At a local drive-in a couple is slaughtered by a sword wielding maniac. The police are called. The detectives assigned to the case are Mike Leary (John F. Goff) and John Koch (Bruce Kimball). They begin their investigation with the manager of the drive-in, Austin Johnson (Robert E. Pearson). Johnson is an angry man with an attitude. Working for him is a meek and squirrelly guy, Germy (Douglas Gudbye). Germy used to work at the carnival as a sword swallower.
Germy tells the detectives about a peeping tom that comes to the drive-in almost every night. He likes to move his car around from spot to spot hoping to find a naked couple making love in their car. He likes to watch. The next time the peeping tom shows up, Germy writes down his license plate number and gives it to the cops. The two detectives learn that the voyeur’s name is Orville Ingleson (Norman Sheridan). They talk to Orville but have no evidence against him and being a plain old perv is not illegal.
The killings continue. Mike and John set up a sting operation at the drive-in hoping to lure the killer to them. Instead, the killer strikes somewhere else and kills another couple. Then they find that Orville the pervert was another victim. When Mike and John hear about a machete wielding maniac in a warehouse with a hostage, the guys think that this may be the killer they are looking for.
“Drive-In Massacre” was released in 1976 and was directed by Stu Segall. It is an American low budget horror film. The movie was one of the earlier slasher type films.
The film boasts bad acting, bad music, bad dialogue and bad story. The script was written in seven days and the film was shot in four, most of it without permits. There really is nothing special here. Even the ending is trite. Sure, I’ve seen worse, there’s a lot of cheese and camp and some ridiculous special effects but you do get some mayhem and a little blood. You’d think it would be more entertaining with some boobs tossed in but the whole thing was really rather average.
The film also boasts a big red herring in the middle of the film that does nothing more than pad the movie’s run time. The highlight of the film is the beginning where someone gets their head chopped off and someone else gets their neck skewered. The rest of the film, except for the filler sequence, is two cops trying to find out who the killer is, with a suspect pool of three. Occasionally there is another murder or two. The total death count is somewhere around 9 but they are spaced out and most of the film is two cops talking.
If you are a slasher fan than it is worth seeking out but it’s not great, even in slasher film terms.