May 10, 2025

Graboids, Dancing, and the Afterlife


Bacon Bits: Flatliners / Footloose / Tremors
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
This weekend's tribute to Kevin Bacon was the last event that was originally scheduled before the passing of the Mahoning Drive-In Theater owner and master projectionist Jeff Mattox which had to be rescheduled.  This event was originally scheduled for the weekend of May 10th and 11th, 2024 and was delayed by almost exactly one year as it was rescheduled for the 2025 season.
 
Show banner designed by Andrew Kern
Show poster designed by Tom Bifulco

I've been cutting back on t-shirts this season, but this one was too good to pass up.  The artwork on the shirt was created by Tom Bifulco and is the same design as what was used on the poster.


Actress Finn Carter was in attendance both nights to meet fans, take pictures, and sign autographs.  She played Rhonda LeBeck in Tremors; a role for which she received a Saturn Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
The first movie of Friday night was Joel Schumacher's 1990 psychological horror film Flatliners.  It features an ensemble cast that includes Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, William Baldwin, Oliver Platt, and the namesake of the weekend's event, Kevin Bacon.  They play the role of five med students who are conducting secret experiments in what appears to be an abandoned church in which they bring their peers to a point where their heart stops (or flatlines) to explore what exists beyond death before they are then brought back through the use of drugs, a defibrillator, and CPR.

I've only seen this movie one time before this weekend.  When I was 12 years old, I lived with my dad, stepmom, and stepsister in South Florida.  My stepsister and I got along well and we'd often hang out in her room and have a movie night.  One of the movies she rented on one of these nights was Flatliners.  My memory of this film is that I thought it was cool, but I didn't really remember any of the details.  It all started coming back to me as we watched the story unfold on the big screen at the drive-in.  My feelings on this movie haven't changed 33 years later.  Despite the critical reviews which are pretty rough, I still think it's a very cool and atmospheric film and one that I'd recommend to anyone who loves movies.


The movie that kicked off the second night of Bacon Bits was the 1984 teen drama Footloose.  This film has become synonymous with the 80's, but for as much time as I've spent watching films from the decade of my childhood, I have never seen Footloose before tonight.  The only thing I knew about the film is that it starred Kevin Bacon and John Lithgow, and it's about a small town where dancing is against the law.

This is not a difficult movie to find so I've had plenty of opportunities to see it over the years, but I didn't think it would be the kind of thing that I'd like all that much, so I never gave it a chance.  In fact, I came very close to passing up this opportunity to see it on 35mm on the big screen.  I only got tickets to Bacon Bits: Night One when tickets first went on sale last year, and if not for the fact that a lot of my friends on the lot told me that they were going to be at this show, I probably would have sat this one out.

I'm very glad that I did decide to give Footloose a chance because it's a pretty damn good movie!  It's not exactly filled with plot twists that you won't see coming a mile away, but it's an entertaining story with solid performances throughout the cast, including an incredible performance from John Lithgow as the reverend (and father of Kevin Bacon's love interest) who is responsible for the town's dance ban.
 

Since the second feature of both nights features monsters that live underground, Rob included the 35mm commercial of Dig Dug in the intermission trailer reel.  I'm always happy to see this hit the big screen.  It does a good job of taking the audience out of 2025 and bringing them back to a time when theaters showed a promo for an arcade game prior to the feature film.  It's things like this that make this place more than just a drive-in theater.


The second film that was screened on both Friday and Saturday night was the 1990 modern monster flick Tremors.  I slept through about 45 minutes of this film on Friday night, but that has nothing to do the movie or my interest in seeing it.  First of all, it's hard for me to stay up on Friday nights since I wake up for work at 5:00 am.  Second, it started drizzling, so we had to pack up the lawn chairs and head into the car for the second half of the double feature on Friday night.  I can usually stay awake even if I'm tired as long as we're sitting outside, but when I settle in behind the wheel in a warm car with the seat back and a pillow behind my head, I almost always doze off for at least part of the film.  Finally, I knew that I would be coming back the next night when they'd be playing Tremors again, so the incentive to try to force myself to stay awake and alert just wasn't there.  I had no trouble staying up to see it tonight.  It was kind of chilly, but there was no rain so we were able to sit outside for the whole night.

Like Flatliners, Tremors was a movie that I have only ever seen one time before.  When I was ten years old, I went on a road trip with my maternal grandmother, her husband, my uncle Kuuipo and his wife, and a bunch of my cousins to spend a month staying with my Uncle Sumo and his family in Provo, Utah.  I didn't get along too well with my mother's side of the family when I was a kid, and that has only gotten worse as I've gotten older as I haven't spoken to any of them in years.  Frankly, I'm glad to not have them in my life and I'm sure that most of them feel the same way about me, so it's for the best.  Despite this, my memories of our time in Utah aren't all bad.  One of the more pleasant things that I remember from the Summer of 1990 was the movie night we had.  One of my uncles brought home Back To The Future and Tremors on VHS from the rental shop.  We popped some popcorn and watched both of them in my Uncle Sumo's living room.

I remember that I thought Tremors was pretty cool when I saw it as a kid, but the only thing I remembered about it nearly 35 years later is that it took place in a desert town in the US Southwest, and it's about giant worms that are terrorizing the people who lived there.  I enjoyed it even more seeing it on the big screen at the Mahoning.


And that's a wrap on Bacon Bits.  I'm not sure if this is going to become an annual event, but there are plenty of Kevin Bacon films to choose from (including one that was shown as a secret feature), so they could keep this going for many years to come if it draws a crowd.  It was a fun weekend, so I'm rooting for it to make a return in 2026.