Thursday, April 23, 2020

Victory Over Communism!

Joe Bob Briggs, the "drive-in movie critic" persona created by journalist John Bloom, would often include a section in his newspaper columns called "Victory Over Communism!" in which he would highlight a still-operating drive-in theater in some part of the United States, during a time in which the number of those theaters was rapidly shrinking. He was especially ebullient when a closed drive-in would re-open.

Joe Bob is probably in his own version of a redneck ecstatic fugue state this week, as the entire box office report for the entire United States comes from one drive-in theater in Ocala, FL. As the story at Slashfilm explains, there are of course quite a few drive-ins operating across the U.S. during the COVID-19 closedown, but apparently only the one in Ocala is showing first-run features instead of oldies or other already-released movies and reporting their gross sales. It showed two, the Marcel Marceau biopic Resistance and the weirdo psychological thriller Swallow. The total box office reported for the week was $33,456.

Joe Bob would probably say you should check it out, but then Joe Bob always said "check it out," so that may not be much of a guide.

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