For over 30 years, John Bloom, or as he’s better known by his stage name, ‘Joe Bob Briggs’, has found a way through our television sets and into our drive-in-movie hearts.
Birthed from a weekly review column Bloom wrote for the Dallas Times-Herald, the Joe Bob persona broke new ground critiquing popular media – particularly low-budget and underground movies — in a manner both apt and aggressively blunt. Joe Bob’s unapologetically redneck, lowbrow humor often framed definitive discourse, making him a cult hero in the alt-newspaper landscape.
After his daring alter ego was banned from the paper, Bloom hit the road, starting in Cleveland with Joe Bob’s One Man Show (later retitled Joe Bob Dead in Concert for home release), and evolving into an innovative theatrical performance piece performed in venues spanning the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco to Carolines on Broadway in New York City.
Bloom’s engagements landed him in the spotlight in more ways than one. In the midst of dabbling with the acting world, appearing in a few tiny productions like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Mick Garris’s The Stand, Married…With Children, Face/Off and Martin Scorsese’s Casino, Bloom took his talents to the tube. Due to the overwhelmingly positive reception of his stage show, ‘Briggs’ was offered a guest spot on The Movie Channel’s Drive-In Theater, a late-night program dedicated to regularly showing B-movies.
Soon after, again appearing as his alter ego, Briggs hosted Joe Bob’s Drive-in Theater, which ran steady for ten years. This led to TNT’s late-night movie marathon MonsterVision, where he again shook things up by writing hyper specific commentary, sharing sketches with guests, and airing unconventional programming like Donovan’s Brain, Forbidden Planet, The Creeping Unknown, and Them!
In 2018, Briggs, joined by Diana Prince, or as she’s better known to fans, ‘Darcy The Mail Girl’, hosted what was supposed to be their swan song, The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs. Airing on Shudder and AMC+, the popular premiere crashed Shudder’s servers. Currently, Briggs and Darcy are celebrating their sixth season on the network.
The season finale is an all-new, dusk-to-dawn movie marathon, celebrating 6 years and 6 seasons with 6 killer films. Premiering Friday, August 30 (at 9 p.m. ET on Shudder TV and AMC+ TV feeds), the “Nightmareathon” will be available on both platforms the following Sunday, September 1.
The interview: Joe Bob ‘n’ Darcy
I was fortunate enough to have a quick chat with Joe Bob and Darcy the Mail Girl ahead of their finale on behalf on Screenopolis. During our talk, we discuss the guests they’re most excited to bring on stage during the big event, the moments they look back on fondly from their sixth season, their horror movie litmus tests, and their thoughts on limiting filmmaking to a certain set of rules relegated by society’s fickle standards.
Kalyn Corrigan: Congratulations on your anniversary! How does it feel to be celebrating six years after what was originally intended to be a farewell program?
Joe Bob Briggs: Well, it feels great. This is the typical way we do anniversaries, though. We should have done it on the fifth, but we’re doing it on the sixth. I’m gonna celebrate the sixth, that’s important.
KC: You’ve shared a few planned arrivals from some exciting guests, like Felissa Rose and Rhonda Shear. Which guest would each of you say you’re the most excited to bring onstage for your Nightmareathon and why?
JBB: Well, I think Rhonda Shear, because I don’t think she’s done one of these shows for years. I had her on my show when I was on MonsterVision on TNT. She was on with Count Floyd, Joe Flaherty. And she’s great. She’s wonderful. And we thought, you know, I didn’t even know if she would do it, because she’s, you know, sort of retired. But now Darcy tells me that she’s unretiring.
Darcy the Mail Girl: She’s unretiring. Yeah. Just for you.
In your promo video for your Nightmareathon, you said that “The Nation is in the mood for horror.” What did you mean by that?
DTMG: Yeah, that’s a good question, actually. What do you mean?
JBB: I mean that, uh, I don’t know what I meant by that. When did I say that? It just sounded good. I’m trying to remember when I said that, but, horror is –
DTMG: Go ahead. Go ahead and try to figure it out now.
JBB: I’m going to go ahead and say what I think, which is that horror is an escape from real horror. Movie horror is an escape from real horror. If you look online, and you see the people that are talking about movie horror, compared to the people that are talking about real horror, you kind of want to spend some time over on our side of the fence, or otherwise you’re going to go crazy.
DTMG: Sure. I’ll accept that, I guess.
One of my favorite things about the show is how it’s such a communal experience. In your own words, what is it about The Last Drive-in that makes it feel like family?
JBB: You know, I wish I knew what creates the feeling of family. I’m so grateful for it. I’ve made friends and I’ve probably made more connections through this show than in my entire career. And we talk to people all the time at the conventions and other places where I go. They just feel an extremely emotional connection to the show, and I appreciate that. I don’t know what caused it exactly.
DTMG: I feel like it all started during the first marathon when it broke. I went online to try to tell people you’re coming back, and to keep people’s interest, I kind of just started telling my story of what you meant to me, and why I was excited to have this goodbye. And then, people just kept joining in, and we all found each other and realized that we all had this thing. People that grew up watching MonsterVision were often troubled, go figure, and we looked to you as like, you know, comfort and a father figure or whatever. We all found each other, and we just kinda kept that going. People are just really open about what you mean, what the show means, what horror means, and that’s kind of beautiful.
JBB: Yeah, a lot of people say that they discovered the show during COVID, and that they felt isolated and we were a comfort place for them. Well, we were the only show that continued to shoot during COVID. I think we were just too stupid to know you’re not supposed to shoot during COVID. We weren’t aware that everybody could die on the show. No, I’m kidding. But we continued to do the show, and a lot of other shows shut down, and, and I think a lot of people watched it at that time.
DTMG: I think it was you. I feel like you’re just very father figure-y, and we feel like we’re hanging out with our crazy uncle or whoever you are, or whatever we want.
JBB: Crazy uncle, okay.
DMTG: You are!
JBB: I’ll accept crazy uncle.
DMTG: You definitely will, because it’s fitting.
Was there a highlight from this season that stood out to you? A favorite film or moment on set?
JBB: Well, I love the National Grilled Cheese Day episode. When we showed Toxic Avenger.
DTMG: He talked about Grilled Cheese Day for months! He was so excited. He was like, ‘I can’t wait till Grilled Cheese Day’.
JBB: I don’t think that was anybody else’s favorite show. But you know, we had quite a few sort of rediscovered movies this year, and one of them was Death Game.
DMTG: Yeah. That was a very big event, with Colleen Camp.
JBB: And the movie itself, a lot of people were being introduced to it for the first time.
DTMG: It was so fun!
I have a theory that all of us horror fans have a secret movie litmus test for people we meet. For me, it’s Michael Mann’s Manhunter, which means that if I meet someone new and they don’t dig it, we can be friends, but chances are we’ll never be ride-or-die. What would you say each of your personal litmus test horror movies are?
JBB: Well, I know what yours is.
DTMG: No, you don’t, because there’s different versions of litmus tests. Like, are they fun and cool and appreciate the classics? If so, let’s see how you handle Scream. Do they like gore and humor? If so, let’s see how you handle Terrifier. Do we want to be really deep soulmates? Let’s watch Cannibal Holocaust. Like, there’s a lot of litmus testing, you know? So it’s like, it depends on how I want to test them.
JBB: Oh. Well, I mean, I guess you’re right. Cannibal Holocaust would be the ultimate test. If you just outright hate it, or think it should be banned –
DTMG: Or you won’t even give it a chance –
JBB: Or you don’t even want to watch it in the first place.
DTMG: Then it’s like, okay, you know what? Actually that, I’m gonna go, that’s the ultimate.
JBB: You’re in it. All right, that’s not a bad thing. You’re in a certain category of human being.
DTMG: I respect you, but we ain’t ride-or-die.
Joe Bob, you’ve been known to be very opinionated when it comes to censorship. I’m very curious what both of y’alls thoughts are on the current debate over whether or not sex scenes are “necessary” in modern day movie making?
JBB: Whether they’re necessary? Well, of course they’re necessary. Sex is part of life. Anything that’s part of life is necessary in moviemaking.
DTMG: I mean, movies themselves aren’t necessary. It’s all about fun and art and beauty, so I don’t see why we wouldn’t have that.
JBB: Yeah, I mean, why wouldn’t you tell a story that involves sex?
DTMG: Right.
JBB: You can tell any kind of story on film. Making a film is a journey into seeing if you can tell a story that nobody else has ever told, and certainly, you want everything in your toolbox that you can use, and sex is one of those things. So, it’s crazy when people say stuff like that.
DTMG: I can’t believe we’re still having this debate. People have been talking about this forever. Are people not used to seeing boobs yet? Like, calm down.
JBB: Yeah, I’m sick of a lot of debates that we have in the movie world.
You’ve received a lot of praise for your deeply personal interviews with stars on set and your ability to connect with audiences on The Last Drive-In, but the Joe Bob character has always been relatable, ever since your MonsterVision days. How has your method of hosting changed over time?
JBB: I would say the main thing that’s changed is I used to be afraid of interviews.
DTMG: What? That seems impossible.
JBB: Yeah, when I first started interviewing actors, I wasn’t able to really bring out, you know, much about them. I’ve always been more comfortable with writers and directors. But I think the main thing that I improved on was being able to interview actors. I like actors, but actors often are really hard to interview because they know their own world, but they don’t really relate to the larger world of the movie that they’re in. And so, I would say that’s the main difference is I’ve figured out a way to connect to the actors.
What can you reveal about what you have in store for your Nightmarathon? I mean, I’m curious if the 666 setup means that it’s going to have a satanic theme, or with it being the 40th anniversary of A Nightmare on Elm Street and you named it your “Nightmarathon,” if that has any connection?
DTMG: I feel like we should just go ahead and say no, because people are excited about that and it makes a lot of sense, but no.
JBB: No, we didn’t really do much with the 666 thing –
DTMG: Or A Nightmare on Elm Street. We just thought, Marathon? Nightmarathon, that sounds good!
JBB: We have six movies. It’s a mishmash. It’s, you know, various genres, various types of movies. See, they’re six very different movies, which is what I think a marathon should be. If you watch a heavy movie, then you want a light movie. Watch a light movie, then you want a heavy movie. If you watch an all-American movie, then you want a foreign movie.
DTMG: There’s like three in here that are like literal classic-classics. So I’m happy I got to show them.
JBB: Three classics?
DTMG: Yeah.
JBB: I actually think there are four.
DTMG: What’s for the fourth one? Whisper it in my ear. Nevermind, tell me later.
JBB: Okay.
DTMG: I think there’s a new classic. There’s a really good new-ish one.
JBB: Oh, well, I wasn’t counting that one.
DTMG: Yeah, no. It’s too new to be a classic.
JBB: I guess it can’t be a classic because it’s a 2023 movie.
DTMG: Soon-to-be classic.
Will we be lucky enough to see a seventh season? What might fans have to look forward to next season, or what would you two personally like to see happen?
JBB: We’re waiting to see if we’re going to see a seventh season. So, we hope so!
DTMG: We never know what’s going on season by season. That’s why I like the finale of each season. We kind of treat it like it’s our finale-finale. So, hopefully!
Shudder’s THE LAST DRIVE-IN: NIGHTMAREATHON special marathon event hosted by Joe Bob Briggs premieres Friday, August 30 at 9pm ET on the Shudder TV and AMC+ TV feeds and will be available on demand on both platforms the following Sunday, September 1.
