My wife, Kerry, and I embarked on another tour of drive-in theaters across the States, and while this was a shorter drive than the last time (only four theaters visited, as opposed to six on the last one), they all offered something that made me think of the nostalgia factor of a drive-in (where it exists and where it does not) as well as how these facilities and their owners have adapted to modern audiences and the drastic steps they have taken to keep these landmarks open.
I often see articles written in local papers about their local drive-ins and how they transport people “back in time.” I get what they mean, but my only problem with this premise is that drive-ins never went away. Many have survived through the decades, and younger generations of drive-in owners keep stepping in to save them when it looks like they might close down. Over the last two decades, the owners (the ones who could afford it anyway) have adopted digital projection and now rely on social media videos to advertise and get the word out about last-minute closings due to weather. You can even order your tickets online and (sometimes) your food on an app.
Of course, modern-day drive-ins still love to show the old “Let’s All Go To the Lobby” bumper between shows, as well as the 10-minute Intermission reel you see in “Grease,” but there is one thing they all still do that multiplexes will not do anymore: double features. This is the real nostalgia of it all. Two movies for the price of one is something you can pretty much only get at a drive-in these days.
Our first stop was the Starlite Drive-In in Butler, PA, which had three screens. One look at their condition and the surroundings as a whole, and you can see the story of how this drive-in tried to adapt and survive by adding more viewing options. Screen 1 is the main big screen (showing “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” and “Motor City”). Screen 2 stands further back (showing “Moana” and “Toy Story 5”). Screen 3 (showing “The Odyssey” only) also stands further back, to the left of Screen 2. Looking at the structure of these latter two screens, you can see they might have been late additions to help bring in more people. Each is built on five tree logs, with a screen made up of over a dozen white panels where you can plainly see the cracks. It’s downright charming.
We parked at screen 2, which also happens to be the smallest drive-in screen I have ever encountered. It felt intimate, like being in someone’s backyard. I have heard drive-in owners shun the idea of multi-screen drive-ins, and I never understood why, until now. At Starlite, all three screens face the same direction. From our vantage point, we could see “Moana” and “Toy Story 5” just fine on Screen 2, but we could also plainly see the bottom half of Screen 1 in the distance. While cowgirl Jessie has her emotional moment of realization under the tire swing in “Toy Story 5,” we could also watch a woman getting brutally attacked in “Motor City.”
Then there is the problem of noise bleed. While trying to get lost in Christopher Nolan’s sprawling epic, you also have to endure having to hear “How Far I’ll Go” blasting a short distance away, which could actually be funny if it lands during a scene of Odysseus on a boat sailing the high seas. Surprisingly, this is the first time I have ever encountered this problem at a multi-screen drive-in. Most people don’t sit in their cars anymore. They sit outside with their radios or their SUVs blasting the soundtracks. We learned that there is definitely a right way and a wrong way to do the multi-screen set-up. They did, however, have a great concession stand and a Ms. Pac-Man.
The oldest drive-in in America is Shankweiler’s Drive-In Theater in Orefield, PA. It was the second drive-in ever built (the first was in Pennsauken, NJ in 1933), and has been going strong since 1934. Well, mostly strong. The theater was dangerously close to shutting down until 2022, when it was saved by local drive-in enthusiasts, Lauren McChesney and Matt McClanahan, a married couple who have been running it with love and care ever since.
They have partnered with local food vendors to spice up their concession menu and, on this particular night (when we watched “Spider-Man” and “Hokum”), set up a separate table to support a local charity. Throughout the evening, I kept thinking about this place as a kind of sacred ground, that a film like “It Happened One Night” might have played here in its very first run, and all the different kinds of cars that have passed through these grounds over the last 92 years.
Shankweiler’s is beautiful. Its grounds are a combination of grass and gravel, with some lovely greenery surrounding the area. The opening announcements are often on-the-fly, personable and full of good humor. The staff is extremely helpful in making sure no one’s views of the screen are obstructed by people putting their hatchbacks up. Their concession stand is quite small, leaving no room for a Ms. Pac-Man, but the menu remains plentiful.
And here’s something that can only happen in an outdoor setting (for better or worse). During “Hokum,” our second feature, a fog rolled in and almost engulfed the place. It cast a beautiful light shaft from the projector during intermission and made “Hokum” look like a horror film made in the ’70s (totally appropriate for a gothic haunted-hotel tale set in Ireland). Later on, the fog gave the film a 3-D effect when the main character (Adam Scott) had to walk around in pitch-black darkness with a flashlight. Those unintended light shafts made it more immersive.
Now, speaking of immersive experiences, I can write a whole twenty-paragraph essay on the legendary Mahoning Drive-In Theater (not far from Shankweilers, in Lehighton, PA), our third stop and the catalyst for this trip. We’ve wanted to visit this place since we first heard of it several years ago. If you want to talk about drive-ins being nostalgic, nothing beats the Mahoning, which still shows films in 35mm. They only show digital when they have to. Every night is a new night. Sometimes you get a thematically linked double feature; sometimes you get a single. Sometimes, you get a fully-loaded fan event, which we had in store for us on Saturday, August 8th: The Guzzoline Gathering, a celebration of George Miller’s triumphant “Mad Max” films, in this case, a double bill of “The Road Warrior” and “Mad Max: Fury Road.” What true cinephile can resist?
First, the drive-in itself. Where to start? Everywhere you look, something makes you want to grab your phone and take a picture. Their mailbox near the entrance looks like Johnny 5 from “Short Circuit.” They have “Willy Wonka” items everywhere, perhaps leftover from their opening night in the 2016 season, their most pivotal year for this facility, as outlined in the feature-length documentary “At The Drive-In”. Their concession area showcases a large library of VHS tapes and DVDs to peruse. You can also go record shopping as you sift through their collection of vintage albums, or you can take a look at old event posters for sale. They have specialty menu items tied to the films being shown. For this evening, they had a special stew and an ice cream float. Plus, toys and trinkets everywhere, plus a separate room for Mahoning merch.
Outside on the walls of the concession stand and projection booth is a mural dedicated to the former owner, Jeffrey D. Mattox, who passed away in 2024. As detailed in the doc, Mattox faced a challenge in 2016 when he had to decide between raising money for a digital projector or sticking with 35mm and only showing old movies. Two film enthusiasts, Virgil Cardamone and Matt McClanahan (yes, the current co-owner of Shankweiler’s), convinced him to try the latter approach: keep the 35mm projector and let them program the double features themselves. This formula worked, and the Mahoning has been making a name for itself as one of the best venues to host fan events in the country, while also keeping analog film presentation alive and well. Take one look at their calendar of events, and you’ll find something you are dying to see on the big screen in 35mm. Oh, how I envy anyone who can afford to be a regular here.
Before the films and during intermission, they have some of the usual (and unusual) drive-in fanfare, but of course, being in 35mm, you get the honest and true effect of a real old-fashioned drive-in movie experience you cannot get anywhere else. You can also enjoy the teaser trailer for “Back to the Future,” “The Terminator,” and a hilariously faded trailer for Disney’s “The Shaggy D.A.” Many of the Mahoning regulars shout out callbacks during the drive-in ads, giving it a nice “Rocky Horror”-like atmosphere. The projectionist, Robert, kindly let me add a little something to the proceedings, a 35mm trailer for the Kevin Costner “Mad Max”-On-Water epic, “Waterworld,” a trailer that had never been unsealed and played before. I have had this fairly useless item in my collection for over thirty years, and it finally got to spin away on a reel for an audience to enjoy (“a virgin print,” he told everyone).
Then, the event itself. I got to meet the organizer, Faye Dorsey, and her husband, Tank, who used to be a Lord Humungous cosplayer (the villain in “The Road Warrior”), and who has a fine collection of “Mad Max” costume and prop replicas, including a dusty motorbike, which was driven around the lot by a pair of impressive “Road Warrior” cosplayers, Scott Frost and Deirdre VonDoom. Tank also showed off his screen-used bits of debris he found in Australia when scouting the area with a metal detector where they filmed the climactic chase in “The Road Warrior,” a next-level commitment to fandom you can expect when you go to an event such as this. We also saw multi-colored Interceptors (Mad Max’s car) on the lot, as well as an assortment of other cosplayers representing both films. My phone eventually heated up as I constantly took pictures and video of everything happening around me. I had no time to play a round of Ms. Pac-Man.
“You know what you get here that you don’t get at other drive-ins?” Faye said to me. “A real community. People walk around and talk to each other, meet each other, and form friendships. You don’t get this at other drive-ins. People mostly stay near their cars and keep to themselves. Not here. Every night, it’s like this.” And the films themselves looked magnificent. You can also camp out for the night if you pay a little extra, as long as you vacate at dawn. Sometimes, they run more drive-in shenanigans on the screen into the wee hours, but not this night. I cannot wait to go back. I have finally seen and experienced another gold standard of drive-in theaters (another being the Skyline Drive-In in Shelbyville, IN; I know there are more).
Finally, on the way home, we stopped at the Aut-O-Rama Drive-In in North Ridgeville, OH (home of the late, great Martin Mull). Despite its rough exterior, this two-screen establishment is very well-run, and with the nicest, cleanest bathrooms I’ve ever seen at any drive-in. The colorful concession stand has plenty to offer, including spicy fried pickles, gigantic ice-cream-and-cookie sandwiches, and a nice assortment of dips and sauces you can add to your burger, brat, or corndog. They also have an arcade area where I finally indulged in a game of Ms. Pac-Man. This place has a more modern feel than a nostalgic one. They do play some of the usual old-school drive-in bumpers between shows, but showcase few (if any) old movie posters or pictures of the Aut-O-Rama from yesteryear. You walk into the concession stand, and you feel like you’re at a multiplex.
Things to know before attending: Wear good shoes and make sure your car tires are strong. The grounds are rough and rocky and don’t provide any way to throw down a picnic blanket for the night. Most people stayed in their cars.
There is also the problem (at least on screen 2, where we endured “Super Troopers 3” before it started to rain heavily) of there being a busy highway on one side and loud freight trains going by every fifteen minutes on the other, which probably explains why people mainly stayed in their cars, so they can hear the film better. It is a testament to how well this theater is run that people put up with that sort of thing, enjoy the films anyway, and keep coming back. Whatever its flaws, it has worked for sixty years and counting, so it just goes to show that friendly service, a rock-solid food menu (and don’t you dare try sneaking in your own food), and a money-saving double bill can go a long way in the tricky business of modern-day theater management and ownership.
Make no mistake, drive-ins still struggle from year to year. So why do I keep going back to these venues every summer and keep looking for new ones to discover? I’m not in it for nostalgia. I had never set foot in a drive-in until I was twenty. Anyone can create fond memories of the drive-in experience today, just as one did in the 1930s and onward.
I keep going for many reasons, one being that they might not be here next year. You never know when you’ll come across a message on Facebook saying “we have made the unfortunate decision to close our doors for good at the end of this season.” Right now, many are dealing with heavy flooding due to all the storms that have rolled through recently. Last year, I mentioned a drive-in in Virginia called the Family Drive-In that needed a buyer. Luckily, they got one, and the name has been changed to The Historic Route 11 Drive-In Theatre.
I also keep going because I love road trips, I love movies, and I love seeing how these places find new ways to enrich the experience, whether through nostalgic trailers and decor, an inventive food menu, irresistible programming, or, best of all, all of the above. I also love sitting outside our car and occasionally looking up at the stars and seeing way more than I would ever see on a clear night in Chicago. I’m also more of a night-owl than a morning person, so being parked at a drive-in on a gorgeous spring, summer, or fall evening until 1:00 am to watch a late-night, double-feature picture show is its own reward. Find a drive-in near you and support it. Remember to hang up your speakers before leaving.
