Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the American Drive-in Movie

Did Charlie Bruss realize he was speaking for a documentary? All the mumbling.

The background music was hideously distracting.

With that Corman was good as were a handful of others. The history is close enough in terms of what led to the demise of the drive ins. Like malls. Like minor league baseball. And more

Thought it was a swing and a miss not to visit some of the abandoned lots and get some specific histories.

Was interesting when shared anecdotes about how drive ins started seeking younger audiences with more exploitative movies but it was unclear if that affected the entire industry. And if that hurt attendance why wouldn't they adjust. Today drive ins show the same movies. Way too much time spent on that even including more indecipherable mumblings from Bruss.

April Wright's labor of love Documentary covers a lot of territory even if it doesn't quite live up to it's title of 'Definitive' -- Her approach is a bit too scattershot and unfocused to quite live up to it. Still, it's an exhaustively researched (Wright visited 49 states and the sites of hundreds of past and (then) present Drive-In theaters) and passionately told movie.

Wright interviewed a number of theater owners, scholars and legendary B Movie master Roger Corman during her travels and they provide anecdotes and perspective (even if sometimes they contradict one another). Lots of old footage and hundreds of old photographs are supplemented by Wright's present-day visits of the sites. Wright's Doc was released during a brief blip in the mid-2010s when the number of Drive-Ins actually increased slightly after decades of sharp decline. Even during the course of the making of this movie, one of the examples of a new Drive-In opening up is later revealed to have closed after just one summer. That blip quickly disappeared before a new current one has occurred during the Covid crisis (time will tell how long it will last). The price of land makes a full scale comeback virtually impossible.

GOING ATTRACTIONS is an enjoyable trip through the history of Drive-Ins, still, Wright speeds through the clips and stills so quickly they sometimes barely register. The Wall to Wall song score interferes at times, and, as mentioned, the sheer number of interviewees occasionally results in contradictions: To wit, one moment we're seeing a montage of 50s & 60s families and kids happily playing and enjoying themselves at Drive Ins, the next, we're being told that by the 50s, families were staying home and watching their newfangled TVs leaving Drive-Ins to be 'passion pits' for Teens. 85 minutes simply isn't enough time to capture over 9 decades of history, so a bit more focus would have helped.

Quibbles aside, GOING ATTRACTIONS will appeal to anybody who's ever experienced the lure of the Drive-In. Wright is to be applauded for her efforts in spreading the affection many have for them. May they remain forever.

The birth, the boom, the death and the (slow-building) rebirth of the drive-in movie theater, chronicled in this fun, if thin and low-keyed documentary from writer-producer-director April Wright. Outdoor theaters began to crop up in the U.S. in 1933, but it was in post-WWII America that Hollywood and the automobile made for the perfect marriage. In the 1950s, teenagers used the drive-in as a good excuse for getting out of the house with their friends, while in the late '70s many screens were turning to X-rated titles to turn a profit (which, along with many other factors, is credited here with killing the drive-in, if temporarily). Communities are shown turning out for the new era of the drive-in experience, while owners and aficionados wax poetic about the days of loading the kids in the car and seeing a double feature for a dollar on a Friday night. Entertaining memories and an avalanche of photographs (which go by at too-fast a clip, some too fuzzy to see and some repeated) make the happy/sad history of the drive-in theater a nostalgic journey, particularly for those who were around at their peak. **1/2 from ****

Of course, today, movie Drive-Ins are, pretty much, non-existent wherever you may happen to look across the North American entertainment landscape.

But, in their heyday (1950-1970) they were about as popular as was hot-buttered popcorn, french fries, chewing gum, and milkshakes.

"Going Attractions" is actually quite an interesting documentary that (through stills, archival footage, and interviews) takes a close-up look at the inevitable rise & fall of the Drive-In movie phenomenon and how this venue helped to shape the course of one's social activities back in the good, old days.