Back in June, we got pretty excited when Allen Theaters decided to put together a makeshift drive-in theater in Farmington. That drive-in is still going strong – and it has since moved into the parking lot of the Allen 8 theater itself on East 20th Street.
If you live on the Colorado side of the state line, guess what … Durango is getting a temporary drive-in, too. Finally.
It’s located in the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad parking lot at 209 W. College Drive and is planned to last from Aug. 27 through Sept. 20. Unlike the one in Farmington, it’s not organized by the regional cinema company.
Tickets are available online at www.durangodrivein.com and have to be purchased in advance. Admission costs $39.95 for one vehicle with up to six passengers or two motorcycles with up to four passengers. As far as an individual car goes, that’s almost double what they’re charging down in New Mexico, but it comes with a bag of popcorn, a theater-size box of Peanut Butter M&Ms, 7 oz. Twizzlers and two 20 oz. Cokes, Diet Cokes, Sprites or Dasanis. Other concessions are also available there or online.
The gate opens at 7 p.m., movies start at 8 p.m. and the schedule is as follows: Aug. 27, “Breakfast Club”; Aug. 28, “Jurassic Park”; Aug. 29, “Wayne’s World”; Aug. 30, “Dirty Dancing”; Sept. 3, “Dazed And Confused”; Sept. 4, “Why We Ride”; Sept. 5, “Easy Rider”; Sept. 6, “The Big Lebowski”; Sept. 10, “Mama Mia!”; Sept. 11, “Tombstone”; Sept. 12, “Grease”; Sept. 13, “The Karate Kid”; Sept. 17, “Creature From The Black Lagoon”; Sept. 18, “Groundhog Day”; Sept. 19, “Steel Magnolias”; and Sept. 20: “Beetlejuice.”
As far as we can tell, tickets are selling like hotcakes (which you could actually cook or get to-go from a local eatery to supplement your 7 oz Twizzlers – you haven’t really seen “Dirty Dancing” until you’ve seen it with a stack of syrupy pancakes) so it’s better not to wait until the last minute.
If anyone out there organizing these things, can we recommend a movie? The 1996 Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton disaster flick “Twister.”
Like “Grease,” it would have a cool meta scene that takes place at a drive-in (in “Grease,” the movie playing is The Blob; in “Twister,” it’s “The Shining” — speaking of which, second movie recommendation …). Twister’s scene is 100% better because instead of Olivia Newton-John slamming John Travolta’s junk in a car door, a tornado nearly kills everyone.
Think about it, movie organizers.
Nick Gonzales
