While Disney’s Hollywood Studios is currently experiencing a transformation that leave many
questioning if the park is due for a new theme, there are still plenty of elements that tie
into its original focus, which is the world of Hollywood and movies.
One of those elements is the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant.
It transports guests back to the golden age of drive-in movie theaters and features a
47-minute long reel that plays on the big screen which includes film trailers, newsreels,
and animated shorts.
Today we’re going to look at the history of drive-ins, as well as some of the very
real sci-fi movies that play at the Sci-Fi Dine-In restaurant.
While the Sci-Fi Dine-In is modeled after the prime era of drive-ins during the 1950’s,
the concept of Drive-In theaters itself dates back nearly 20 years earlier to 1933.
A man named Richard Hollingshead Jr from Camden, New Jersey was working for his father’s
company, Whiz Auto Products when he had an idea.
Now some sources online claim that Richard was trying to think of a more comfortable
movie-going experience for his mother when he came up with the idea of a drive-in theater.
However there are more business-centric roots to this idea.
Believing that credit was a liability to his father’s company, Richard looked for new
ideas that dealt in cash.
His initial idea was to create deluxe tiki themed gas stations complete with a restaurant
and films.
It’d be a place for drivers to service their cars, fill their tanks, and meet other people.
Cause you know, that's what you're looking to do when you go to the gas station... grab a meal
and meet other people.
At the same time the stock market had crashed just four years prior, and the country was
in the middle of the great depression.
However even with economic woes, Richard noticed that many people still made a priority out
of going to the movies.
It offered an escape at an affordable price during a time where reality was especially grim.
So when the deluxe gas station idea was trimmed down, it was the movie concept that stuck around.
Hollingshead felt that the added comfort of getting to stay in your car would be appealing
to movie going audiences.
You wouldn’t have to get all dressed up for a night out.
After some experimenting in his home driveway, Hollingshead filed a patent for the drive-in
theater and expanded it into its own standalone company when he formed Park-In Theaters Inc.
To keep it short, the following 16 years would be both successful and litigious for Hollingshead.
He managed to build a company out of drive-ins and licensed out the idea to others across
the country, however he began to find it increasingly difficult to enforce the patent against those
who simply refused to pay for the license.
In 1949 the first circuit court of appeals ruled, 3-0, that the original patent was invalid
as the concept wasn’t something that could be patented to begin with.
According to the judges, the idea lacked invention and was just a natural adaptation to the way
most theaters in the world are laid out.
This meant that the concept of a drive-in theater was fair game, and with the post-WWII
economic, industrial, and baby booms occurring, it meant that the country was primed for the
growth of drive-ins.
More and more people were owning their own cars, and they wanted to drive their new cars,
and they wanted to see new films, and teenagers on dates wanted some sense of privacy.
It offered a novel experience that the television industry, which was budding at the time, couldn’t reproduce.
And so at its peak, it was estimated that there were nearly 4,100 drive-in theaters
across the country.
However drive-ins still played second fiddle to the more ubiquitous traditional movie theater.
So even with their growth in popularity many drive-ins were showing second or third run
films rather than the big motion pictures premiering at the time.
Now at the same time this was all happening there was a movement in the film industry.
Science fiction films were nothing new, in fact they dated back to the early days of
cinema with films like George Melies’ A Trip to the Moon.
However with the introduction of atomic weaponry at the end of World War 2, and the start of
the Cold War after World War 2, science fiction found itself growing in popularity.
1951’s The Day The Earth Stood Still was a great example.
It was a creative outlet for the anxiety that the public was beginning to feel about cold
war tensions and the impact a potential atomic or nuclear war would have on not just the
country, but the world.
More importantly, it was a creative outlet that performed well at the box office, grossing
nearly $1.9 million dollars that year against a $900,000 budget.
And if there is one constant when it comes to Hollywood, it’s that when something does
well, you can be sure to expect a bunch of copycats.
The 1950’s saw an increase in sci-fi films, some of which were good and many of which weren't.
And while they did grow in popularity, they weren’t taking the spotlight quite yet.
That cultural shift would take a little bit longer.
So often times they would be added on as the second film in a double feature, otherwise
known as the b-movies.
So now you have drive-ins, growing in popularity but still playing less prestigious films and you also have
sci-fi movies, growing in popularity but still taking a backseat to more mainstream titles.
You put the two together and suddenly sci-fi b-movies start to find a home at drive-in theaters.
The Sci-Fi Dine In Theater Restaurant at Hollywood Studios features many sci-fi films from the
era, and while most don’t really deserve a full-blown look into its history, here are some fun facts
for the next time you’re dining in at the restaurant and spot some of these films on the big screen.
1954’s Devil Girl from Mars, directed by David MacDonald was allegedly written and
filmed in just 10 days.
It follows the tale of a group of people at a Scottish inn as a Martian lands on Earth
to kidnap men for her home planet.
As the story goes the producers, the Danziger brothers, booked studio space to film 26 episodes
of a series called Mayfair Mysteries.
According to screenwriter John Mather, the production wrapped up ten days early, and
with the rest of the studio use already paid for, he was tasked by the producers with writing
a sci-fi film to shoot in the remaining time.
That would become Devil Girl from Mars.
As I said earlier, copycatting was not rare back in these days.
Then again, I guess it’s not rare today either.
1957’s The Amazing Colossal Man, directed by Bert Gordon, was a cash-in on that same
year’s The Incredible Shrinking Man.
In a reversal of The Incredible Shrinking Man, Colossal Man is about Glenn Manning,
a Lt. Colonel who is exposed to the radiation of an atomic bomb test and begins to grow uncontrollably.
It, too, was filmed over a period of just ten days.
The following year director Nathan Juran would try to cash-in on The Amazing Colossal Man
and made a film that was originally titled The Astounding Giant Woman.
It was renamed before it premiered to Attack of the 50 Ft Woman and managed to beat both
Devil Girl and Colossal Man’s feat by being filmed in just 8 days.
I'm starting to see a link here between rushed shooting schedules and quality.
Robot Monster, released in 1953, was filmed in just four days around Bronson Canyon in California.
It’s most notable for the fact that the robot monster was ultimately just a giant
gorilla suit with a sci-fi helmet.
The director, Phil Tucker, claims that while the film was budgeted at $50,000, he only
really had $16,000 to make the film.
It was said that the relationship between Tucker and the financiers of the film ended
up so tense and poor that Tucker wasn’t allowed to see the final film at the premiere.
He had to buy a ticket like everyone else.
The Horror of Party Beach, released in 1964, was part of a double-feature by director Del Tenny.
His grouped it with a film called Curse of the Living Corpse, and managed to earn $1
million off the pair.
My favorite quote from Tenny, said years later, was "People ask me how I can admit that I
made these bad movies. I just tell them that I cried all the way to the bank."
And of course, it’d be impossible to talk about the films of the Sci-Fi Dine In Theater
reel without talking about Plan 9.
Jerry: Just a movie? You don't understand!
This isn't plans one through eight from outer space. This is plan nine! This is the one that worked!
The WORST movie ever made!
Arguably director Ed Wood’s most famous film, 1958’s Plan 9 From Outer Space is
often cited as one of the worst movies of all time.
The movie “stars” silent film era actor Bela Lugosi, who was most famous for playing Dracula.
However Lugosi passed away with only just a few minutes of footage shot, and so most
of the film features a body double who uses their cape to hide their face.
There are a ton of resources on the famous “so bad it’s good” sci-fi film, including
Tim Burton’s 1994 film, Ed Wood, which chronicled the career of the director.
The 1950’s was an era in which the way we consumed films, and the films we consumed
were reflective of the world we lived in.
Sure there are still some drive-ins today and there is no shortage of low quality sci-fi,
but there will never quite be a time like that era that the Sci-Fi Dine In Theater transports us to.