Movies

B-movie legend Joe Bob Briggs scares up campy holiday fun in Houston

The legendary B-movie buff will host a fun movie screening.

Photo courtesy of Joe Bob Briggs

When Dallas-born newspaperman John Bloom adopted the persona of redneck, Western-wearing movie critic Joe Bob Briggs more than 30 years ago — writing proudly un-P.C. reviews of B-movies and exploitation movies that would get syndicated in papers across the country — one thing he didn’t expect to do was bring families together.

But that’s exactly what he did when he started hosting the popular, long-running Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater on The Movie Channel back in the ’80s. “It’s remarkable how many people tell me that they watched it in family units like that,” says a giggling Bloom/Briggs, 65, tells CultureMap. “You know, that it was a unifying thing with their dad or their uncle or their brother or their sister.”

Through championing and showing films that mostly traffficked in his love of the three B’s — blood, breasts and beasts — Briggs not only became a familiar face on many families’ living-room TV. He also became an influential figure in the film world — the Pauline Kael of the drive-in/grindhouse circuit, if you will.

If it wasn’t for Briggs, we wouldn’t have art houses programming screenings of cult films and midnight movies, exploitation-friendly film festivals like Austin’s Fantastic Fest and film critics who aren’t afraid to show love to entertaining genre films. (You could also say that Briggs is responsible for all the rabid fanboys who go nuts on the Internet whenever someone doesn’t care for a popcorn picture they like — but let’s not completely blame those psychos on him.)

Briggs is proud that cult films and B-movies are no longer held in low regard. “When I first started reviewing these films, I was the only guy reviewing these films,” he remembers. “For the most part, I was the only guy writing weekly, on a regular basis about — and we didn’t call them genre films; we called them exploitation films. They were considered disposable. They were considered trash. People didn’t even keep the prints. The mainstream media didn’t review them at all. And, so, it’s good that many of these films were sort of rescued from oblivion, because nobody really wanted to give them any attention.

“So, it’s a good thing that now, when one of them comes out, there are a thousand reviews of them on the Internet the next day.” He giggles again. “Because it means, at least, they get a fair shake in the marketplace. Maybe they’re only gonna be on Netflix for three months or something. But, at least, people are aware of them.”

Another streaming platform these films could go to is the horror/thriller service Shudder. These days, that’s where you can find Briggs, once again introducing classic, old-school, drive-in movies. It began when he hosted the 24-hour movie marathon The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs over the summer, which caused many servers at Shudder to break down due to fans clamoring online to see Briggs again. “Everyone got kicked off the system,” he says. “We not only shut down the Shudder servers, we shut down the Sundance Channel servers. I don’t know how they were connected.” (Shudder is owned and operated by AMC Networks, which also owns SundanceTV.)

Briggs just got through hosting a Thanksgiving marathon on the service, which means a Christmas marathon — titled “A Very Joe Bob Christmas” — is right around the corner on December 21. (A weekly series is coming in 2019.) He’ll also be having a yuletide celebration right here in Houston, hosting a holiday-themed double feature at Alamo Drafthouse LaCenterra on December 14.

The event starts with the 1974 slasher flick Black Christmas (which is already sold out), followed by the 1977 Satanic thriller The Sentinel, which Briggs calls “the lesser-known of the Catholic-themed horror movies of the ’70s.” “You can do things at Alamo that you can’t do anywhere else,” he says, “because they have that audience that sort of hunger for cult films and films that are out of the mainstream.”

So, don’t be surprised if you see whole families attending these films, as Joe Bob Briggs once again gives them some blood and gore to bond over.

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The Graveyard Shift: The Sentinel with Joe Bob Briggs Live! runs Friday, December 14, at Alamo Drafthouse LaCenterra, 2707 Commercial Center Blvd., Suite K-100. Showtime is 10 pm. Tickets are $25.48.

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Movie Review

Star TV producer James L. Brooks stumbles with meandering movie Ella McCay

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Emma Mackey in Ella McCay.

The impact that writer/director/producer James L. Brooks has made on Hollywood cannot be understated. The 85-year-old created The Mary Tyler Moore Show, personally won three Oscars for Terms of Endearment, and was one of the driving forces behind The Simpsons, among many other credits. Now, 15 years after his last movie, he’s back in the directing chair with Ella McCay.

The similarly-named Emma Mackey plays Ella, a 34-year-old lieutenant governor of an unnamed state in 2008 who’s on the verge of becoming governor when Governor Bill (Albert Brooks) gets picked to be a member of the president’s Cabinet. What should be a happy time is sullied by her needy husband, Ryan (Jack Lowden), her agoraphobic brother, Casey (Spike Fearn), and her perpetually-cheating father, Eddie (Woody Harrelson).

Despite the trio of men competing to bring her down, Ella remains an unapologetic optimist, an attitude bolstered by her aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), her assistant Estelle (Julie Kavner), and her police escort, Trooper Nash (Kumail Nanjiani). The film follows her over a few days as she navigates the perils of governing, the distractions her family brings, and the expectations being thrust upon her by many different people.

Brooks, who wrote and directed the film, is all over the place with his storytelling. What at first seems to be a straightforward story about Ella and her various issues soon starts meandering into areas that, while related to Ella, don’t make the film better. Prime among them are her brother and father, who are given a relatively small amount of screentime in comparison to the importance they have in her life. This is compounded by a confounding subplot in which Casey tries to win back his girlfriend, Susan (Ayo Edebiri).

Then there’s the whole political side of the story, which never finds its focus and is stuck in the past. Though it’s never stated explicitly, Ella and Governor Bill appear to be Democrats, especially given a signature program Ella pushes to help mothers in need. But if Brooks was trying to provide an antidote to the current real world politics, he doesn’t succeed, as Ella’s full goals are never clear. He also inexplicably shows her boring her fellow lawmakers to tears, a strange trait to give the person for whom the audience is supposed to be rooting.

What saves the movie from being an all-out train wreck is the performances of Mackey and Curtis. Mackey, best known for the Netflix show Sex Education, has an assured confidence to her that keeps the character interesting and likable even when the story goes downhill. Curtis, who has tended to go over-the-top with her roles in recent years, tones it down, offering a warm place of comfort for Ella to turn to when she needs it. The two complement each other very well and are the best parts of the movie by far.

Brooks puts much more effort into his female actors, including Kavner, who, even though she serves as an unnecessary narrator, gets most of the best laugh lines in the film. Harrelson is capable of playing a great cad, but his character here isn’t fleshed out enough. Fearn is super annoying in his role, and Lowden isn’t much better, although that could be mostly due to what his character is called to do. Were it not for the always-great Brooks and Nanjiani, the movie might be devoid of good male performances.

Brooks has made many great TV shows and movies in his 60+ year career, but Ella McCay is a far cry from his best. The only positive that comes out of it is the boosting of Mackey, who proves herself capable of not only leading a film, but also elevating one that would otherwise be a slog to get through.

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Ella McCay opens in theaters on December 12.

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