It was one year ago on July 13th that Shudder made the wise decision to bring legendary movie host Joe Bob Briggs onto their streaming service to host a 24 hour marathon of horror. The event was so popular that it crashed Shudder's servers, fans had a hell of a time trying to log in to watch it. That marathon was followed by two all-nighter marathons that coincided with Thanksgiving and Christmas, and this year Joe Bob officially got his own series again, hosting nine weeks of double features under the title The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs.
Shudder has (again, wisely) ordered a second season of The Last Drive-In, but while we wait to see what the future holds the streaming service will be taking a look back at where this working relationship began. That 24 hour marathon.
To mark the 1 year anniversary of the marathon, Shudder will be replaying the marathon for subscribers in the U.S. It has been available to watch in their archives, so fans who missed the original stream have had a chance to catch up with it at their convenience, but it's cool that Shudder will be running the whole thing again on their streaming channel. It's also cool that Joe Bob and Darcy the Mail Girl will be live tweeting throughout the event, providing commentary and interacting with fans.
The only downside to having a movie hosting show on a streaming service is that Shudder only gets the rights to show some of these movies for a certain amount of time. When that time period is up, the movie is removed from the service, just like with any streaming service – but if Joe Bob hosted the movie for his show, that episode of his show is removed, too. It's still a step up from the days when he was hosting shows on television, where an episode would air once and then be gone forever unless someone recorded it, it's just a bummer whenever any minute of Joe Bob goes away.
Due to streaming rights, the replay of the marathon will be three films shorter. In the last year, Shudder has had to remove THE PROWLER, DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS, and THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK from their service. But that still leaves ten movies for the marathon replay, which begins with an hourlong countdown this Saturday night, July 13th, at 7pm.
Here's the schedule:
7:00 pm – COUNTDOWN
8:00 pm – TOURIST TRAP
10:11 pm – SLEEPAWAY CAMP
12:13 am – RABID
2:14 am – SORORITY BABES IN THE SLIMEBALL BOWL-O-RAMA
4:03 am – BLOOD FEAST
5:48 am – BASKET CASE
7:41 am – RE-ANIMATOR
9:41 am – DEMONS
11:46 am – HELLRAISER
1:57 pm – PIECES
So even though it's three movies short, the replay will still offer the chance to watch some classics with Joe Bob hosting segments. And the Joe Bob hosting segments are what matter the most when tuning in for his shows. I see viewers complaining about the movie selection on his shows from time to time, and it's baffling to me. Sure, it's great when he hosts something awesome, but even if the movie is terrible it doesn't matter, I'm there to see his hosting segments. He has had to host some major stinkers in his day, but he is always entertaining.
I missed the marathon stream last year, so I'll have the stream running during this replay to make up for it.