If you can sing along to “Let’s Do The Time Warp Again,” then this Friday is when to start. The starring track in the cult-classic Rocky Horror Picture Show is the perfect kickoff to this year’s “Fall Throwback Series” at the McHenry Outdoor Theater, where against all odds, owner Scott Dehn has kept the Hollywood-Meets-Motor-City tradition of drive-in theaters not just alive, but thriving.
Dehn joined the theater in 2003, and right off the bat, he found a way to put new life into the then-challenged venue. “We used to end the season in mid-August and close up,” Dehn says, “and I thought that was such a shame. The new releases in early fall were never very good, but the weather was still nice, so there had to be something we could do with that.”
To Dehn, the answer was obvious – take the drive-in’s nostalgia value and run with it. “I contacted the studios and got older films, and we figured we’d try it and see what happens… at worst, we just wouldn’t do it again.” But sure enough, he says, “the response was amazing! It was crazy, people would come dressed up, they’d be singing along when there was music… so we continued it, and expanded it, and a lot of people don’t come out all summer, they just come here for the throwbacks.”
And not just from the nearby city of McHenry, either – “we get a lot of people from Woodstock,” Dehn says. “It sounds silly, but one of the things I do is that before we clean up the lot, I’ll walk it and look at the garbage. I’ll get an idea of what kind of food people are bringing in, and you can also see where it came from. I’ll see pizza boxes from Antioch and all over the suburbs, and there are plenty of Napoli’s boxes from Woodstock in there too.”
But despite the drive-in’s popularity, it almost could have disappeared forever. When Dehn took the theater over in 2012, cinemas around the country had received an ultimatum: convert to digital projection as an industry-wide standard, or perish. Drive-ins, which have never been part of large theater chains, were especially hard hit – like many other owners, Dehn had no way to raise the $130,000 needed for the upgrade. But ironically for an icon of America’s classic-car culture, a Japanese auto company was there to help.
“Honda had a thing called Project Drive-In,” Dehn says. “They were awarding five digital projectors to the top voted theaters in the country, and we were in the top five. It basically saved the theater.” The next step: buying the land. According to Dehn, “A lot of the drive-ins that are seasonal, which is most of them, if they don’t own their property it’s getting sold out to developers. After we got the equipment, I told myself the next project had to be to secure the location. That way, we’ll be able to exist here no matter what.” Accomplishing that goal the next year in 2014, Dehn says that the McHenry Outdoor Theater is now as solid a business as any megaplex. Despite only 200 drive-ins remaining from a peak of 5500 in the mid ‘50s, he says “the ones that have survived, if they own the land they’re on and have digital projectors, they have a bright future.”
But without a doubt, the Throwback Series was a large part of what saved the theater – Dehn says that he hasn’t seen any other drive-ins with a similar program, despite its huge success at his own. Of course, showing a rerun of a Hollywood movie is much more complicated than just slapping a disc in a DVD player. “These movies go through ‘rights limbo’ every once in a while as they get swapped between studios,” Dehn says. “I could play Rocky Horror this year, but I couldn’t get the rights the last two years.” Especially troubling is media megagiant Disney, which Dehn says is “buying up just about everything… Disney doesn’t license out their old features, so Indiana Jones, Star Wars, those are all out, forget it.” Especially disappointing for this writer was hearing that Dehn tried and failed to show 1981’s hard-rock animated anthology Heavy Metal, which we both agree on as “the ultimate midnight drive-in movie” (incidentally including Groundhog Day director Harold Ramis in a bit part).
But still, there’s no shortage of good movies made before the 21st century, and this year Dehn has yet another fantastic fall lineup. Starting at 8:00 pm (and earlier as the season gets darker), this Friday and Saturday the 31st and 1st will open with fun-for-all-ages musical Grease, followed on both nights by fun-for-most-ages musical Rocky Horror Picture Show (Dehn encourages props, costumes, and group riffing in front of the concessions stand – “it’s just as important as the movie itself”). September 7th and 8th is “Kenny Loggins” weekend, featuring Caddyshack (“I’m Alright”) and Top Gun (“Danger Zone”) (and, “Playing With The Boys”). September 14th and 15th will feature The Sandlot and Field of Dreams, followed by Tim Burton and Richard Donner’s Batman and Superman on the 21st and 22nd, and the original Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th on the 28th and 29th. As with last year, Dehn will show new releases in October – Venom and The Predator the weekend of the 5th, and the new and original Halloween the weekend of the 19th – with a still-undetermined Classic Horror night before Hallow’s Eve itself. As always, both movies are shown each night as a double feature that can be seen for one $12 ticket (half price for kids 11 and under, and for seniors and military).
While owning other theaters under the Golden Age Cinemas name, including the classic Libertyville two-screen and the McHenry Downtown Theater (reopened this year alongside D.C. Cobbs’ new McHenry location), the McHenry Outdoor Theater is Dehn’s passion project. Taking part not just in preserving, but in bringing to life a theater that’s been open and operating every year since the end of World War Two, Dehn says he has no regrets about the blood, sweat and tears he’s put into it. “I’m stuck here,” he says, “but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.” The McHenry Outdoor Theater can be reached in twenty minutes from Woodstock by following route 120, and taking a left on Chapel Hill Road after crossing the Fox river.
Willcockson Wordsmithing 