REEL LIFE FILM & VIDEO FILE : Creatures of Comfort Take to Drive-Ins : * The One-O-One attracts parents with sleepy kids, seniors who crank up the sound and those who like to smoke and talk.

On one night last weekend, pajama-clad kids stacked in pickup trucks and minivans watched intently as the Flintstones careened into the Bedrock Drive-In for a flick. It was all oddly self-referential since the folks in the pickups and vans were watching “the modern Stone Age family” at the One-O-One, a drive-in theater in Ventura. Like some fossil fish discovered swimming off the coast of Madagascar, drive-ins are, much to everyone’s surprise, still alive.

“People have rediscovered them,” said Milt Moritz, vice president of Pacific Theaters--which, with 65 locations, including the One-O-One, is the largest operator of drive-ins in the state.

“If you want to smoke, you can smoke,” Moritz said. “If you want to talk, you can talk. Senior citizens like the privacy of their cars--they can turn up the sound. If the kids cry or fall asleep, the parents can still see the film.”

As Ruben Alvarez, a 43-year-old moviegoer from Ventura, points out, the drive-in is the only place where you control the environment.

“You have your own area--and nobody else can get into it. No people talking behind you. No territorial elbows with the guy in the next seat. I love it.”

You wouldn’t say drive-ins are booming--the last one built in Los Angeles or Ventura County was 15 years ago--but the decline may have stabilized.

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The drive-in era peaked in 1958, when 4,063 drive-ins dispensed entertainment across the country. Today there are only 870, according to the National Assn. of Theatre Owners, based in North Hollywood. The One-O-One was built in 1974 and expanded to three screens in 1975.

Home videos, the proliferation of multiscreen walk-in theaters and escalation of land values made operating a drive-in less profitable than using the land for commercial development. Even daylight savings time, which was standardized in the late 1960s, contributed to the decline by pushing dusk back by an hour in the summertime.

But while multiplex cinemas subdivide at the rate of an overheated paramecium--with screens reaching smaller dimensions even as ticket prices creep toward double digits--drive-ins are becoming attractive again.

Adults get in for about $5 apiece at the One-O-One Drive-In. And that’s for two movies.

Clark Freeman, 18, on a date with his girlfriend, offered one more advantage of drive-ins:

“Your feet don’t stick to the floor.”

Pancho Doll compiles Reel Life each week for Ventura County Life. If you have information on local film, television or video events or personalities, write to him at 5200 Valentine Road, Suite 140, Ventura 93003, or send faxes to 658-5576.