by Johnny Martyr & James V. Mignogna
While seeking a publisher for this article, owner and operator of the Mahoning Drive-In, Jeff Mattox passed away on April 13th, 2024 at age 65. We dedicate these words and photos to you, Jeff. Thank you for casting your magic across the screen.
Cars have been parking at the Mahoning Drive-In in Lehighton, Pennsylvania since 1949. Back then, Mahoning was unremarkable; it was just one of many places to watch mainstream 35mm films flicker across a hundred foot screen from the comfort of your family sedan. By the late 1950’s, there were over 4,000 drive-in movie theaters across the United States.
This iconic mid-century pastime has all but disappeared though, with only about 300 drive-in theaters remaining. Of these, the once forgotten Mahoning now holds the distinction of being the only drive-in theater in North America that still projects 35mm film continuously.
Looking for something to do one weekend, photographer James V. Mignogna and his horror fan cronies found out that that the Mahoning Drive-In wasn’t too far away. It would be a fateful visit, on which, he had this to say:
“My experience was probably pretty similar to other people who discover the Mahoning. First, I was taken by how this place seemed trapped in amber. There was little about it that seemed to have kept up with the times. I didn’t grow up going to drive-ins, but it felt like stepping back into my childhood. With the exception of the cars, it could well have been the 70s… could have even been the 50s for that matter. Everything seemed in place, and yet out of time.”
James told me that “it was the people and access that surprised me. Everyone was so friendly and welcoming. I was fairly astonished to find that I was welcome to come into the projection room. Filled with posters and tchotchkes, not to mention the dual Simplex projectors from 1948, it is palpably the heart of the place.”
At risk of losing the profit-driving ability to screen first-run movies, other drive-ins were forced to trade in their clackety old film projectors for ominously silent DLP models. Armed with vintage projectors, Mahoning has turned their liability into a strength and embraced less regulated but adamantly adored cult classics which attract film enthusiasts from across the country.
Mignogna remembers a key moment. “When I saw Jeff [Mattox], the owner and master projectionist, swapping out reels of that 35mm film, reel after reel of it, deftly looping it through the gears of the gate… I was instantly under the spell of the Mahoning.”
The melding of medium and message is often the charm of low/no budget flicks. The seminal George Romero zombie movie, Night of the Living Dead was filmed in black and white and leans on local news broadcasts to advance its plot. Budget-driven choices like these contribute to the sense of realness of the otherwise unbelievable zombie uprising. Clever use of resources is exactly why decidedly anti-Hollywood movies both fit and fan the ethos of the Mahoning.
Rare screenings of original 35mm prints routinely garner the attention of wildly costumed enthusiasts and real cult heroes who have turned the drive-in into a veritable, and sometimes a literal, festival.
“I’ve met a lot of people there… Linnea Quigley (Trash from Return of the Living Dead), Gaylen Ross and Scott Reiniger (Fran and Rodger from Dawn of the Dead) Felissa Rose (Angela from Sleepaway Camp), Lynn Lowry (I Drink Your Blood), Ed Neal (the hitchhiker from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) Bruce Campbell, Joe Bob Briggs, Lloyd Kaufman, and so many others you would need a pope to top them.”
“Fortunately, the [William S. Burroughs anointed] ‘Pope of Trash’ was not only having all of my favorite of his films shown at the recent John Waters Filthy Film Festival, but he would be in attendance himself.”
On meeting and photographing Pink Flamingos director, John Waters, James Mignogna told me that “Mr. Waters is the truest personification of counterculture, a cycle so complete he has made it back around to establishment and out the other end. His effortless grace untouched by “the filth,” or perhaps made more perfect by it. His career seems improbable and so, where better to be than at this improbable place, surrounded by we merry freaks that he seems to attract like moths to his brilliance.”
Indeed, the lamps of the 35mm projectors themselves are also an attraction.
The photographer opened up more about his experience. “As I trolled the crowd, eye to the frame of my Leica M2, I realized I was just like the tourists of Mortville, in perhaps my favorite of Mr. Waters’ films, Desperate Living, photographing the degradation. In fact, from Donald Dasher’s crime beauty art fix in Female Trouble to the titular Pecker, a photographer that every photographer can relate to, John Water’s films have always featured us weirdos with cameras seeking to record, process, revel in and make sense of the perverse world around us. In a way, I think there is a bit of him in every one of those characters. At least this is what I told myself when it was my turn to get a picture with him.”
“As I met [John Waters], complimenting him on his impeccable fashion and raising my Leica M2 up to my eye, I thought ‘I’m just like him for 1/125 of a second, he knows I’m shooting film, he sees who I am, he will approve.’ Through the finder I saw the legend, smile. Snapping the backlit shot, I said a little prayer that I’d accommodated correctly for the exposure.”
This is the point in the article where I was going to summarize the beauty of the Mahoning Drive-In and the way that life imitates art at this unlikely haven for cinema, but James Mignogna’s ode seems so much more fitting.
“I guess it’s that way with any seemingly superfluous passion. When you get enough of these people together with hearts facing the same direction, we form a kind of congregation. Here was the church of the perverse. Ironic to post ironic and back again, we gathered [at the Mahoning Drive-In] to celebrate celluloid and venerate culture. That grand cinemascope screen is the Cathedral Mahoning, Mr. Waters the evening’s Pope of Filth, and we the faithful who have come together to survive what others would tell us are passé, obsolete or out of vogue.”
“Oh contraire, Hon. In an age where culture is parsed by algorithm, and the soul of human endeavor and creation increasingly outsourced to artificial intelligence, we are the antidote of authenticity. The survival of culture is no less than the survival of the human spirit, and that, along with Mr. Waters inveterate wit and all the ships at sea still producing film and chemistry for us to write down this kinky world, is and remains, very au courant my darlings.”
If you find yourself wandering the backroads of Pennsylvania, be sure and stop by the Mahoning and be a part of the art.
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