Welcome to Awful Advent: a countdown of 13 Holiday Horror movies for the 13 days before Christmas
For this year’s eighth entry, we step away from movies themselves and turn instead to one of the biggest names in cult-movie-curation, Joe Bob Briggs in The Last Drive-In: Joe Bob Ruins Christmas!
It’s the annual Last Drive-In holiday special and this year’s theme is gifts! Joe Bob has picked Darcy’s favorite movie, and Darcy has picked his. Ice Cream Man (1995) and ‘Gator Bait (1974)!
A bit of a departure. Instead of curating the movie for tonight myself, I wanted to turn horror host to see what they would do. I’ll admit to being a little disappointed that they didn’t pick explicitly holiday movies (I thought there’d be something wild like Blood Beast in there), but I like the theme of these being gifts exchanged between the hosts. Plus, with horror host shows, the movies are less important than what the hosts add to them.
Horror hosts have two jobs: curation and context. The curation is the films they choose and the context is what they add to it. Joe Bob is good at both. He picks films that are unique, unexpected, and then he gives all the details about how the movie was made as well as the larger place it has in the culture. The stories behind the making of Ice Cream Man sound like a better movie than Ice Cream Man, and his description of how Beverly Sebastian, the writer/producer of ‘Gator Bait, distributed her movie describes a world wholly removed from the Marvel monopoly currently dominating our culture.
As for the films themselves, Ice Cream Man is the 1995 Clint Howard vehicle where he plays a murderous ice cream man. It’s a movie I’d seen before and is not very good at all. However, it’s bad in interesting ways and worth seeing once just to puzzle through the strangeness. Joe Bob has the details that explain why many things happened the way they did.
‘Gator Bait is the 1974 redneck rape revenge film and, to quote Joe Bob, “this movie got grim real fast.” The movie starts with someone being threatened with sexual assault and later someone gets killed during a uniquely violent sexual assault. Yeah. Merry Christmas. The star is former Playmate of the Year Claudia Jennings and she runs around in the kind of skimpy outfit you’d expect, but there’s a lot of sexual violence in the movie and, as the Flop House boys say, I don’t want that chocolate in my peanut butter. It’s a tougher watch than Ice Cream Man, but Joe Bob’s stories about the movie’s production, legacy, and the people involved is something else and demonstrates why he’s such a compelling host.
If anything struck a sour note about the special, it was Joe Bob’s monologues about the theme he wanted to focus on for the special, “No room at the inn.” He talked about the Christmas story and spun that out into a metaphor about inclusivity and exclusivity, the moments when we’re denied entry or acceptance. He makes the point that these are some of the best memories that we have—the night becomes better because you weren’t allowed into that party, and, besides, the people who get kicked out have more fun anyway. He wants his show, his space, to be a place where everyone is welcome, even those kicked out of the other places.
I’m down with the idea of inclusivity and he’s right, the “freaks” have more fun. Sort of the inverse of the Groucho line, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member,” I don’t want to hang with the people who would demand I change. The issue, though, is who do you think is being excluded? If it’s the trans folk, the black folk, the activists and agitators, I’m down. I’ll go where they lead. And you can read Joe Bob’s speech as being addressed at those very people. He says he wants people of all races, genders, and sexualities to feel welcome, but he also says “politics.” And he doesn’t get specific in his speech up to that point. He doesn’t name any group he sees as being excluded that he wants to make sure feels included. It’s very general and wishy-washy and you could read it as speaking to anyone, and thus to no one. The only examples he gives, and he repeats them so these are the people he’s thinking of, are people who voted in a way you don’t like or people who said something on Twitter in 2014. And my reaction is just,
Motherfucker, are you talking about cancel culture?
It’s that stuff that sticks in my craw. When you get into the realm of “we need to make space for people who disagree with us,” there’s a line. First, because it only works one way. It’s always left and liberal types who have to make sure conservatives feel comfortable. You never see the National Review run articles like, “How to tell your aunt about your son coming out,” or, “Easy vegan dishes to keep Thanksgiving civil.” It’s always your racist uncle who likes starting shit that you have to tiptoe around. Here’s a radical idea: if Uncle Duke can’t make sure the dinner that’s important to your mom goes well, maybe he can fuck off. Maybe the people who want to make things worse for the people around them don’t need to be invited. In fact, I’ll grant them this concession: since they’re authoritarians they can follow the fucking rules in my house and keep their politics to themselves.
Second, no one even believes it. No one believes it. No one insists you have to invite people you don’t like into your space unless they disagree with you on politics. Then it’s a moral imperative. Why is that the exception? Cousin Melvin doesn’t get an invite because he’s boring and always talks about copyright. Aunt Ruthie is a Cowboys fan and this is an Eagles house gawdammut! And when they do get invited, they manage to keep their copyright and Cowboys discussions to themselves because they understand that ancient Philadelphia koan: don’t start shit, won’t be shit.
The call for inclusivity is for those who are denied entry for who and how they are—not for what they did. I was visiting friends for the last time in 2017, during the summer when things were moving forward to cancel Obamacare. If that had gone through, my friend’s dad would have died because he couldn’t afford his medical care without the various Obamacare provisions. People voted for that. They didn’t vote for candidates who then turned around and sprung that on us, they voted for that very thing, demanding the repeal of the law that was keeping my friend’s father alive. All this talk of “cancel culture” is people demanding they not be treated like people who did what they did. Oh, you tweeted something mean in 2014? Well, what have you done since? How have you apologized? What did you do to make it right? Cause if it’s nothing, then I’m going to act like you’re the person who said what you said because you are the person who said what you said.
When you say you want to run a space where everyone is welcome, I need to know if you mean my mixed-race family is welcome or if the people who papered my campus with flyers about “white genocide” are welcome. When you say it’s about not decrying people for how they voted, you tell me the safety of my family is second to the comfort of your uncle and, for all your talk of “inclusivity,” you’ve told me very clearly who's not welcome.
2.5/5 horror hosts cringing in a corner afraid cancel Krampus is coming to claim them
The Last Drive-In: Joe Bob Ruins Christmas is available to stream on Shudder starting December 19th.
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