Movies, moonlight & hot rods: Motorheads Drive-In to open on outskirts of Horry County
Bronson Cribb has longstanding ties to a 3-acre piece of property at 1600 East 5th Street in Tabor City, North Carolina.
Cribb worked as a teenager at an auto service garage there.
“That’s where I was working when I was like 17 years old, buffing cars in that back garage, and there was a car dealer there and that’s how I learned how to buff cars professionally,” Cribb said. “I made them look brand new and they sold them. Then I started building cars and bikes.”
The garage remains on the property across the state border from Loris, and more than 30 years later, Cribb has added to it.
He has been building Motorheads Drive-In and Grill, an outdoor movie theater with a name that reflects Cribb’s passion for building, restoring and servicing classic cars and motorcycles that he shares with others he knows in the area. It is scheduled to open at 4:30 p.m. Friday, with the movie starting around dusk.
“It has always been a dream of mine because Tabor City has always been known as a hot rod town, and back in the day there used to be drive ins around there,” said Cribb, 49. “I just said, ‘Man, we need an old-school place to go to, you know, because the world is so frickin’ modern.’ We don’t have anywhere to go to for all these hot-rodders.”
The drive-in is opening in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when people can use more outdoor activities.
“It’s a place for families to be able to get away, especially during this virus,” Cribb said. “You can’t sit down in a restaurant without having to wear a mask. You can just pull up, park and that’s your spot. You go to the window and pick up your order and go back to your car.”
Movies will be shown one or two nights per weekend.
The property can host approximately 100 cars. The projector screen is about 32 feet wide and 10 feet high and sits about 5 feet off the ground.
The drive-in is connected via a gravel road to Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park at Daddy Joe’s family RV park, so Cribb expects to attract many of those customers.
He owns a custom body shop at his home about 3 miles from the drive-in called Motorheads Inc., and he still utilizes the garage near the grill at his new business.
Cribb restores cars from the 1920s to the 1970s, and his movies will reflect that in many cases, though he also intends to show family movies such as the “Wizard of Oz.”
The first movie is the 1973 classic “American Graffiti.”
“Everything’s old school, like you went back into Grease,” Cribb said. “I’m going to be showing everything about hot rods. That’s what I’m all about. We’re taking them back to the old days because that’s what we need.
“Tabor City is nicknamed Razor City because back in the day it used to be hot-rodders and greasers would knife fight at the railroad tracks. They’ve still got those hot rod cars.”
Cribb plans to host occasional car shows during the day and preceding movies as well.
The movies will be broadcast on radios through an FM transmitter on channel 91.1. He’s accepting $3 donations at the grand opening to help cover the cost of the movie and will set future pricing afterward..
The grill is designed to serve hamburgers and cheeseburgers, hot dogs, cheese dogs, bologna sandwiches, wings, fries, ice cream, popcorn and other offerings.
Cribb said he works as a nuclear power plant reactor coolant pump inspector, a job he began after being recruited by Westinghouse Nuclear for his mechanical ability. So he has built the drive-in around his travels for that job.
“It has taken me a long time to build it but it’s ready to rock,” said Cribb, who added that Jamie Hooks of Hooks food service has helped him open the drive in. “I’ve been building this for five years out of my own pocket.”
Cribb has had a myriad of jobs. He said he was a dancer for Xanadu male burlesque, a DJ, a bouncer at a gentleman’s club and a prison guard, and he also spent about five years until 2000 as a building contractor and helped build Canterbury and Oxford apartments in Carolina Forest and condos in Barefoot Resort.
He was then led to build the drive-in.
“I pulled up there at that stop sign one day after being a retired building contractor, and the good Lord gave me the vision,” Cribb recalled. “I was looking at the building and he told me, ‘That’s yours. . . . Do it decent, make it old school and not just a beer joint.’ So it’s a place for the kids, a place for the old timers, a place for people to come to and not have to worry about getting shot and stabbed because people are drinking.”
More moonlight movies
There have been two other drive-in theaters operating this summer, including one that is just down the road from Motorheads in Tabor City.
▪ Stateline Movie Time at 3851 Dothan Road opened in May 2019 and shows movies at dusk nightly, year-round.
Tabor City resident Sherry Barnes is the owner/operator, and said she cleared the land and built the drive-in because she wanted to create something outside for children to do.
She shows a combination of brand new and older movies, and has built an extensive film catalogue.
Upcoming movies from 2020 include The Rental and Unhinged, and upcoming older movies include King Kong, Jurassic Park and Back to the Future. She recently showed The Invisible Man, Sonic the Hedgehog and The Lodge.
Customers can bring coolers and a grill, the property is pet friendly and movies are $10 for adults, $5 for children, and $8 for veterans, first-responders and medical workers.
Stateline is more than a movie theater, as Barnes has used or plans to use the property for concerts, outdoor bowling, hoola hoop contests, a flea market, a yard sale, a haunted trail that is wheelchair accessible, and haunted stories around a bonfire.
“We’re more than just movies,” Barnes said. “We’re an entertainment venue and movies are a bonus.”
▪ Thompson Farm and Nursery in Conway has been showing outdoor movies on Friday nights this summer for a series called the Drive-In Movie Summer Series 2020 On The Farm.
They began on June 19 and the lineup over the next four weeks through Sept. 4 is The Goonies, Cars, The Notebook and Moana. Movies are $9 for ages 12 and up and $5 for children, and ages 2 and under are free.
“They’re a hit so we’re definitely going to continue them,” said Christina Burzler, managing partner of Thompson Farm. “We wanted to offer something to people to get out of the house.”
The multi-use screen was built facing a parking lot in a 6-acre field, and audio is available on both external speakers and an FM channel. The Friday movies began as a six-week endeavor in the fall and were extended due to their popularity.
Burzler said the movies may continue in the fall but will move off Friday nights because the property will become its annual agritourism farm by mid-September that features 15 different species of animals. It will include a pumpkin patch and petting zoo and activities such as animal feeding, rubber duck races, an 80-foot slide, cornhole, hay wagon rides and a six-acre corn maze. The agritourism farm will be open Friday nights and weekends.
This story was originally published August 13, 2020 at 12:17 PM with the headline "Movies, moonlight & hot rods: Motorheads Drive-In to open on outskirts of Horry County."
