'Guerrilla drive-ins' turn nostalgia on its head

PHILADELPHIA -- Think the only way to see a big-screen movie is while slurping a 64-oz. soft drink, eating a $5 candy bar and shushing the wannabe film critic behind you?

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That's not the case anymore, thanks to people like John Young, creator of the West Chester Guerilla Drive-In and part of a loosely knit network of celluloid renegades resurrecting the drive-in for a new age.

"Nowadays, you push a button and a movie appears," he said. "There's fun in the inconvenience of having to get off the couch and go somewhere you might not be familiar with, maybe getting rained on, maybe being cold. It makes it an adventure."

For the past four years or so, the 38-year-old Web developer has been showing films — real, honest-to-goodness 16mm film — from a 1970s school projector mounted on the sidecar of his 1977 BMW motorcycle.

He has presented more than a dozen movies at locations suited for the theme: "Meatballs" at a canoe rental center, "Caddyshack" on a golf course, and most recently, "Ghostbusters" at Fort Mifflin, a favorite haunt of paranormal investigators.

It's not exactly an evening at the local multiplex — and that's the point.

"What a great idea. What a great way to see a movie," said Jim Haighey, of West Chester, one of more than 60 people watching "Ghostbusters" projected in front of the fort's 211-year-old Citadel. All had to first find a hidden AM receiver in West Chester transmitting a secret code before being e-mailed the location of the movie.

It was a soggy night at the Revolutionary War fort on the Delaware River, and the 1984 comedy was interrupted every few minutes by planes zooming just overhead on their way to the runways at nearby Philadelphia International Airport, but that only seemed to add to the moviegoers' enjoyment.