![]() Unlike the Coyote who have a strict policy on outside food and drinks we would load up on our own liquid refreshments before entering and we also would take frozen dinners in those boiling bags and heat them up in a pot of boiling water on Toms stove. A case of beer in aluminum cans? Enjoy the show, boys. ![]() The only time I ever saw police officers at the drive-in was at the entrance to the four-screen Century in Grand Prairie where officers stationed at the box office made everyone open their trunks and ice chests weapons and drinks in glass containers were forbidden. ![]() It was shocking to pull in and see the theater packed in fact on the rare nights that happened.Īnd security was lax to put it lightly. Unless they were showing something everyone wanted to see (a first run of a FRIDAY THE 13 th sequel or cult favorites like THE ROAD WARRIOR) it wasn’t unusual for Tom and I to pull into the drive in theater and see the place nearly empty. Some would call them exploitation films we called them “drive-in movies” though because they were meant to be shown in drive-ins or other such theaters that were desperate to sell admission tickets. It was about this time we noticed there was a sub-genre of films that would occasionally pop up on the drive-in screen movies with an extra dose of sex and violence. Eventually they just quit trying sometimes they would get a pair of movies that became stock features, change the B-features they were paired with from week to week and switch screens every week as if the regulars like us wouldn’t notice. Why drag the whole family to the drive in and pay $4 a head to see THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE or MAD MAX when they could rent the movie for the whole family for a dollar? The drive-ins by the mid 80s were all pretty much in their death throes and they knew it. And then there was the video stores which in the early 80s began popping up everywhere people could rent movies for as little as a dollar. The drive-ins by this point had endured the advent of cable TV and the mass realization of millions of former film goers that they could run the “audio out” cables on their VCRs into their stereo receivers and turn their living rooms into state-of-the-art theaters. We began to scout out the remaining drive-ins in the DFW area. It had a fridge, a 4-burner stove and the top popped open so that six people could watch a movie at the drive in in perfect comfort. In the early 80s I had a friend named Tom who purchased a used1976 VW camper van from an attorney. Now mind you I actually LIKED Shaun the Sheep in spite of it being a “family film” but as we sat in our lawn chairs broiling in the Texas summer heat (it’s still hot here even after the sun goes down) my mind couldn’t help but drift back to the early 80s when Joe Bob Briggs still had his column in the Dallas Times Herald and the few remaining drive-ins left in the Dallas/Fort Worth area DIDN’T cater to families. And boy have I been getting caught up on my “family films”: this summer alone I have sat through MINIONS, INSIDE OUT and most recently we took the kids to see SHAUN THE SHEEP. Of course we dragged them to the drive-in theater a couple of times while they were here since drive-ins are even scarcer in Canada than they are here. We had our nine-year-old grandson staying with us again this summer and two of my wife’s older children spent a couple of weeks with us during the latter half of August. They have the only drive-in game in town and market themselves as a novelty form of family entertainment. Off-duty police officers provide security and they reserve the right to search your vehicle. The Coyote caters hard to families, running mostly PG family movies. There are three more in North Texas that I am aware of but they are all a considerable driving distance from my house. They are the one, the only, the sole drive-in theater within an hour’s drive of my home. Since they cater to families anxious to share the nostalgia with their kids, the Coyote pretty much only shows “family films”. They opened in 2013 with three screens and business has been so successful for them they have erected a fourth screen in the last year. I’ve written before on this site about the new drive-in theater that has opened near where I live the Coyote just north of downtown Fort Worth.
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