Heads up, Mutant Fam! Joe Bob Briggs and Darcy the Mail Girl are coming to Texas for Halloween. This year’s Joe Bob’s Spooktacular, a dusk-to-dawn Halloween-night party, will haunt the already haunted Texas Theatre in Dallas. Harkening back to the William Castle spook-show traditions of the ‘50s and ‘60s, this is the way to spend All Hallow’s Eve, well into the morning.
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The all-night, 12-hour event will feature “five and a half movies,” according to Briggs, who hosts Shudder’s The Last Drive-In alongside Darcy. There will also be “an old-fashioned spook show” hosted by the skeleton-faced Professor Morte, who was created by Shane Morton. He has staged the Silver Scream Spook Show in Atlanta for 18 years and doubles as the Production Designer for The Last Drive-In. Morton will be turning the historic Texas Theatre into a haunted environment, inside and out. The goal is said to get the attention of the ghost of Lee Harvey Oswald, which allegedly haunts the theater. He was arrested at the theatre in 1963 while trying to kill a police officer.
Briggs and Co. are keeping the movie titles under wraps but he was willing to say that one of them is a William Castle classic that will be presented just as Castle presented it. Meanwhile, another one is said to settle for all time the critical controversy about Halloween III: Season of the Witch, with a debate followed by an audience vote. The final screening of the night will be a Halloween-themed Saturday-morning cartoon feature hosted by Darcy. This is night unlike last year’s The Last Drive-In: Nightmareathon on Shudder, only this is live and in person.
“We’ve done four years of Jamborees at drive-ins in Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Nevada, but this year we wanted to do something a little more intimate and a lot more scary,” Briggs said. Barak Epstein, manager of the Texas Theatre, had this to say:
“Not since the days of the Texas Stadium Drive-In has there been a marathon of this caliber anywhere in Texas.”
The oversized, overnight program will also feature a costume contest, burlesque performances, and Joe Bob’s usual commentary on Halloween-themed and rock-and-roll-themed movies. Darcy did much of the programming and said she was inspired by the 1991 slasher Popcorn.
“I’ve wanted to do a Popcorn-style horrorthon since the first time I ever saw that movie,” Darcy said, “and now I finally get to! On actual Halloween night with my Mutant Fam! I am so hyped for this!”
Tickets for the event Joe Bob’s Spooktacular 2025 edition are on sale now at TheTexasTheeeatre.com. For more, check out our love letter to Joe Bob Briggs following his Indoor Drive-In event in Austin, Texas.
