Aug 6, 2018 4 min read

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We’re in the last month of summer, but we’re back for another trip through the Observer-Reporter archive to see what movies were playing at local drive-ins this past weekend in decades past.

Forty-five years ago in 1973, Route 19 Drive-In had the first-run Washington screening of “Scarecrow,” where Al Pacino and Gene Hackman star as two vagabonds heading cross-country with a dream of starting a car wash business near Pittsburgh.

“Scarecrow” was followed by the Ryan O’Neal vehicle “The Thief Who Came to Dinner,” which was directed by Washington native Bud Yorkin. We’d love to know if any of Yorkin’s friends or family in the area came out to see the latest film from the hometown boy who made it big in Hollywood.

Further up the road at Mt. Lebanon Drive-In in Canonsburg, the crime thriller “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” was playing along with Alec Guinness in “Hitler: The Last 10 Days” – a screening so late into its release that might have been the last days to catch it in the theater.

But on Mt. Lebanon’s second screen, a tantalizing triple feature from the infamous exploitation distributor Crown International Features was playing as “adult entertainment.”

Opening the night was “Superchick,” an R-rated action-comedy about a sexually liberated flight attendant who uses her martial arts skills to hold off various villains in this movie that’s light on plot, but heavy on all the best aspects of drive-in exploitation fair. 

The second movie showing was “The Stepmother,” a low budget Hitchcock-inspired thriller about an architect who murders a man he believes is having an affair with his wife. The night was closed out with “The Wild Pussycat,” a Greek sexploitation movie that Crown originally released back in 1969.

Moving forward five years to 1978, Route 19 was debuting the latest Pink Panther film, “Revenge of the Pink Panther,” with “Fun With Dick and Jane” as the second feature. But again, Mt. Lebanon had a nice helping of lurid cinema on their outdoor screen with Al Adamson’s cult classic horror movie “Nurse Sherri” playing along with “House of Psychotic Women,” which is a retitling of the Paul Naschy film “Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll.”

Adamson was a prolific b-movie director who co-founded the film distributor Independent-International Pictures with fellow director Sam Sherman. The duo produced some of the most colorful exploitation movie titles to hit the drive-in screen, including “The Fiend with the Electronic Brain,” “Blood of Dracula’s Castle” and “Satan’s Sadists.”

As the legend goes, Adamson and Sherman conceived of “Nurse Sherri” over the phone. Sherman was interested in ripping off a successful Roger Corman picture titled “The Student Nurses,” but the later success of supernatural horror hits like “The Exorcist” and “Carrie” led the dynamic duo to do reshoots that resulted in quite possibly the first time an exploitation film company cut out nude scenes in favor of developing a story.

Going back 35 years to 1983 and Route 19 Drive-In was playing “National Lampoon’s Vacation.” This modern comedy classic was paired with the historic adventure film “High Road to China” starring Tom Sellick.

Mt. Lebanon was playing “Gates of Hell,” a retitling of Italian horror maestro Lucio Fulci’s “City of the Living Dead,” and the sci-fi fantasy epic “Krull.” In Burgettstown, Tri-State Drive-In had a double feature with the rock ‘n’ roll comedy “Get Crazy” starring Malcolm McDowell and Terry Gilliam’s brilliant fantasy film “Time Bandits.”

While all of the screens in 1983 were offering some great entertainment, Tri-State definitely wins in hindsight because of how rare “Get Crazy” would become after its initial release.

Director Allan Arkush claims the film’s financiers using a strange tax shelter scheme similar to the plot of Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” and the film wound up changing hands through a confusing line of shell companies until the negative and all other original elements became completely lost – making a proper restoration for DVD or Blu-Ray release impossible.

But don’t take our word for it: Here is a video of Arkush telling the horrors of production on “Get Crazy” in an episode of “Trailers from Hell.”

That wraps up another trip in the Drive-In Time Machine. See you next week!