Joe Bob Briggs is putting his own drawl behind his own words. Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In, the 2025 Dark Horse Books reissue of Briggs’ collected drive-in movie criticism, is now headed to audio, with an edition narrated entirely by Briggs himself.
Preorders for the audiobook are open now at Briggs’ own online shop, ahead of a digital download release set for December 15. The audiobook is priced at $25.99, discounted from its $29.95 list price, and for now is only available directly through Briggs’ site rather than mainstream audiobook retailers.
The collection gathers Briggs’ column of the same name, which ran in the Dallas Times Herald starting in 1987 and became required reading for drive-in and B movie devotees across the American South and beyond. It revisits his takes on gore classics like Basket Case, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Evil Dead, alongside the low budget curiosities, fan mail and infamous “drive-in totals,” Briggs’ scorecard tally of onscreen nudity, severed limbs and body count, that made his column a genre institution.
“People have been asking me to read my own book for decades, mainly because many of them can’t read,” said Briggs. “Now you can hear every high body count review, every drive-in total, and every crazy fan letter exactly the way it was meant to be experienced.”
No word yet on whether the audiobook will expand to platforms like Audible once it is available in December. For fans of The Last Drive-In, Briggs’ long running Shudder series, the release offers something the show never has: hours of uncut Briggs commentary on decades of horror and exploitation cinema, told the way it was first written, and now read aloud by the man himself.
