Mareeba Drive In

This Weekend at the Mareeba Drive-In… One Weekend Only.

Get ready for a wild double feature under the stars with Masters of the Universe and Anaconda screening this Friday & Saturday night only.

From epic fantasy battles to jungle chaos, this is the kind of big-screen combo the drive-in was made for.

Pack the car, grab dinner and choc tops from the café, and settle in for a huge night of retro fun and giant creature thrills.

Gates & Cafe open from 5:30pm
First movie starts at 6:45pm

Adults $14 | Concession $12 | Kids $8
One ticket gets you both movies.

See you under the FNQ night sky.

We’re excited to have live music from local favourites Aurelle and Left of Keno playing throughout the morning at the Mareeba Drive-In Car Boot Sale!

Come along for a great community morning while helping raise funds for the wonderful team at the Mareeba Animal Refuge

Browse for bargains, grab some breakfast from the cafe, enjoy the live music and soak up the atmosphere.

Car Boot Sale
Mareeba Drive-In Theatre
Sunday 7th June | 8am – 12pm

Face painting, live music, cafe open and plenty of hidden gems waiting to be found

Big day out at the Mareeba Drive-In today 🔨☀️

The rebuild of our outdoor sign is finally underway after it was destroyed earlier this year. The boys have spent the entire day working on the new structure and it’s nice to finally see it starting to take shape.

It’s not the original sign, but for many people it’s still become a familiar part of arriving at the drive-in over the years, so we’re looking forward to seeing the new one up soon.

Still plenty left to do, but here’s a little behind-the-scenes look at today’s progress.

We were so impressed with the turnout for our one-weekend-only screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was wonderful to see so many people come along to enjoy such an iconic cult classic on the big screen at the drive-in.

Following the screening, Maria, put together a piece titled ROCKY HORROR, WHAT TO WATCH NEXT and kindly allowed us to share it with you all. Maria is incredibly knowledgeable about film and has written a thoughtful and fun follow-up for anyone looking to continue the Rocky Horror vibe after the credits rolled.

We really enjoyed reading it and thought fellow movie lovers might too.

ROCKY HORROR, WHAT TO WATCH NEXT written by Maria Hutchison

Clue (Jonathan Lynn, 1985)
Do you dare to spend another night in a mansion with Tim Curry?
Yes, they made a movie out of the board game Cluedo. Yes, it’s surprisingly good. Yes, it isn’t just good good it’s actually quite terrific. Tim Curry is the butler – of course he is – who guides the various suspects/amateur detectives through a night of madcap murder mystery solving. The movie is written and directed by the co-creator of the Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, and the script while very silly is also whip smart. The skewering of the various cosy mystery character types is on point and grounding the proceedings in the paranoia of 1950s Washington is a bold and interesting choice that results some incredible punch lines as things wrap up – the final line in this is up there with the Barbie movie as something you’d never expect from something based on a product for children.

Streets of Fire (Walter Hill, 1984)
Would you like to know what movie the unfortunately departed Eddie might have walked in from into Frank’n’furters mansion? It exists!
Bookended by two absolute bangers penned by Meatloaf’s lyricist Jim Steinman, with some rockabilly, doo w*p and Stevie Nicks in between, Streets of Fire, “A Rock and Roll Fable” from “Another Time, Another Place,” plunges you into a wild neon drenched 50s inspired world of bikers and musicians. There are more exploding motorcycles than you can point a rifle at. There’s a club infiltration/gunfight set-piece that might be the second biggest influence on the John Wick movies after Hong Kong gun-fu movies. A very young Willem Dafoe steals the show as the villainous leader of the baddest gang on the block.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001)
The identity of a bitter tr*******al musician comes undone as she tours in the shadow of the younger rock-star she mentored. Of all the movies that seem to be angling to be the next Rocky Horror, this is the one that comes closest to the same transgressive good time, though it ultimately ends on a downer note – which is a product of the movie thinking it has a lot more to say about sexuality and gender vs Rocky Horror which thinks it’s all a lark. Still the costuming and production design are fabulous and Origin of Love, Wig in a Box, Wicked Little Town and Sugar Daddy are some of the best songs from any 2000s movie musical (And I think two of those actually eclipse anything on the Rocky Horror soundtrack, but argue amongst yourselves).

Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes, 1998)
A journalist (Christian Bale) looks back at the disappearance of the David Bowie-esque figure that rocked his world as a young adult. A meditation glam rock and what it may or may not have all amounted too told with all the theatricality, over the top looks and flights of fancy you want from something like this. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is tremendous as the Bowie-alike figure, but Ewan McGregor fresh off Trainspotting and before Moulin Rouge! is the showstopper as Curt Wild, the Iggy Pop/Lou Reed inspired musician who becomes his lover. And not only for the full-frontal n**e scene! The anguished version of Gimme Danger he belts out late in the film may be better than Iggy’s original.

Little Shop of Horrors (Frank Oz, 1986)
Like Rocky Horror Little Shop of Horrors is a love letter to the B-movies that were drive in fixtures back in the day. This one is a musical remake of film by prolific low-budget filmmaker and mega-director/producer Roger Corman, who made the cheap theatre market his niche… but this one thanks to director Frank Oz and the expertise he gained puppeteering and voicing the likes of Miss Piggy and Yoda gives you the goofy but convincing killer plant monster those movies rarely could. The songs are wall to wall terrific and if you love turn-of-the-90s Disney this is a must watch. For Composer Alan Menken and Lyricist Howard Ashman Little Shop served as a calling card to The Mouse. The two would go onto to create the magical tunes for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin.
The original Little Shop of Horrors (1960, directed by Corman himself), famously filmed in just two days, is something of a poster child for Corman’s get it out cheap and get it out quick model, but there’s some great stuff in his catalogue. The Masque of the Red Death (also personally directed by Corman) is one of the most purely fun and visually delightful horror films of the 60s, and being about a great decadent party hosted by a mad satanist sorcerer (Vincent Price) in a sprawling spooky castle has a lot to like for Rocky Horror fans. Targets (Peter Bogdanovich, 1968) asks what exactly you can get away with under the Corman system? Answer being, quite a bit. The movie is hybrid of a showbiz drama, featuring an aging monster movie actor (Boris Karloff, Universal’s original Frankenstein’s Monster) going about a normal day, and a pitch dark procedural thriller from the perspective of a spree shooter, all culminating with a bravura extended climax at a drive in.

Fame (Alan Parker, 1980)
Controversial opinion: there’s a wave of teen films released just prior to the John Hughs’s cycle (Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, Breakfast Club, Ferris Beuller’s Day Off) that are so much better.
These are: I Wanna Hold Your Hand (Robert Zemeckis, 1978), Fame (Alan Paker, 1980), Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Amy Heckerling, 1982), The Outsiders and Rumble Fish (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983) and Risky Business (Paul Brickman, 1983), with George Lucas’s American Graffiti (1973) as an honourable mention because it doesn’t fit the timeframe but is also the template that every post late 70s teen film builds on.
Preamble over, there’s a lengthy sequence in Fame where several of the attendees of the New York performing arts school the movie revolves around go to a midnight screening of Rocky Horror complete with floorshow and it’s magical.

Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972)
Cabaret tells the story of a young English arrival (Michael York) in 1930’s Berlin where he begins a relationship with the nightclub singer Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli, in a role that takes the darkest notes the actors were allowed to play in A Star is Born, her mother Judy Garland’s most complex film, and runs with them). To reel off the serious topics the films covers – sexual fluidity, infidelity, abortion and the ascent of Na**sm, and more – is to short charge how thrillingly (and chillingly) fun it is to watch in no small part due to Liza’s effervescence and the performance of Joel Grey – as something like Frank’n’Furter’s precursor – as the Master of Ceremonies at the nightclub the film returns to over and over again and how the musical numbers he introduces and participates in function as funhouse mirrors to a society outside that is slowly descending into hell. The film’s final shot leading into the silent credits remains one of cinema’s most brutal gut punches. We laugh – nervously maybe – and nod along to the music, until we don’t.
A compelling double feature to do is this film along with (Liza’s Dad’s) Vincente Minnelli’s Meet Me in St Louis (also starring Judy Garland) for how starkly different the two musicals are, with St Louis exemplifying the best version of a dominant kind of Hollywood production that persisted up until the late 60s.

The Muppet Show (1976 to 1981… to ?)
The original format, and the still their strongest format.
Like Rocky Horror, delightfully scrappy and anarchic, until you think about it for more than a minute and recognise the fiendish amount of craft that’s gone into making something that feels so tossed off.
That recent special with Sabrina Carpenter was marvellous and proves that there’s still a lot of life in the old variety show routine. I can’t be the only one hoping they make more.
But please, not only big celebrities for the human guests. One of the great charms of the original show is the murderers row of Musical Theatre Famous but not Famous Famous people who share the limelight with Kermit and crew, like Cabaret’s Joel Grey who swings by for the first episode to sing Willkommen (Welcome) with the ensemble and motivate Gonzo with Razzle Dazzle (from Chicago, another Fosse musical).

June at the Drive-In

The cooler weather has arrived and this is the perfect time of year for a night at the movies under the stars.

Most programs this month screen for ONE WEEKEND ONLY, before we roll into the school holiday season at the end of June.

Dinner, popcorn, choc tops, great movie weather and plenty coming up on the big screen

Take a look at what’s on this month 👇

BIG laughs are landing at the Mareeba Drive-In this weekend only.

Get ready for a comedy double that’s pure chaos under the stars with: Scary Movie 6 & The Naked Gun

Pack the car, grab your crew, and settle in for a night of outrageous laughs and the kind of movies that are just more fun at the drive-in.

And the fun keeps rolling into Sunday morning with our Car Boot Sale from 8am - 12pm.

Bargains & treasure hunting
Live music
Face painting
Café open for breakfast

One huge weekend at the drive-in.

Need to Know:• Gates & Café open from 5:30pm• First movie starts at 6:45pm• Adults $14 | Concession $12 | Kids $8• Buy tickets at the gate• FM sound through your car radio on 96.0

See you under the stars 🍿

ONE WEEKEND ONLY at the Mareeba Drive-In

The fashion chaos of The Devil Wears Prada 2 meets the wild cult energy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Friday 29 May & Saturday 30 May only.
Then they’re gone.