Jul 30, 2018 6 min read

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Sixty years ago in 1958, when Southwestern Pennsylvania’s drive-ins were in their prime and there was a smorgasbord of cinematic treasures on the area’s outdoor screens.

But at the then-recently opened second screen Mt. Lebanon Drive-In, the management was trying something new by booking “mature adult film entertainment” and emphasising that “during the engagment (sic) of this film, children will be discouraged.”

No, I’m not talking about the nudie movies the drive-in is infamous for booking, but a classy subtitled 1954 French thriller called “The Snow Was Black.”

Based on the novel by Georges Simenon, the advertisement that ran in the Observer-Reporter back on Saturday, July 26, 1958, quotes the New York Times review as claiming “only a French Film Maker would be likely to attempt it.”

And that French director was actually Argentian-born Luis Saslavsky who helmed 29 films in a career that spanned four decades and predominantly worked in France during the 1950s.

While it seems  “The Snow is Black” was well-received by critics upon its U.S. release – with Newsweek even calling it a “masterpiece” – it seems to be one of those films that has been lost to time. I can’t find a single home video release.

The film was followed up with the crime caper comedy “The Ladykillers” starring Alec Guinness. But Sunset Drive-In in Washington was offering three movies with a little something for everyone in the family for the low price of 50 cents, including Walt Disney’s “Bambi,” the Arthur Hiller directed drama “The Careless Years” and the Samuel Fuller western “Run of the Arrow.”

Tri-State Drive-In in Burgettstown debuted Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” debuted on Sunday, July 27, 1958 with the rock ‘n’ roll musical “The Big Beat.” However, their ad mistakenly called the film “The Vertigo” and listed “Vertigo” star Kim Novak as appearing in “The Big Beat.”

And in Greene County, three “big action hits” were hitting the screen at Skyview Drive-In. “The Vikings” starring Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Ernest Borgnine and Janet Leigh opened the night followed by the Western flick “Outlaw’s Son” and a “Midnight Spook Show” closing the night. I can’t find any movie titled “Midnight Spook Show,” so I’ll have to assume that they were throwing on whatever horror movie they could get their hands on that weekend.

But moving forward five years to 1963 shows a real horror movie marketing master at work in the newspaper ad department. Sadly, he wasn’t appearing at the drive-in, but we can’t take a look back at film history and ignore that a William Castle movie was opening in Washington 55 years ago this weekend.

Castle was the king of selling schlock movies with a carnivalesque atmosphere. His most famous movies had elaborate marketing gimmicks, including installing buzzers in the seats for “The Tingler” and floating skeletons over the audience during “House on Haunted Hill.”

His film “13 Frightened Girls,” which played the Basle Theater on a double-bill with “The Young and the Brave” on Sunday, July 28, 1963, had a different kind of hook, however. Castle publicized a worldwide search for the 13 most beautiful women from 13 different countries. He even went as far as to make different edits for each country that highlighted their specific beauty. However, in true carnival-huckster form, not all of the girls were from the countries they represented.

But that wasn’t the only gimmick: according to some reports, Castle also supplied theaters with lickable lottery tickets at some showings. I’m not exactly sure how that worked, but that certainly sounds like something Castle would have done.

Ten years later in 1973, it seems another quintessential drive-in movie again got booked at the Basle – though this time under its name Midtown Theatre. Charles B. Pierce’s “The Legend of Boggy Creek” opened there in July 1973 and stayed on the screen for several weeks.

Oddly, it was Disney’s “Mary Poppins” playing the drive-in this past weekend in 1973. Any drive-in movie buff could tell you that those bookings definitely should have been reversed, because “The Legend of Boggy Creek” is a movie that would play best at the drive-in.

“Boggy Creek” tells the story of the legend of the Fouke Monster, an Arkansas creature that is similar to Bigfoot. Residents in Arkansas as far back as 1953 had reported seeing a seven-foot tall creature covered in hair and sightings have been reported as recently as 2010.

Pierce took the stories of the Fouke Monster and presented them as fact in “The Legend of Boggy Creek,” which as a faux-documentary style with actual residents of Fouke, Ark., portraying themselves in testimonials recounting their stories of run-ins with the legendary beast. The documentary format of the film even inspired the ’90s horror hit “The Blair Witch Project,” which took the idea even further by pretending the footage in the film was 100% real.

Shot for the paltry sum of $100,000 by Pierce, this independent movie was a surprise indie hit and brought in about $25 million at the box office while scaring the pants off of children and adults alike with its groundbreaking style. The film even lived on as one of the titled selected by pre-eminent drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs during his recent “The Last Drive-In” marathon on the streaming service Shudder.

Sadly, the rights to “The Legend of Boggy Creek” seem to have either expired or are tied up in some kind of legal red tape that has resulted in a string of terrible bootleg and unauthorized DVD releases sourced from old VHS masters that crop down Pierce’s Techniscope cinematography to a murky, full-frame mess. If there was ever a film that is deserving of a proper, high-definition restoration, it’s definitely “The Legend of Boggy Creek.”

Jumping forward to 1988, Pittsburgh’s most famous filmmaker had his latest film playing at the Skyview Drive-In in Carmichaels 30 years ago this weekend.

“Monkey Shines” was the latest film from George A. Romero, the famed horror director who invented the modern zombie movie with “Night of the Living Dead” in 1968.

Returning to the screen just three years after the disappointing performance of his latest zombie epic “Day of the Dead” (which is now rightfully regarded as a horror masterpiece), “Monkey Shines” was Romero’s first collaboration with Orion Pictures. 

However, “Monkey Shines” didn’t bring in audiences either, with the reception of this scary tale of a quadriplegic man with an evil trained monkey assistant not even breaking even during its theatrical run. 

Romero’s collaboration with Orion was later cut short by the company’s bankruptcy in the early ’90s, which delayed the post-production and release of Romero’s Washington County-shot Stephen King adaptation “The Dark Half.”

“American Gothic” was a low-budget horror film from video distributor Vidmark Entertainment, who had just recently got into the theatrical distribution market. In the film, Rod Steiger and Yvonne De Carlo star as a backwoods elderly couple whose bizarre past and homicidal tendencies come to light when they take in group of stranded vacationers.

While it didn’t break any box-office records, “American Gothic” was a mainstay of horror sections at VHS rental stores in the ’90s.

Join us again for another cinematic trip in the Drive-In Time Machine next Monday!