Hidden on the outskirts of town is a nether region, a place where mystery resides, a location so obscure and strange that one is tempted to call it the Twilight Zone. The area is tucked away within a seedy section of town best left unexplored. However, cars race by with their excited cinematic travelers, eager to drive through the Gates of Movie Hell. We dig a little deeper into the shadows, ponder the sights, ingest the sounds, eat a pizza slice or two, gulp a soda, catch some clips, and find that this isn’t exactly a foreign place at all, but instead, a friendly little gathering place we call the Rock ‘n’ Roll Drive-In.

Yes, an intriguing location, indeed, that is marked with an ‘X’ on our Flick map, this Drive-In has four screens with multiple features playing every night. At its central hub is a circular snack bar/munchies haven/hang out place for the ADD-addled, socially-minded sections of the crowd, and a key chill out locale for cats after a long week of dodging people, assignments, phone calls, text messages, and random responsibilities.

As usual, with most of these lingering outdoor joints, the double bills feature a weird blend, a marriage of celluloid opposites, but it is the music blaring from within the round snack bar that sets the right mood. It is someone’s mixed tape, a burned CD of favorites that veers from Elvis to Little Richard to the Clash, from the Ramones to Nirvana, from Neil Young to Wilco that nails the point home. Guitars, vocals and drums slash through the air, blended into a seamless noisey whole as Nachos, popcorn, Snickers, and ice cream are purchased and devoured while gazing at walls containing old movie posters—Night of the Living Dead rests in a sacred spot next to PHISH - IT, Rust Never Sleeps next to a Phantasm poster, and Pan’s Labyrinth is next to U2-3D imagery. Old school horror is associated with rock music, and that’s alright, mama, that’s alright with me. READ ON for more of this week’s Hidden Flick…

Examples of recent double, triple, and quadruple bills at this little adventurous location:

Grateful Dead Movie with Army of Darkness: This one seems geared towards stoners, fans of old school animation welded together with Sam Raimi’s bizarre vision, and those who find Jerry Garcia and Bruce Campbell to be from the same spacey smart ass cloth.

Stop Making Sense with The Devil’s Rejects: I have no idea how David Byrne is a match made in Drive-In Heaven with Rob Zombie but it works for me.

Woodstock with Tropic Thunder: EVERYBODY must get stoned (and shot at, and forced to watch Nick Nolte leap for a detonator, and Tom Cruise diss Barry Diller in fine fashion while Robert Downey Jr. taunts you into laughing at his ingenious Afro-Aussie).

A Bonnaroo montage of MMJ clips, and a small side dish of Jim James at the Newport Folk Festival with The Dark Knight: It was a choice and wet summer, eh?

Hellboy II with Black Label Society’s Doom Troopin’: Yo - Hell is for Biker Children.

Two episodes of Metalocalypse, Radiohead performing In Rainbows in its entirety, plus Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii: I’m not condoning the use of narcotics, but…

The Song Remains the Same with Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Sometimes, one needs to go back to The Well of Life, albeit with a wince at the cheese factor. “NEE!”

Fantasia with the Stones performing to thousands of confused hippies in Gimme Shelter: And sometimes, you need to ponder the chaotic beauty of Walt Jagger’s demonic art.

Help! With Saw: Just cause Drive-Ins can usually have strange family/slasher tandems…like Shrek with I Ate Your Girlfriend Last Night, or Wall-E with Sling Blade.

Head with Hostel: The Monkees rule in this psychedelic hoedown matched with a certain friendly horror tale about happy tourists losing their way.

Jailhouse Rock with The Strangers: The King and The Losers.

AC/DC–No Bull–Live in Madrid with 28 Days Later: No brainer beer & zombie run.

Sigur Ros-Heima with the original Scandinavian Insomnia: Nice Cold World theme.

Quadrophenia with Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas: Nice end-of-an-era theme.

Kanye West at the Roo with Plan 9 From Outer Space: Nice FUBAR theme.

The Last Waltz with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Fri, remake; Sat, original): Just to show how to end it all in fine fashion from two very different points of view.

They are strange cinematic pairings, but they seem appropriate at a place with an old, fading neon sign that advertised itself as the ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Drive-In’. Get in the car, stuff the trunk with brew, bros, babes, and blankets for sitting on the hood, turn left, head down the road until you hit The Fog, and see the other cars angling threw the gates, leading to the squadron of large screens. Gaggles of young dudes and dudettes and teen-crazed monkeys race from car to car, and then into the Food & Drink Zone to buy bad yet tasty snacks, gallons of soda, paper thin pizzas with red and brown simulated ‘food’, ice cream sandwiches, chocolate-coated whathaveya, and multiple film bills offering SHOCK HORROR RAWK. Yeppers—get out there and enjoy life as summer fades into fall in the dark theatre of your own little mash up of an imaginary Drive-In.