In March, at NJ Horror Con and Film Festival, I met Joe Bob Briggs, who is an actor, writer, and the host of The Last Drive-In With Joe Bob Briggs on Shudder. For decades Joe Bob has been sharing his insightful film commentary and witticisms with millions of viewers. You might know him from TMC’s Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater or MonsterVision on TNT, which were popular programming in the 1980s and 1990s, or The Last Drive-In on Shudder, where he literally broke the internet in 2018. You might even know Joe Bob for his reviews of movies in the Dallas Herald Times in the early 1980s. Regardless of where or when you first discovered Joe Bob, he’s not the kind of person that you forget.
Being a wrestling fan who watched WCW Monday Nitro in the 1990s, I remember noticing MonsterVision on the same channel. I’m also a horror fan, and I signed up for Shudder a year or so ago because of my passion for the genre. When I saw that Joe Bob was making his big return and that it was taking place on Shudder, I made it a point to check it out. So many people wanted to watch the live marathon at the same time that it crippled Shudder’s servers for a limited period of time. The success of this farewell marathon by Joe Bob, hence the name The Last Drive-In, resulted in a couple holiday specials and a brand-new series which got renewed for a second season.