Oceanside Drive-In Is Thriving While Others Fail

Sometimes late at night, after all the movies have ended and most of the cars have driven out, Jerry Beauchamp has to wake people up. He peers into the window of an El Camino or a flatbed truck and shouts. The reactions he gets are varied and emotional and often memorable--much like the movies themselves.

“People,” he said with a sigh. “Some are angry, some are scared, some are profusely apologetic. I’ve seen other things too.”

Occasionally, Beauchamp disturbs people in various states of romantic repose. Their reactions are also varied, emotional and memorable but usually in the context of one main feeling:

Embarrassment.

Beauchamp, 32, just shrugged and laughed. He’s laughing a lot these days and rarely feels embarrassed. Box-office sales at the Valley 4 Drive-In Theatre in Oceanside are hardly a laughing matter, unless it’s a giggle mixed with a jump for joy.

While drive-in theaters across America are flopping faster than Madonna’s movies, the Valley 4--which Beauchamp manages--is thriving. On a recent $4-a-car night, the four-screen lot played host to what Beauchamp figured were between 800 and 1,200 cars.

Camp Pendleton helps a lot. Much of the clientele settling in for “RoboCop” and “Full Metal Jacket” were Marines and their families. High school kids thrilled to be dating were lined up, car by Japanese car, for a beach movie bringing back Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello.

The night was overcast and misty enough to cloud eyeglasses but no one seemed to mind--least of all Beauchamp.

“We’re the only drive-in in North County,” he said. “The nearest one is the Harbor in National City. We pull in people for miles around. You can bring a whole family in here, and it don’t matter if you talk, and a carload of folks can pile in for $4 (on Wednesday and Thursday nights). In my book, that’s some kind of entertainment bonanza.”

Television Has Helped

It hasn’t been overlooked. For some strange reason, Beauchamp said “the video revolution” has actually increased business.

“I suppose people are waking up to movies again,” he said.

And to more traditional forms of seeing them. With almost every parking space filled, husbands, wives, brothers and sisters spread out over blankets or reclined in lawn chairs or hunkered down in the backs of pickup trucks. Buckets which had held Kentucky Fried Chicken and used Burger King wrappers were tossed aside, mingling with the gravel of a parking lot serenaded by excited voices--the squeals and cries of children, the laughter of teen-agers.

Some people paid attention; many didn’t. Given the crowd and the festive atmosphere, it looked like a cross between Woodstock and Camp Pendleton.

The smoky snack bar was jammed with talkative people craving fresh-popped popcorn, candy bars, even bottles of formula heated for babies.

“As fascists go, ‘RoboCop’ is a pretty good one,” one man said to another.

“Oh, who cares,” the other one said. “At least we can smoke. Isn’t that why we came?”

Proletariat on Parade

“This is bizarre,” one college-age woman said to her date. “It’s fun to see how the proletariat lives.”

The proletariat seemed to be having a good time, which indicated a change.

Several drive-ins in San Diego County have folded within the past decade--the Frontier near the Sports Arena, the Campus near San Diego State University and a fleet of others dating back even farther. Most were one-screen operations that suffocated under modern-day fiscal realities.

Joseph Pietraforte, general manager of DeAnza Land and Leisure, which owns the South Bay Drive-In in San Diego, explained why.

“The cost of converting drive-ins to multiple screens, versus the cost of the property itself, caused many to die,” he said. “You could make a lot more money selling to an eager developer who wanted the acreage these things sit on than you could by installing multiple screens.”

But multiple screens--which Pietraforte said “saved” many indoor theaters--are in his view having the same effect on drive-ins.

“There’s a drive-in revival going on,” he said from DeAnza’s Los Angeles headquarters. “These things are not nearly as risky as they were a few years back. They’re starting to come back, and some, like the Valley 4, are doing fantastically well.”

Well enough, Beauchamp said, that on a recent Thursday night, he had a staff of 18, not counting himself. They included popcorn poppers and ticket sellers, as well as a large, beefy security detail.

On the Job Since 1967

One of his employees, Jan Warner, minds the ticket booth and has since July, 1967, when the Valley was a one-screen theater. She remembers the place long before it hosted swap meets thrice weekly (another way of butting heads with fiscal realities) and well before it was smack in the middle of a highly developed area.

“Back then, we were out in the country,” Warner said. “I bet developers would love to get their hands on this property. I hope they don’t, though. Obviously, I kind of like working here.

“You know, I don’t think things have changed much. We still get a lot of Marines. Their hair styles haven’t even changed. Those poor wives . . . They’re cooped up in those little apartments on base all day long, with a houseful of screamin’ young ‘uns. Hubby comes home, and they say, ‘Get me out of here!’ ‘Out of here’ usually means here.”

Warner has seen a lot in two decades. Some of the boys she used to work with--they take money from drivers; she rings the sale and yanks the tickets--have emerged as Oceanside’s leading citizens. One is a captain in the Fire Department; another is an Air Force officer “and one of the country’s top pilots.”

Warner has survived bomb scares at the Valley and seen grown men naked, climbing into the front seat of their cars after a reprimand by management. She’s learned loads about human nature. Teen-agers still crave the drive-in on date night; their intentions “just haven’t changed much.” Kids--all under 12 are admitted free--remain surprisingly untouched by horror movies.

“It’s the parents that get scared,” she said.

First-Run Films Shown

The big change since ’67 is the movies. The Valley 4, like most San Diego County drive-ins, offers first-run Hollywood films on a par with indoor theaters. Whereas it used to be “the 14th version of ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’ ” now it’s “Star Trek IV,” “Spaceballs” and “Platoon” and the dividends, Warner said, show up at the box office.

“Some nights,” she added with a sigh, “the line of cars seems unending.”

That’s how it was one recent Thursday night--a ribbon of light piercing a sea of darkness, car after packed car clamoring to get in. With jangling cash registers and moviegoers by the pickup-load come occasional problems.

Vic Sooto, a 24-year-old security guard from Oceanside, said teen-agers sometimes roar in 25 cars at a time. They park in adjoining rows and let the good times roll. It isn’t illegal in California to consume alcohol on private property, unless management forbids it--which Beauchamp does. Sooto confiscates a lot of alcohol and drugs, he said, and occasionally tempers flare. His worst night happened four years ago, when a local gang sparked a disturbance that police had to squelch.

Beauchamp said he had given Oceanside police carte blanche to enter at any time and patrol without permission. On one recent night, Sooto said more than three-dozen teen-agers were arrested for under-age drinking and disorderly conduct.

But most of the time, the Marine-dominated crowd comes just to watch.

Wendy Strawther and Cindy Thompson, 26-year-old twin sisters from Orange County, have relatives stationed at Pendleton and come to the drive-in purely for escapist entertainment.

‘You Don’t Have to Dress Up’

“I love coming ‘cause you don’t have to dress up,” Strawther said. “And you can talk.”

“Doesn’t everybody talk at the movies?” Thompson said. “I love to. I don’t like being told to shut up.”

Strawther just left a military base in Texas, where her husband was stationed and where, she said, drive-ins are disappearing faster than oil wells.

“Even if a drive-in was open, it’s so blasted hot down there you wouldn’t want to go to one anyway. California is great. Drive-ins are just one more reason.”

Strawther’s van contained three adults and three children, all of whom were attending “for maybe the sixth time in the month.” It was the group’s second time to see “Full Metal Jacket,” Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam epic that Eric Keesee, a 20-year-old Marine from York, Pa., said was eerily faithful to boot-camp life.

John Kelsey, 27, another Pendleton Marine, was there with his date, Darla Little, 20. He’s from Fredericksburg, Tex., and said he’d become a “ ‘Full Metal Jacket’ junkie.” He’s lost count of how many times he’s seen it. He said it’s quite realistic, especially the part about recruits getting hit. He’s gotten smacked in the chest a few times.

Richard Calvert, 34, still another Pendleton Marine, was there with his wife, Debra, and three children. He said the Valley 4 experience can be distilled into three main concepts:

- Cost (it’s cheap).

- Fun.

- A place you can take children without hiring a baby sitter or inciting carloads around you.

“No wonder this place is a hit,” he said, as his daughter’s seedless grape hit him in the back of the head.

“I’m excited!” she said.

“RoboCop”--and the night at Valley 4--had begun.