Pandemic creates the oddest phenomena: here, for instance, is a British drive-in cinema. They exist for people who won’t go to a conventional cinema for fear of infection, which sounds like a film in itself. But that is the charm: attending a drive-in cinema feels like living inside a film, because every British drive-in cinema until now has failed.
It is an American invention, of course, and American cinema honours the drive-in with multiple appearances on film: in Grease (1978), where Danny jumps on Sandy as they watch a trailer for The Blob (1958); in Twister (1996), in which a tornado annihilates a drive-in cinema showing The Shining (1980); in Dead End Drive-In (1986), in which, in an apocalyptic future, drive-ins are designated concentration camps for social rejects: that is a tidy metaphor. It is no coincidence that the most popular film of the British drive-in phenomenon is Grease, which is a homage to the American car, and to the ability of American teenagers to have sex in it.
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