Tour the Horror Auto Museum at Flashback Weekend 2020
This year’s Flashback Weekend has a special treat in store if you love classic cars and classic scary movies. Your admission to the massive horror convention — taking place at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare Chicago in Rosemont from July 31 to Aug. 2 — gets you a trip through the Horror Auto Museum, which gathers together iconic vehicles from films you know and love.
See the car Michael Myers drove in ‘Halloween’
The featured attraction of the Horror Auto Museum is the original 1978 Ford LTD station wagon from the John Carpenter classic Halloween. In the film, legendary boogeyman Michael Myers (Nick Castle) steals the wagon after breaking out of Smith’s Grove Sanitarium and uses it to, among other things, make a run to the general store for a gussied-up William Shatner mask, disregard residential speed limits with reckless abandon, and creep on Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis).
The fact that Myers is so capable behind the wheel of a boat like the Ford LTD despite having been locked up since the age of six gets a lampshade thrown over top of it: When a colleague tells him that Myers couldn’t have driven a car, Dr. Sam Loomis (the late, great Donald Pleasance) informs him “he was doing very well last night.” If I had a nickel …
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According to the folks at Flashback Weekend, the car was rented out for two weeks of shooting and eventually auctioned off by the rental agency. After lying dormant in a barn for decades (much in the way that Myers lays dormant in the den of a weird river hobo in Halloween 5), the Ford LTD found its way into the hands of someone who recognized its historical significance and had it restored to silver screen-quality gory glory.
Better still, Nick Castle will be a guest at the convention, and attendees will have the opportunity to get a photo with him and the station wagon he drove more than 40 years ago. Flashback Weekend is also offering a Halloween Wagon Private Access VIP pass and will announce details as to what that entails closer to the event.
Photo: Hylnder777 / Wikimedia Commons
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In addition to the Halloween 1978 Ford LTD station wagon, the Horror Auto Museum will feature the titular car from Carpenter’s Christine; the giant Green Goblin face from the grille of the Happy Toyz truck in Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive; and a 1971 HEMI ’Cuda Tribute Car honoring the 1988 Don Coscarelli film, Phantasm II.
Visit FlashbackWeekend.com to learn more about Flashback Weekend 2020 and the Horror Auto Museum.
Two Flashback Weekend Midway Drive-In HorrorFests Announced
Speaking of cars and horror movies, nothing quite brings the two together like a trip to the drive-in. To help ensure that the drive-in, like Michael Myers, never dies, proceeds from Flashback Weekend go to the continued operation and restoration of The Midway Drive-In & Diner in Dixon, which celebrates its 70th anniversary in 2020. Building on that cause, Flashback Weekend and The Midway will team up to put on two horror movie marathons this year, which would most certainly put a smile on the faces of Joe Bob Briggs and Joe Lansdale.
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On April 18 at 8 p.m., the Grindhouse Drive-In Fest will show four cult classics spanning from the 1960s to 1980s — “Godfather of Gore” Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Two Thousand Maniacs! has been announced as the first of the four, and you could probably lay even money on a Lucio Fulci movie or William Lustig’s Maniac also being on the slate. Admission costs just $20 for the whole night.
The Midway will also bring back its annual Dusk to Dawn Drive-In HorrorFest on Sept. 12. Last year’s HorrorFest offered an eclectic four-film lineup: Christine, The Exorcist, Night of the Creeps, and a 4K restoration of Fulci’s Zombie. Both Midway Drive-In HorrorFests will include vendors selling horror merch as well as vintage trailers and concession ads between showings.
Need more? In October, The Midway will host first-run screenings of Halloween Kills, the sequel to the smash-hit 2018 reboot of the Halloween franchise. Once the season gets underway, the drive-in also expects to show new horror films including Candyman, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Spiral: From the Book of Saw, and A Quiet Place 2. Check back at TheMidwayDriveIn.net later this spring and summer for updates.
Kyle S. Johnson lives in Cincinnati, a city known by many as “the Cincinnati of Southwest Ohio.” He enjoys professional wrestling, Halloween, and also other things. He has been writing for a while, and he plans to continue to write well into the future. See more articles by Kyle.