Once in a while, Brugger and I both feel a hankering to go to the drive-in
theater in Eden, about a half-hour down the way, and last night was one of
those times. Over the years, we've had some lovely experiences there as well
as some that were anything but up to snuff. Happily, last night was a
winner...well, until the trip home.
The
Eden Drive-In
has two screens—the original, full-size screen and a more recent, pint-size
screen with a correspondingly smaller parking area. The Mandalorian & Grogu played last weekend and was still on for this weekend, so we decided to check it out, since we both loved the series. However, once we arrived at the
theater—about an hour and a half early—we learned it was playing on the small
screen (it had played on the main screen last week), and that smaller lot was
already damn-near full. On the big screen, they had Backrooms
and
Obsession, so we figured, well, fuggit, let's check them out. I'd heard good
things about both from friends and fellow writers who'd seen them, and...
hey... horror movies and drive-in theaters naturally go together. Huzzah!
It was a beautiful evening, and as it got darker, the breeze turned chillier... and chillier. We'd had the foresight to bring layers, so... hey, we felt happier than
happy to get a break from the recent once-unseasonal heat. As the sun set, the sky turned all
kinds of colors, and come full-on dusk, a bright full moon hung
overhead. The perfect setting for us.
Backrooms was, to me, utterly brilliant — rather Lynchian, I thought, as if it sprang
from the darkest heart of the Black Lodge. It's kind of the inverse of real
life: a nightmare film, in which conventional reality occasionally asserts
itself. Obsession similarly hit a level of intensity that I found disconcerting.in the extreme. Ms. B. preferred Obsession, while I preferred Backrooms, but that was all a matter of degree. We both loved both.
The only tragic part of all this was that, heading home on the rural
backroads, I ended up hitting a deer. We'd seen loads of them along the way,
so I was driving pretty slowly, but nevertheless, one came bounding out across
the road at full tilt, and that was all she wrote. So, sadly...one dead deer.
The damage to my car was minimal, but it's still going to require some body
work, which is an expense we can ill-afford at the moment.
I hate hitting animals. Almost ironically, back in 2015, Kimberly hit a deer
on the way home from that very same drive-in (see
"Deer Damage"). In her case, the accident caused extensive damage to her car. Perhaps
ironically, we'd been talking about that incident while we were waiting for
the movies to start. Alas. Anyway, I feel horrible for the deer, and despite
the pain the ass, pretty lucky that the accident wasn't any worse.
We had such a lovely evening, we decided that it was going to be our takeaway
from it. Now, we're really looking forward to another drive-in movie night.
Peace out.
