Joe Bob Briggs and The Last Drive In: We broke the internet!

The horror community joined together Friday and Saturday to break the internet and watch Joe Bob Briggs on “The Last Drive In” courtesy of Shudder.

Friday the 13^th in July of 2018 will go down in horror movie history because of one man and one event. For 24 hours starting Friday night, Joe Bob Briggs returned to our televisions, computers and mobile devices via Shudder to bring us some of the best in cult horror classics during the The Last Drive In. This was a huge event in the horror community that not even Shudder saw coming.

Image courtesy of TNT

I never had the chance when I was younger to watch MonsterVision, Joe Bob Briggs’s show on TNT that aired from 1991 to 2000. It was cancelled at the height of its popularity and people were not happy. Recently, I started finding episodes and best of clips and realized all that I had missed. So, when I heard that he was coming back to host one more time after 17 years, I knew I couldn’t miss it.

Unfortunately for Shudder, no one else was going to miss it either. Due to such an unexpected high demand to watch one of our favorite horror hosts, the Shudder servers were struggling for most of the day. I can’t count the number of times I was kicked off. Fortunately, I kept trying and saw most of the marathon. The worst of it was for the final movie. I got kicked right after Hellraiser and missed the entirely of Pieces but I was able to jump back on the server just in time for the good-bye. And honestly, I cared less about the movie than that last five minutes.

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And I’ll be honest, I got teary-eyed. I don’t know which was sadder: the look on Joe Bob’s face, the empty chair or when he sat as the lights turned off and he held his hat. It felt like the end of an era and it felt just…sad. However, I wonder given the overwhelming amount of response for this marathon, if this is truly the last we will see of Briggs and his casual and informative hosting style. And he was on his game for this marathon. Whether he was talking about directors, movie secrets, Donald Trump or what dystopia REALLY is, he was a damn delight and I loved every minute of it.

If you missed the stream due to technical issues (and you weren’t lucky enough to catch the Twitch feed from fan and hero @cthlhu), never fear because Shudder is putting all of the movies on demand WITH the commentary from the live stream. The full list of 13 movies is: Tourist Trap, Sleepaway Camp, Rabid, The Prowler, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-rama, Daughters of Darkness, Blood Feast, Basket Case, Re-Animator, Demons, The Legend of Boggy Creek, Hellraiser, and Pieces.

My most favorite thing about this event, though, wasn’t the movies or the commentary or the feeling it gave being able to watch cult horror movies all Saturday long. This was one of the few things I have ever seen bring nearly all of the horror community together. This was huge. Everywhere you looked, people were talking about The Last Drive In, Joe Bob and what movie he was showing. Whatever the movie was at the time was one of the top trending subjects on Twitter and that is AMAZING. The horror community took over the internet for 24 hours and it was a beautiful thing full of nostalgia, reminiscing and sharing why we love this genre so damn much.

The Last Drive In with Joe Bob Briggs was one of the coolest things that has been done with the horror community as a whole in a long time and we all loved it. Thank you to Joe Bob Briggs for coming back one more time, for Diana Prince (a.k.a. @kinky_horror) being an awesome new Mail Girl and to Shudder for giving us this awesome gift that took many people back to their childhoods one more time.

Next: Joe Bob Briggs visits 1428 Elm

Did you catch The Last Drive In on Shudder? Tell us what you thought about Joe Bob’s return in the comments below!

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