Tales:
The Fenley Chronicles
Angels Die Hard
Another Saturday evening in Springfield – what to do? Pop & I head for the 66 Drive-In for the double feature. Tonight’s selections are two classics somehow passed over by the Oscars: Death Race 2000 and Angels Die Hard. The patrons are the usual mixture of teenagers in Rustoleum Camaros with steamed over windows and folks whose habits make them best suited for such a semi-public venue.
All goes as expected during the first picture; David Carradine turns in yet another half-asleep performance within a wafer thin plot that you might expect from a video game. The main point seems to be running people over (extra points for babies & grandmas) in fiberglass bodied cars. Sly Stallone even has a horribly acted bit part; Rocky the gangster. A totally awful movie and perfect drive-in fare at three bucks a carload.
Now it’s after ten and Angels Die Hard begins. Once again those misunderstood Hell’s Angels are being persecuted just because they like to terrorize small towns for fun and profit. Life is so unfair! By the end of the first reel the Angel’s luck is beginning to run out. Will the bikers escape to ransack another village or will they all taste the righteous chain? On comes the second reel – backwards. Harleys roar in reverse as bikers curse in Pig Latin. Throughout the lot headlights flash, a horn toots. The screen goes black, minutes pass.
The film flickers back on. The Angel’s are going forward again, but upside down. Headlights flash again, more horns blow. Derisive commentary can be heard around the lot as the picture continues to run top side down. One guy gets out and stands on his head to correct the view. Finally the drunken projectionist awakens from his stupor and shuts down the projector. Five or ten minutes pass as the clamor rises from unhappy Hell’s Angel lovers across the drive-in. The shouted commentary becomes spicier as the minutes pass until the screen flashes back to life. Now the bikers are flailing their tire irons backwards and upside down. Car doors fly open. Bearded guys with tattoos lurch to their feet from their chaise lounges in the backs of pickups to shout expletives at the snack bar.
The projectionist is beginning to panic now. The picture starts and stops in rapid succession. Every possible combination is shown except the correct one. Upside down, backwards, no audio, audio out of sync, you name it. Horns blow continuously. Every car in the lot is flashing high beams. To the left a short guy with a pack of Lucky Strikes rolled up in the sleeve of his t-shirt spews a stream of curses in Spanish. One row up, a ten year old Impala with an "I brake for nobody" bumper sticker explodes with unsavory characters like the little car full of clowns at the circus. They scream at the snack bar from which emanates the offending imagery, their eyes popping as they leap and holler as if they were dancing on a hot skillet. One big dude in a Harley Davidson shirt wrenches a drive-in speaker from its pole and hurls it thirty feet away, snapping the cord. Another joins in the fun, imitating the backward bikers on the screen by stomping the speakers into twisted animal cracker shapes.
Pop puts the Toyota in gear – time to leave before the riot squad arrives. As we slipped out the exit, the Angels were still dying hard, though inverted.
