Dead End Drive-In

Dead End Drive-In (1986)

There's a party every day, a movie every night, and all the junk food you can eat. What more can a kid want... except to get out.

In the future, a health nut and his tag-along girlfriend become trapped in a drive-in theater that has become a concentration camp for outcast youths.

Date of release
1986-08-13
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (127)
Runtime
1h 27m
Genres
Horror, Science Fiction, Action
Director
Brian Trenchard-Smith

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: A$68K
  • Filmed in: Sydney
  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 1

Dead End Drive-In is a 1986 Australian dystopian action film about a teenage couple trapped in a drive-in theatre which is really a concentration camp for societal rejects. The inmates, many of whom sport punk fashion, are placated with a steady diet of junk food, new wave music, drugs, and exploitation films. The film was directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith and stars Ned Manning and Natalie McCurry as the captive couple, and Peter Whitford as the manager of the drive-in. Mad Max 2 stuntman Guy Norris performed some of the stunts. The soundtrack includes contemporary popular music performed by such bands as Kids in the Kitchen and Hunters and Collectors.

Production

The movie was based on a short story by Peter Carey, although Brian Trenchard-Smith says he had not read it when he came on board the project. A previous director had been attached but had pulled out. "I came in, took a week, and welded the best elements from the first three drafts together, boosting the social comment," says Trenchard-Smith.

The film was shot over 35 days at a drive-in theatre in Matraville starting on 9 September 1985. Funding came from the New South Wales Film Corporation. The director said of the film that:

The Drive-In is, of course, an allegory for the junk values of the eighties, which our hero sees as a prison. The last 20 minutes of the film - the escape - is the desperate blazing climax, but the whole film has a feeling of high style, of heightened or enhanced reality - a little bit over the top, but retaining a reality that the public will accept.

The final stunt by Guy Norris cost around $75,000, more than any previous single stunt in Australia, and set a world record for a jump by a truck: 162 feet (49 m).

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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