What's the Texas Drive-In Film Trail? | Opinion

Photo byBig Sky Theater Facebook

Once upon a time, Texas was the land of the drive-in theater.

I've got a big love of drive-in movie classics. I regularly review movies from that era over at Drive-In Radio. I've had a lifelong love affair with movies. My family ran a tiny, single-screen, traveling-circuit movie theater in the very early days of film. But my deepest love is the drive-in movie.

Texas didn't have the first drive-in — we had the third, though. In 1934, the Drive-In Short Reel Theatre in Galveston opened, just a year after the first theater of its kind opened in New Jersey.

Jersey native Dick Hollingshead would patent the idea in 1933, and it would spread like wildfire across the country. But the drive-in developed its own special culture here in Texas. We've birthed several historians of the drive-in, and not just me. John Bloom, late of the Dallas Observer, became late-night horror historian Joe Bob Briggs (JBB himself was born in the very pages of the Observer).

From El Paso down to Brownsville, to the Houston bayous and back up here to North Texas and on into the Panhandle, easing down back into the dusty West Texas plains, you could, at a time, nearly throw a rock and hit a few local drive-ins.

In the heyday of the drive-in, the Lone Star State might've well been the Drive-In State. We had more theaters of their kind than anywhere else.

After stagnating and dying off for decades, we've recently seen something of a rebirth of the drive-in. Leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, there had been a few new players experimenting with drive-ins, but in the last several years, we've seen the beginning of what could be a renaissance.

People, as it turns out, actually like going places together. Drive-ins, unlike the failing multiplexes, are something of an event-unto-themselves, as they've always been. The selling point of the original drive-ins was as much getting together with all your friends and laughing at low-budget monster movies as anything else.

Thanks to the Texas Film Commission — a Texas treasure unto itself — the state's launched several "Film Trails," of late. They're a kind of road-trip guide to Texas film history. And one of those film trails — is the Texas Drive-Ins Film Trail.

Photo byTexas Film Commission

Stretching across the state, the Trail's made up of drive-in theaters that have stood the test of time, and have gotten the Film Commission's stamp of approval.

Some are traditional — like Gatesville's The Last Drive-In Picture Show. It wouldn't be unfamiliar to anyone who grew up around drive-ins. A double feature every night, and weekend matinees.

Others, like Austin's Blue Starlite are micro-theaters and traveling pop-up theaters (that would make my own ancestors proud).

Some are the new breed — Fort Worth's Coyote Drive-In. And others are long-time family-run affairs, like New Braunfel's Stars & Stripes Drive-In.

But all of them share a long, long history in the Lone Star State of drive-in movies. In all their history though, drive-ins weren't just a place to watch a movie.

They were a place to make friends, have a date, see your neighbors, eat popcorn, and get away from the real world for just a little while. As pieces of American history go, that too is a Texas treasure.

The world's a better place when we can all put aside our differences and just catch a midnight double feature.

How about you, fellow Texans? Do you have a favorite drive-in, or obscure bits of film history? Let me know in the comments.

If you enjoyed this piece, come say hi at Drive-In Radio, where I talk about bad movies, good music, and culture — by the people and for the people.