"Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In" for 12/28/90

cutline: Nicole Eggert, star of "The Haunting of Morella," knows that single life can sometimes be difficult

By Joe Bob Briggs

Drive-In Movie Critic of Grapevine, Texas

I spent the holidays up in Tulsa visiting the Oklahoma Briggses, the ones that divorce their cousins so they can marry their sisters, and on the first day I was there it got down to a 37-below triple-dead-hounddog wind-chill factor, and 16 members of the family lost fingers.

Anyhow, if you've never been to Oklahoma, then you may not realize that 1) they have ice storms up there every year, 2) they don't have any de-icing highway equipment, and 3) they don't ever buy any de-icing equipment because "it's not like we have ice storms every year."

So what they do instead is they wait until about 3,000 cars have plunged into rivers (no big deal, since an Oklahoma river is only six inches deep), and then they have bald-headed guys go on TV and give out "driving safety tips." Here they are, in case you ever need to drive over one of your relatives in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma Driving Safety Tip Numero Uno: When your car goes into a skid, and your car has no doors or windows, stick your left foot out the side and use the toe as a rudder. Steer the car in the direction of where you want to jump out.

Oklahoma Tip #2: When an old lady comes to a dead stop on a hill, so nobody can get past her, offer to help by putting "extra traction" in her tires. Then shoot em all out with a deer rifle.

Driving Tip #3: When traveling with more than eleven fat people in your station wagon, assign the heftiest beef critters to the rear-axle area. If the station wagon actually pops a wheelie, leave Uncle Benny in the snow. Tell him fat people can survive up to three weeks with no food or water.

Numero Four-o: If you have trouble climbing a mountain road, you are lost. You are in Arkansas. Take precautions to avoid being eaten by hillbillies.

Numero Five-o: If your car starts tumbling end over end, you are driving a Yugo.

Numero Six-o: If you feel yourself becoming wet, cold and sticky, you have forgotten your car.

Numero Seven-o: If you become alarmed by the number of stranded, injured and dead people on the highway, you have forgotten you're in Oklahoma.

Speaking of horribly disfigured family members, I finally found a theater showing "The Haunting of Morella," the latest Edgar Allan Poe flick produced by drive-in king Roger Corman, who started it all in the early sixties when he made "House of Usher" with Vincent Price. This time Rog hired up-and-coming drive-in director, Jimbo "Show me your breasts" Wynerski, and this may be his best flick yet. Leave it to Jimbo to find the latent lesbianism in Edgar Allan Poe. My kinda guy!

David McCallum is the "Man From Dunkin Donuts" as he moons around his Gothic mansion with a five-day growth of beard and a pair of Ray-bans, haunted by the memory of his dead wife, who had metal stakes driven through her eyes 18 years ago after she drank virgin blood and tried to kill a baby girl. What's really got him ticked off, though, is that now the baby girl wants to be just like her mom.

He can't control her. She's been hanging around out at Mom's tomb with a Ken-doll lawyer from town, unaware that her evil lesbian tutor is feeding the house servants to mom's glowing skeleton and getting her ready for the ultimate makeover. Mom wants to live again in baby daughter's body and show daddy the real meaning of the word "hen-pecked."

In other words, we've got the teenager's ultimate nightmare. She doesn't just tell you you can't wear makeup. She wants to be your makeup.

Thirteen breasts. Eight dead bodies. Branding iron through the eyes. Cross-nailing. Multiple throat-slitting. Virgin blood-bathing. Blood-sucking. Nude back-stabbing. Devil sex. Ax in chest. Exploding casket. Exploding crypt. Gratuitous supporting-actress skinny-dipping. Witchcraft fu. Lesbo fu. Jugular fu. Drive-In Academy Award nominations for David McCallum, for sucking opium and saying "I still cannot bring myself to utter that name"; Lana Clarkson, as the evil lesbian tutor, for saying "One more feeding, my love, and you'll be fully resurrected"; and Nicole Eggert, in the dual role of Lenora and her dead mother Morella, for saying "My flesh needs sustenance, and your life shall fill that need."

Three and a half stars.

Joe Bob says check it out.

JOE BOB'S ADVICE TO THE HOPELESS

Republican Alert! The Big Bear Drive-In in Suquamish, Wash., has a big "For Sale" sign on it and might be a fireworks stand or mini-mall by the time you read this. Terrence J. Rowe of Seattle has vowed to fight the "influx of godless California hot-tubbing Communists" who are doing this to his state. And he reminds us that, without eternal vigilance, it could happen here.

To discuss the meaning of life with Joe Bob, or to get free junk in the mail and his world-famous "We Are the Weird" newsletter, write P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, TX 75221, or leave your name and address on Joe Bob's comedy line, 1-900-4-JOEBOB ($1.50 first minute, 75 cents each additional). Joe Bob's Fax: 214-368-2310.

Dear Joe Bob:

I have discovered the true meaning of life.

On Monday you get drunk. Tuesday you recover, and Wednesday you feel good again. So Wednesday you get drunk. Thursday you recover, and Friday you feel good again. So Friday you get drunk. Saturday you recover, and Sunday you feel good again.

You take Sunday off. In the afternoon you can either watch football or rent a drive-in movie tape. In the evening you can watch "60 Minutes" and "Masterpiece Theatre."

I know that sounds boring, but hey, Monday is only a few hours away, and then you can get drunk again.

Sincerely,

John B. Sherrill

Lubbock, Tex.

Dear John:

When I lived in Lubbock, people could get drunk EIGHT times a week. What happened to you people?

Joe Bob Briggs,

Women do not get pretty when they're pregnant. Queen Victoria had many children and was she pretty? No. She had a face like Alfred Hitchcock and a figure like W.C. Fields.

One thing, though. She knew what she was about and that was walking--not pushing! The thigh bone is connected to the hip bone, you know, and you got to wiggle those hip bones and expand the pelvic outlet.

Enclosed is a page from Advice To My Grand-daughter, letter from Queen Victoria selected by Richard Hough, Simon & Schuster, 1975.

"Dear Victoria,

"I have not yet thanked you for your dear last letter; let me do so now and say also that I think it was far wiser and better that you did not come up here, much as I regretted not seeing you--as you wld have seen but little of dear Para--& probably got overtired at Abergeldie by the irregular hours, etc. Dear Papa is upon the whole in better spirits, seems to be comfortable and happy here--Irene is in such good looks & very dear & nice & trying to do what she can for dear Papa.

"I hope you walk regularly every day? It is the one thing to be attended to.

"I am glad to hear Liko is going on well--but how annoying that this shld. happen.

"I have spoken to Uncle Bertie & also shown him some of the letters & he has expressed himself very kindly. I enclose a copy of his letter to me this mng. wh. I thought Ludwig wld. like to see. Hoping soon to hear from you both.

"Ever your devoted Grandmama

"V.R.I."

C. Shepard

Stanford, Calif.

Dear C.:

No, Queen Victoria was not pretty when she was pregnant. She was not pretty when she was UN-pregnant, either. The woman looked like a Holstein on steroids.

Bad example.

Dear Joe Bob,

I just got through reading your "Joe Bob's America" column on Harley Redin and The Flying Queens of Wayland Baptist College and, as I have in the past after reading this feature, feel damn well moved to tears. The JBA column has been so inspirational for the past few months that I'm going to make a suggestion that no one, including you, will probably take seriously: You deserve a Nobel Prize for Journalism with "Joe Bob's America." Honestly, I think the only reason it hasn't already happened or even been suggested is because of the schizophrenia of your entire feature. That is, you have a breast and blood count of a sci fi sex kitten-slasher film review followed by a heart-wrenching exposition of the lost values of Americana. But eventually, people will have to overlook this. Because I believe, if you keep up the quality of sincerity and pride of your "Joe Bob's America" column, the Nobel Prize will no longer be a joke, but will be in your very hands.

Korby Sears

Richardson, Tex.

Dear Korby:

Isn't the Nobel Prize given out by Communist Swedish people? And don't they always give it to Bolivian poets that are in jail?

Dear Joe Bob:

First they got rid of the drive-ins. Then they went after feelthy pic mags. Now we can't even go to a museum, fuh crying out loud, to see obscene photos, and you know slasher films are next. That Comsymp Jesse Helms will turn the whole durn place into a great big gulag at this rate. But I know you understand, and it gives me the strenth to go on.

You deserve the support of every patriotic Merkin who has ever thought it might be a good idea to do a little chainsaw carving in the halls of Congress and the Oval Orifice. These wimpolas who claim you glorify the abuse and exploitation of wimmin should be thankin you instead. I mean, if it wasn't for you, they wouldn't even know about it, if you know what I mean, and I believe you do.

Write on, big guy. There's a Nobel Prize at the end of that trail of mangled intestines.

Mary F. Beal

Seal Rock, Ore.

Dear Mary:

I don't think they have a Nobel Prize for Sleaze, but I like this recurring theme.

Dear Fellow, in part, Joe,

With acquaintanceship with your column, I have been heartened to know that the calcifying forces of Normalcy are being kept in check by conscientious citizens like yourself.

I want to say that I rather took exception to the Prozac column. While it is true that Americans in general have a difficult time with taking responsibility for problems and working on them in real ways, you should know that there are also people out there whose brains (I refer not to intelligence, but to management systems) actually don't function well enough to allow them to live well at all. It is just like being born with a deformed limb or a weak viscerum of some sort; except it's less obvious and more globally debilitating. For example, you seem to have been taking a potshot at people who, quite literally, have one of their "off" switches broken. Those normally known as "obsessive-compulsive" people actually can't stop their brains from saying "Go do this . . . go do this . . . go do this, go do this, godothisgodothisgodothisGODOTHIS!" The off switch for their task remembering circuitry is broken! Not even the memory of having just gone and done this, not even going and doing this again is of any help! If something nonlethal mitigates this problem to a feelable degree, I feel, it should be made available to those in genuine need. We're not talking mere attitude problems here.

Still with appreciation,

Joseph G. Shay

Brookline, Mass.

Dear Joe:

I didn't mean to be taking pot-shots at genuinely sick people (although I think I did overstate the case a little). But when a drug becomes as popular as Prozac, so popular that the DRUG ITSELF is treated like a rock star on the cover of Newsweek Magazine, then every half-witted doctor will overprescribe it, and every ingenious drug-addicted liar who feels bad will find out how to get it, and pretty soon we'll have another crisis of a drug getting into the wrong hands of too many people and causing actual deaths.

I don't think nobody should take it, but I do think many people who have marginal emotional problems are abusing it.

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