home but very little changes in this dull dump that’s meant to be a satire.
Labelling Dead End Drive-In a cult movie, ad the film’s retail distributors have, is no guarantee of its quality or must-see status, nor is an endorsement from a certain Quentin Tarantino that this is his favourite Trenchard-Smith‘s film. So what? Let’s face facts it’s a turkey. With a tight budget of $2.5million Dead End Drive-In failed spectacularly to find an audience bombing out at a meagre $68,000 on home turf putting pay to the plans Trenchard-Smith had for a sequel.
Trenchard-Smith sees the drive-in as an allegory for the junk values of the eighties which is apt given that he has included footage from his own flick Turkey Shoot (1982) as an attraction showing at the drive-in, amongst others from his questionable back catalogue.
It’s taken for granted that we know the sinister truth behind why punters are permanently locked in. It’s vaguely eluded to rather than made clear. Personally I wouldn’t have known had I not read the press blurb. And more annoyingly one is left pondering issues with the plot rather than being able to switch off and enjoy the mindless affair unfolding in front of them.
You never really believe it’s set in the future, as it looks far too Eighties, and hard to believe that people would really find this way of life presented to them as preferable to what they had before even without work outside to go to.
There’s potential here but Dead End Drive-In is all dreadfully one-note and the premise takes a lot of swallowing. As for the alleged exploitation, boobs are kept to a minimal and fist-fights too as our lead mooches around trying to figure a way out. Still if car stunts make you so excited that you pee a little then you’ll get a big thrill out of THAT stunt at the end. (Stuntman Guy Norris performed the end stunt that held a world record at the time, for an impressive truck jump of 163 feet).
Trenchard-Smith was a last minute replacement for Dead End Drive-In and claims not to have been familiar with Peter Carey’s short-story Crabs that inspired it. This would lead to a lack of preparation time for the director and in turn explain why we ended up with less a movie about social satire but instead gave a film about a guy looking for replacement tires whilst upsetting a bunch of non-threatening punks that chat in the gent’s toilets. Dumb!