Yes I did. The first movie I ever went to as a small child was in my uncle's convertible, watching the movie "The Greatest Show on Earth." I remember being traumatized by the guy falling off the trapeze and the horrible train wreck. I also remember seeing the much more child-friendly "Dumbo" at a drive-in as a small child.

Much later, when I was in college in the early seventies, a fun date was at the drive-in where we saw Lee Marvin, Rod Steiger, and James Coburn in Duck, You Sucker! _ (Sometimes also called _A Fistful of Dynamite.)

We still have two drive-in cinemas in Melbourne, one of which has operated continuously since it opened in 1961. It's been many years since we've gone to a film at the drive-in though - I think the last time was in the 1990s. Maybe we should go again soon!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_…

@Cass I saw RHPS 26 weeks in a row at one point, midnight Saturday shows at the Biograph theater in Richmond, VA.

Let's do the Time Warp again, indeed.

Thank you @Christoph!

😊 🎂

Only time we saw movies that were not on TV when I was a Kid was the Drive in during the summer months. My dad's company shut down the operations floor for re-tool for 6 weeks each year and that's when he had free time for things with the family... the rest of the year he was up at 4:30 AM to do breakfast and walk to work and would be home for dinner and asleep by 7:30 at night.

I didn't see a movie in a theater (except for a single class trip in Middle school) until I had moved out after High School.

My only experience of drive-in cinemas (and the semi-connected drive-through restaurant) while young was as an part of certain genres of film set in the US. Prodding the internet, this absence seems to match the rest of the UK.

They do exist now in the UK now, promoting that greatest of nostalgias: the hankering for a past that never happened and so cannot be tainted by the ambivalent comfort of reality.

The big whoopdeedoo local drive-in (famous for all-nighters—still open, but more normal hours these days) was on my dad's post. He would pull in there and sleep on third shift. I never watched a movie there, despite dating a fellow who lived a few blocks down the street. Lack of a car may have played a part in that 😏

Ex (not the same guy—I'm still friendly with the other one) and I went to the other local drive-in a few times. I don't recall ever doing the stereotypical drive-in date thing, despite Ex being a major horndog. We did fire up a few times tho 🥴 Unlike the big whoopdeedoo drive-in, it closed and fell into disrepair. Dad used to frequent the diner straight across the highway from it. The proprietor said it was pretty loud each time a screen collapsed. A construction company or some such used the land for a while. A redevelopment proposal was floated some years ago—I wonder if it ever got done.

That was all on the east side of town. The drive-in on the west side of town was already closed by the time I moved there. It became an orange fascist big-box store. The drive-in had been a bowl shape, which made for fun construction.

Speaking of bowl-shaped... here in FL, we passed one such bowl on the way up to UF with doggo. Looked it up—it was hanging on by a thread, hosting a flea market on the weekends. They had dabbled in pornos at one point, which was kind of surprising considering that at least one screen was visible from the main drag!