Dead-End Drive-In
It’s a time waaaay in the future (1990), in this utterly silly but amusing film based on a short story by Peter Carey.
The rising rate of unemployment among Australia’s younger population has forced the government to come up with a creative way of dealing with the fallout of wayward youth.
Youngsters heading to the drive-in for a night out, end up being summarily detained. Their cars, once vessels of freedom and rebellion, become makeshift dwellings. In a sickening twist, the detainees are forced to rely on the drive-in cafeteria for food and drink.
The film goes to great pains to explain the prison’s currency, how the inmates manage to (despite appearances) maintain a hygiene regimen, and even how they avoid pregnancy. But somehow the story fails to account for the endless stream of incoming newbies who have evidently failed to notice that countless numbers of other youth have vanished after going to the drive-in, or even that such fortresses exist.
When our anti-hero “Crabs” and his girlfriend Carmen find themselves entrapped in the drive-in, it is Carmen who readily adapts to their situation. She bonds with the other girls of the prison, who spend their spare-time in the complex’s bathroom, swapping stories and teasing hair. As this film was made in the eighties, teasing hair consumes a considerable chunk of their time.
To say that Crabs is a little slow at catching on would be an understatement. “Shit!” he exclaims in one scene, where we see him tinkering under the hood of his dilapidated ride. When his girlfriend asks him what the problem is, he replies: “We’re out of petrol”. The fact that the wheels of his car were stolen on the first night of their interment, and that the place is surrounded by high concrete walls and electric wiring, hasn’t quite made an impression on the diminutive “Crabs” who, in a negligible sub-plot, probably sees this situation as an opportunity to prove his machismo to himself and his older brother, who makes a living towing cars that are crashed by the reckless youth who go cruising at night. He remains intent on breaking out.
It’s hilarious watching Wilbur Wilde embarrass himself as “Hazza” – a bully with a strange accent … or perhaps speech impediment. Who knows? There’s even a cameo by Brett Climo, who appeared on the Australian soapie: A Country Practice. One can only wonder which role was more embarrassing.
Note the nod to another Trenchard-Smith film, in a scene where scenes from Turkey Shoot are playing on the drive-in screen. Carmen is, quite comically, enthralled.
The high hair, synthesized soundtrack and new-wave clothing make this an unmistakably eighties film: nostalgia for some, an anthropological curiosity for others. Laugh-out-loud entertainment for most.