Bury Me At Camp Blood

The 2009 remake of Friday the 13th is, by most conceivable metrics, a bad movie. Cacophonous, slapdash, and dutifully uninspired in its pursuit of tits and guts, the movie is a chore even in the forgiving eyes of horror gorehounds. But on the southwestern edge of Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, on the giant screen of The Mahoning Drive-In—the largest still showing movies on 35mm film—it’s intoxicating. Not because of some magical idyllic drive-in experience, but for the deep, strange siren song of this drive-in, and the Gathering of the Juggalos–esque events it hosts every year. There are lawn games, costume contests, and raffles. People pitch tents and set up campers, they unfold card tables and have potlucks, spread out blankets and camp chairs and spooky lamps to make it easy for friends to find them in the dark between movies. Almost everyone here is from somewhere else, and none of them care how bad the movie is. They like the movies, sure, but they love The Mahoning.

People are lured to this place. That’s how most encounter it—someone brings you, serves as a guide, an evangelist. Something makes visitors want to share it with others immediately, in no small part thanks to the spectacle of events like Camp Blood, an annual celebration of slasher movies. This is my third Camp Blood; I first came here because a friend brought me, and this time I want to know how others found their way to this unremarkable patch of the Poconos. I speak to a gaggle of friends, many of which are connected by a man from New Hampshire named Keith. He united a bunch of movie fans from Boston and Ohio and inspired them to make the long drive down to Lehighton for the Mahoning. I was eager to meet Keith, but unfortunately, he was busy mainlining another triple feature at another repertory house, The Gap Theatre in Wind Gap, Penn., a 48-minute drive from the triple feature that began here at sunset.

“[Keith] was like, ‘the programming at this drive-in is incredible,” one of the friends, a man named Desmond, tells me. “And then one year I had to go because they played The Valley of Gwangi, which is a dinosaur movie I’m quite fond of from the ’60s … that got me out here, and it’s the first drive-in I’ve ever been to.”