I Blame Dennis Hopper

by Illeana Douglas

  By the time I was going to the Middletown Drive-In, our local spot, with my friends and boyfriends in Connecticut, it was featuring only “Dusk Till Dawn” horror flicks. But before that, they had actually played some great movies. There my parents saw Andy Warhol’s Trash, Midnight Cowboy, and King of Hearts—one of their favorites. During our hippie days, my mother would dress us in our pajamas, and we’d get to go to the Middletown Drive-In in the back of one of the hippies’ trucks. It was a great way to watch films. You’d fall asleep during one film only to wake up to another—as if it were one long continuous movie. I remember seeing just an amazing array of movies and genres that way. Serpico and Scarecrow; The Sugarland Express with Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry; Freebie and the Bean on a double bill with Blazing Saddles. Nashville paired with M*A*S*H, which was the second time I saw nudity. Nudity = drive-in. I woke up and my brothers were screaming and pointing at the screen. It was the first time I saw breasts in a movie. In M*A*S*H, Sally Kellerman was “Hot Lips” O’Houlihan, naked as a jaybird in the shower. Sally Kellerman, who I knew first because of her breasts, later became my friend after we met doing a staged reading of a Paul Mazursky play.

  As I got older, and without my parents or brothers around, the nudity at the drive-in was usually happening in the front seat, unfortunately while I was trying to watch the movie. I was in the backseat with a girlfriend watching Bang the Drum Slowly, which was paired with Report to the Commissioner. A Michael Moriarty double bill, I guess. Bang the Drum Slowly was riveting. It had an actor I had never seen before named Robert De Niro, and in the film he’s dying. My friend and I were watching the movie—perhaps the saddest ever made—and meanwhile her sister is in the front seat, oblivious. She’s making out with her date, and getting pretty hot and heavy, and we’re holding back tears in the back! Two completely different cinematic experiences. Finally we had to get out of the car so we wouldn’t disturb them with our sniffles. We watched the rest of the movie on the hood of the car, careful not to turn around until the car stopped moving. Let me tell you, they missed one good movie. That De Niro fellow. He went places.

  By the time I got to high school, the Middletown Drive-In was associated not only with sex but with all sorts of teenage misbehavior. Some of it was sort of innocent, like the tradition of sneaking in extra people in the trunk of the car.

  The admission was only 99 cents, so the practice was more about getting away with something than it was about the money. But hey, we were poor, so I didn’t mind nearly suffocating to save a buck. I became friends with an older girl named Molly. Molly’s mom had this champagne-colored Pontiac Grand Prix. It was a massive car with a huge trunk, and if she only knew how we misused it. I can’t tell you how it drove, because I rarely got to sit in it, but I can assure you, the trunk of a Pontiac Grand Prix can fit three small teenage girls.

  A typical Friday night went like this: Molly would pick everyone up. There would be about seven or eight girls stuffed into the car. When we got close to the drive-in, Molly would pull over and decide who would have to get into the trunk. I usually volunteered, because I knew she would pick me anyway. I was younger and not in any way cool, so I had no clout to stand up and say “You know, just once I’d like to ride in the car like a passenger, not in the trunk like a corpse.” I was also not one of the upper-crust girls who had beautiful hair and clothing and would never dare do something as demeaning as get in a trunk and sneak into the drive-in to save 99 cents! Besides, it was date night, and they had to look their best because there were going to be boys there. That was the main reason anyone went to the drive-in.

  I became known as a fearless trunker, which was far from the truth. The scary part of sneaking in through the trunk was not so much worrying about being caught. It was knowing that we were right over the fuel tank whenever we hit a bump. Rolled up in a ball inside the trunk, you could hear everyone in the car laughing and talking and you’d keep thinking about that fuel tank. The car would slow down at the drive-in entrance and Molly would yell, “We’re here! Don’t say anything!”

  Yeah, as if it were easy to carry on a conversation from the trunk of a car!

  You’d feel the bumpity-bump as the car drove in and then over to the farthest end of the drive-in before you were let out. Sometimes it was still dusk, and you’d have to wait for it to get dark before anyone would let you out. By that point, it was hard to breathe, and you were convinced they had left you inside as a joke—which did happen to me, a lot, and it’s still not funny! What is funny is that in all the years we snuck in, no one ever asked to open the trunk of anyone’s car.

  Maybe they just accepted it as petty drive-in theft. Punks and stowaways. It was always a relief to see Molly’s smiling face as she popped open the trunk and let me out. Maybe there’d be a small impression of the spare tire on my face, but that would fade as the night went on.

  By the time I’d be released, the first movie would have started, but as I’ve said, folks didn’t really go there for the cinematic experience; it was more an act of teenage lust.

  Once outside the trunk, the girls would give each other a quick once-over. We would put even more makeup on our already made-up faces, apply more sticky lip gloss, and head to the burger stand to check out who was there. The burger stand was basically a screened-in outhouse that smelled of rancid grease. Inside, the fluorescent lighting made you look like one of the zombies that were often playing on the screen. You’d stand in line to get your French fries, the paper soaked with grease. You’d match it with an equally greasy burger and a watered-down Coke, and you had your perfect unhappy meal. It was better to eat outside, because inside it was too hard not to notice the dead, greasy flies stuck in the flypaper catchers dangling from the ceiling—last changed probably in the 1950s. The Middletown Drive-In had the best fries I have ever eaten. I have searched and almost caught that memorable smell whenever I am near a carnival or state fair. That wonderful nostalgic smell and taste of youth. Top it off with a blue or purple snow cone and there you have it. Snapshot. I remember talking to a boy I liked and thinking it was going really well. I went to the bathroom, which was conveniently located inside, right next to where they fried everything. I looked in the mirror, and my entire mouth was circled bright blue. As if the clown Emmett Kelly had just eaten a Smurf and wiped it on his mouth. The boy was gone by the time I got it off my face. Another time, I was chatting up a boy about a movie when a fly got stuck in my lip gloss. He was getting it off my mouth and got a handful of pink-colored goop with the live, coated fly still attached. I had hoped that my expertise and knowledge about films would draw boys to me like flies at the drive-in. It never happened.

  The Middletown Drive-In was a good place to smoke without getting caught, drink without getting caught, meet up with boys and make out in cars without getting caught. It was not a place to watch movies, yet I was there actually to watch the movies. Maybe I couldn’t shake my earlier magical experiences of drive-in movies.

  Even when the movies started to be geared more toward horror flicks. I still wanted to watch them. I’d say, “The movie is starting; let’s go watch the movie,” and finally, pitifully, “Isn’t anyone going to watch the movie?” But no one was interested. There was nothing worse than seeing a great scary movie, such as The Reincarnation of Peter Proud or When a Stranger Calls, and having no one to talk to about it. There were times I would find myself alone in a car absorbed in a movie, and realize it was dawn. I’d watched five movies in a row, and my friends were God-knows-where.

  Once, I was in Molly’s car watching a scary movie by myself, and it turned into a scary movie in real life. It was very late. At the drive-in, there were no clocks, just a string of movies, so you lost track of time. My guess is that it was probably somewhere between dusk and dawn.

  I had just got through watching Carrie. It was gruesome. Great scary ending. And again there was a lot of nudity in it. Nudity = drive-in! I couldn’t believe that my friends had missed this movie! Next up was Alice, Sweet Ali
ce with a young Brooke Shields. Pretty good—I kept watching, thinking, Surely someone is going to show up soon. Eventually, the next movie started, and it was Burnt Offerings. The movie began innocently enough, not half as scary as Carrie. Lots of creepy zooms. A sinister chauffeur. And who is in the upstairs window? It was almost cheesy, so I kept watching. All of a sudden there was a scene with water. Now, I was always kind of afraid of the water. I never wanted to go swimming. I had one fear as a child. It was completely irrational, but I was terrified of someone holding me under the water and drowning me. I would not go swimming with my brothers, because I was so afraid. My mother would be trying to give me a bath and I would scream, “She’s drowning me!” Maybe it was a past-life thing, I don’t know, but that was my crazy fear. In Burnt Offerings there is a scene in which Oliver Reed becomes possessed by this demon living through the house. The demon feeds off the life force of all of the house’s inhabitants. At one point in the movie, Oliver Reed starts holding his son under water, trying to drown him. That was my fear, and now I am seeing it in a movie. Bette Davis is screaming at him to stop, but Oliver Reed just keeps holding the kid under water, and he can’t control himself. He’s gone insane. He’s trying to kill his son. The kid is splashing around fighting for his life.

  I thought I was going to be sick. I jumped out of the car and just started running. I was scared to death; I just wanted to go home. I started frantically looking in cars for someone I knew. I couldn’t find anyone, and I could hear Burnt Offerings playing as I made my way through the cars, that horrible voice of Oliver Reed following me.

  At one end of the drive-in, near some pine trees, there were some swings. “I’ll meet you at the swings” was code because the swings were a kind of lovers’ lane. When it was late, you hoped that the person driving you home wasn’t at the swings, but I headed over there anyway looking for Molly or any other familiar face. I was at the swings seeing if I recognized anyone when I suddenly noticed the strangest thing. Just past where the swings met the forest I saw an empty wooden chair, like an old saloon chair. Next to it was a large popcorn box and some food wrappers. It seemed really creepy all of a sudden to see this completely empty chair in the middle of the trees—ominously lighted from Burnt Offerings. Who was sitting there? Was it a man? Was it a bear? Did whoever it was carry a chair through the forest in the dark, then climb over a fence, just to see a free movie? I mean, who would do something like that? Obviously someone just like me, but …

  I was still staring at the empty chair in the forest when a car pulled up beside me. It was a wood-paneled station wagon. A lot of my friends’ parents had station wagons, so at first I thought it might be one of them looking for one of their kids, which happened all the time. It wasn’t. It was a slightly older guy. I can’t really describe him, but I will always remember his voice, because he sounded sort of like the character actor Dabney Coleman. It was a voice with authority, completely trusting and calm. He said, “You look lost. You OK? You need help?”

  “No,” I said, “I’m just looking for my friends…”

  “Oh, you by yourself?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  There was nothing unusual about his asking me if I was alone. Of course he would want to be helpful. You met all sorts of interesting people at the drive-in. The light from Burnt Offerings was illuminating that weird empty chair, and again I was wondering, Where had all my friends gone?

  I was wearing a pink tube top. For a second I thought I caught the guy glance at my chest, but that was impossible. I thought that I was just being self-conscious because I was a little busty. Maybe it was because he was a grown-up, or maybe because I was still shaken up by the movie, but for some reason, I kept talking to him. He was talking about Burnt Offerings, saying he didn’t like it, so he was leaving. “Just trash,” he said, “I’m heading out. You need a lift?” I didn’t answer him, because I was still staring, fascinated by the empty chair in the forest, when he reached across the seat, and offered me—I’m not kidding—a large supply of his candy. “Would you look at this?” he said. “I bought all this candy, and now it’s going to go to waste.”

  I have replayed the next moment many times in my mind, and it never fails to give me the shivers. He was holding out his cardboard tray with all the candy in it, and I started to lean in to the car to get a better look at what was there. In that second while I contemplated whether or not I was going to take his candy, he grabbed my forearm and tried to pull me into the car. It happened so quickly. Just about three seconds of sheer terror, but just as quickly I was able to pull free and get away. I will never forget the slap of his hand on my forearm as he tried to pull me into the car—or the angry sound his arm made as it slammed against the car door as I broke free and started running. I did not look back. I was sure he was right behind me, getting ready to drag me back to his car. I ran toward the familiar light of the burger stand. To my relief I finally saw one of my friends and tearfully told her what had happened. Everyone was pretty shaken up. I mean the drive-in was a dive, but things like that just didn’t happen. It had always been a pretty safe place. Word spread and a posse of grown-ups set out looking for the wood-paneled station wagon, but no one could find it. About a week later, the State Police came to our house to interview me because another girl my age had described seeing the same paneled station wagon following her at the drive-in. Whoever it was, they never caught him, and life went on. Dusk till dawn.

  But I wondered. Was he the guy in the empty chair? I imagined his sitting near the swings watching kids as they made out, then preying on innocent young girls—girls who were probably a little too young to be wearing tube tops. The drive–in was never the same for me after that. I would see that empty chair now and again, alone in the forest. I never once saw a person sitting in it, though.

  By the late ’70s and early ’80s the movies at the drive-in were pretty much all cheap and sleazy stuff. Who knew the grainy images I was subjected to would later be heralded by Quentin Tarantino as grindhouse classics! Those dark movies fit with some equally gruesome dates. I think I saw every horror “classic” that is bandied about at the drive-in while on a date of some kind. It’s Alive. Basket Case. Squirm. Sssssss. Sisters. I Spit on Your Grave. One stands out, because I had recurring nightmares about it. The plot revolves around a leech-like parasite that infects you and makes you want to have sex with everyone while red goop comes out of your mouth. Two scenes are seared into my memory. In one, a leech swims inside a girl who may or may not be masturbating while she is taking a bath. The other one is an orgy scene in which a sex-crazed father offers his daughter to another man by saying, “This is my daughter Vanessa. You’ll like Vanessa. I do,” and then starts having sex with her first!

  I was in a car with a boy and he took that as a cue to do the same. I made him drive me home immediately. For years, I remembered it as the most disturbing movie I ever saw, and for years—because we didn’t have Internet back then—I didn’t even know the name of it! One night, many years later, I was with Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma describing this absolutely vile film I had been subjected to as a child at the drive-in. I was getting to the orgy and the red goop, and they started to scream “THEY CAME FROM WITHIN!!” They were absolutely delighted that I had seen it, extolling it for several minutes as “a classic,” and went on to tell me it was the “commercial” debut of director David Cronenberg, whom I had just met on the set of To Die For. For those of you who love red goop, leeches, and incestuous orgy scenes, the movie is also known as Shivers. It is my deepest regret that I didn’t know that he had directed They Came From Within at the time, because I would have had just one question for him: “Mr. Cronenberg, why?”

  The last movie I ever saw at the drive-in was Motel Hell, in 1980. Like my first drive-in movie, Romeo and Juliet, it also was centered on a short-lived, doomed romance. I had met a boy named Henry in history class. He was a little older than I, from a wealthy family, but he thought I was funny and he asked me out
on a few dates. Soon enough we were going steady. I was thrilled, until he asked me to the drive-in. We had never done anything more than kiss, and I was a little nervous about what “going to the drive-in” with a boy meant. I reluctantly agreed to go, convincing myself that he was a nice boy from a good family and certainly wouldn’t expect anything more from me beyond watching a good R-rated thriller! We were watching Motel Hell, and it was, again, sometime between dusk and dawn, and surprise, surprise, Henry suddenly wanted to do more than just watch the movie. I was very disappointed, because I’m a big Rory Calhoun fan, and I love movies about making meat products out of human beings. But there I was, trying to make some sense of the plot, and Henry kept trying to put his hand down my pants.

  I kept squirming and saying “C’mon, I want to watch the movie,” which, when the movie is Motel Hell, is kind of lame, but it’s all I had. He kept trying. Back then, the teenage girl’s version of “I have a headache” was to tell a guy you have your period, so I said, “Henry, I’m sorry, I have my period,” and that put an end to it. He looked bored after that and started talking about his blue Corvette. I had to stop watching the movie and pretend I was interested in his blue Corvette. Basically, Henry ruined Motel Hell for me.

  In the weeks before our drive-in date, Henry had kept telling me about the new car his dad was buying him, which was the aforementioned Corvette. Back then it seemed fairly interesting. He showed me countless pictures of it, describing it in loving detail. At the drive-in, when he made me stop watching Motel Hell, he said, “Pretty soon I won’t have to be driving my parents’ car. I’ll have my blue Corvette.” It was the symbol of his being a wealthy kid. His father could simply order him a Corvette. We left the drive-in way before dawn, and he talked about his stupid Corvette the entire drive home. A week or so later Henry called me, very excited to tell me that his blue Corvette had arrived, and, true to his word, he asked if I wanted to go for a spin. I was thrilled. My mother was making dinner, and I threw on my denim jacket and told her that Henry was taking me for a drive in his brand-new car. Even my mother had heard about this stupid blue Corvette. We were all waiting for it. My mom—bless her heart—was then driving another poormobile, a burnt-orange Chevy Chevette.