So my wife and I have watched recent seasons of The Last Drive-In together, and she watched the others by herself; but neither of us ever watched the show’s genesis on Shudder, as a supposed “one time only” 24-hour marathon in 2018, bringing back this old guy from the twencen for one last ride. But now we have… mostly. Some of the movies have fallen prey to licensing and aren’t there anymore (and some we’d already seen recently enough to not want to rewatch), but we did have a half-dozen to watch through.

Independently of the movies, it’s interesting to watch them establishing the format of the show. There’s a whole thing at the beginning trying to explain what they’re doing, because honestly “watch this 24 hour marathon in real time” is genuinely a weird thing for streaming to do and it apparently needed some justification. But they quickly fall into a groove where Joe Bob is doing his Joe Bob thing — the part where he’d been doing the character a long time let them skip past a lot of the awkwardness you’d get if you were establishing it all fresh.

The biggest difference between this nascent version of the show and the more-developed version that we have now is Darcy the Mail Girl. Here, she’s just an occasional participant — literally a mail girl who pops in every now and then to deliver letters — whereas in the modern show, she’s basically a co-host. Her larger presence works much better, because it makes it clear that Joe Bob’s crotchety-old-man schtick is self-aware, with her constantly rolling her eyes at him and bringing in a more youthful (and feminine) energy. Still, the show does work from jump, and it’s easy to see why it was a big success for Shudder.

All right, on to the movies!

Tourist Trap is incoherent and poorly made. The characters’ actions and motivations are unclear (to be generous). It’s honestly not even all that creepy. But as low-budget horror goes, it somehow had enough charm to be watchable, if not quite rising to the lofty heights of mediocrity.

The Prowler is another incoherent one, with a decade-spanning story that never quite coheres, and a killer whose motivation is… I don’t want to say “inexplicable,” because they explained it, but, well, let’s just say it’s a stretch. But it’s doing a high school thing and is successful in establishing its vibe (honestly one of the most important things for horror movies to do right), with appropriately horrifying kills. It probably nets out at “mediocre,” but it does so in a way that’s more interesting than that word sounds.

Daughters of Darkness was a surprise to me, because it’s a Dutch/French/German movie starring Delphine Seyrig, whom you will remember as the titular character in Official Greatest Movie Of All Time, Jeanne Dielman. I was genuinely not expecting a Jeanne Dielman connection here in Joe Bob territory, I have to say. So this is a movie about lesbian vampires, and Seyrig is marvelous as a vampire queen, just bringing that movie star charisma to the role. I sort of wish I had seen this blind, because it’s a slow movie and it’s not overtly supernatural for most of its length; I think watching it and realizing slowly what genre you’re operating in would be a fascinating experience. The movie isn’t wholly successful — it’s a little too slow for no particular reason — but it’s interesting and moody.

Night of the Demons is a movie I don’t have a lot to say about. The problem is, I didn’t take any notes while I watched it, and the next day I watched Return of the Living Dead. Well, turns out this is also a movie about a bunch of teens getting into supernatural trouble, and every time I try to picture this group of teens, I end up picturing that one instead. Apparently my memory was almost just completely over-written by the better movie here. But one thing I do very clearly remember is a demon-possessed woman writing on her chest with a lipstick, and then pushing it into her nipple and having her boob absorb it. So, y’know, that happened.

Hellraiser is obviously better-known and more famous than these other movies, with Pinhead being one of the iconic horror movie villains. But I think this is a case where his role must evolve as the franchise goes on, because this isn’t really a movie about Pinhead — it’s a weird family drama about a dude whose brother died, and whose wife (who’d had an affair with him) is luring men to their death to bring the brother back to life, or at least undeath. Pinhead exists in the movie, but he’s basically off to the side as just kind of an almost cosmic judge who’s big into S&M. If I didn’t know that this movie is part of a major franchise, nothing that I watched would have hinted at it, because this seems very on par with the rest of the movies in terms of its general “weird and interesting, but amateurish” vibe and overall quality level.

Pieces is the last movie of the season, and it’s set in a college near Boston… but actually filmed in Spain by someone who hadn’t really seen Boston and with mostly Spanish actors. Its college never feels remotely like a real college, and most of what people do in the movie makes no sense at all. Like, the killer is a stealthy killer who stalks the hallways and quiet grounds of the college… with a chainsaw. In one scene, he literally hides a chainsaw behind his back as if it were a knife or something. It’s totally absurd (as is the killer’s backstory — he starts off as a little kid who for some reason has a jigsaw puzzle of a naked lady, which where did that come from at all?!?, and when his mom starts ranting at him about how terrible he is for this, he kills her with an axe, like you do). It’s kinda fun in a trashy way, but definitely one of the weaker movies here.