The weather in Memphis couldn’t be more perfect, and Saturday night at the Malco Summer Drive-In you can spend a night under the stars with some summer movie season classics. Black Lodge’s Time Warp Drive-In celebrates May with Suburban Dreams: The ’80s Kids Adventure Films.
First on the list is the greatest of the bunch, and a perfect film. After Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind became an unexpectedly huge hit in 1977, he envisioned a sequel under the working title Watch the Skies. Based on an infamous UFO sighting from Kentucky, in which a Hopkinsville family claimed their farm was terrorized by aliens, the project got as far as a screenplay by Brother From Another Planet director John Sayles before Spielberg ditched the overt horror elements. Screenwriter Melissa Matheson came up with the line “E.T. phone home,” which became the jumping-off point for a new story of an alien who is accidentally left behind by a UFO. He (they?) are discovered hiding in a backyard shed by Elliott (Henry Thomas), a 10-year-old suburban kid whose family is in the midst of a painful divorce. With his older brother Michael (Robert MacNaughton) and younger sister Gertie (Drew Barrymore, in a star-making role) Elliott tries to evade government scientists led by Peter Coyote (known only as “Keys”) and help E.T. rendezvous with a rescue ship.
E.T. is Spielberg at his most manipulative, and I mean that as a compliment. It is, strangely enough, an autobiographical story: E.T. was inspired by Spielberg’s imaginary friend who helped him get through his own parent’s divorce. Released in 1982, it held the title of highest-grossing film in history for eight years until another Spielberg film, Jurassic Park, displaced it at the top. It was also the first film as a producer for Kathleen Kennedy, the current head of Lucasfilm. In hindsight, what’s most remarkable about the story is its commitment to staying entirely within the secret world of kids, as you can see from this clip featuring a hopelessly endearing performance by a 7-year-old Drew Barrymore.
The logo of Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment comes from E.T. and Elliott’s famous nighttime bicycle flight. The second film of the night is another Amblin production, this one from 1985. The Goonies started life as a story Spielberg came up with, then passed on to director Richard Donner, pioneering director of the 1978 Superman. A group of misfit kids from the poor neighborhood of Astoria, Oregon, find a map to pirate treasure and race through an escalating series of Indiana Jones-inspired situations to save their families from eviction. Starring the future Samwise Gamgee Sean Austin and Josh Brolin in early roles, The Goonies is an irreverent, hyperactive adventure that has attracted a cult following over the years. Austin would later go on to star in the Goonies-inspired Netflix series Stranger Things.
The third and final film of the evening came out the same year as The Goonies. Proof of E.T.‘s long shadow, the story of Joe Dante’s Explorers is kind of the reverse of its inspiration. Instead of an alien coming down to Earth and secretly befriending kids, it’s a group of kids building a spaceship and flying up to meet the aliens. The best part of the film is the cast: It’s the debut film for both Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix, who are both terrific.
The Time Warp Drive-In films start at dusk, around 7:45 p.m. They will be preceded by a performance by The Becomers, a band whose members range in age from 7 to 12 years old. Admission is $25 per car, so bring the family for a night of impeccable entertainment.
