Joe Bob Briggs

John Irving Bloom (born January 27, 1953), known by the stage name Joe Bob Briggs, is an American syndicated film critic, writer, actor, comic performer, and horror host.

John Irving Bloom was born January 27, 1953, in Dallas, Texas, the son of Thelma Louise (née Berry) and Rudolph Lewis Bloom.

Bloom was raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, and by age 13 was a sportswriter at what was then the Arkansas Democrat.

He won a Fred Russell-Grantland Rice Sportswriting Scholarship to Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee, where he majored in English and wrote for the student newspaper, The Vanderbilt Hustler.

After graduating in 1975.

he became a reporter for Dallas Times Herald and later wrote for Texas Monthly magazine.

Taking a leave of absence from the newspaper in order to co-write (with Jim Atkinson) his many books, the true crime book Evidence of Love (later adapted as the TV film, A Killing in a Small Town), he supported himself by writing movie reviews for the paper.

There he created the humorous persona of "Joe Bob Briggs" to review exploitation films and other genre movies.

Bloom's acting persona as "Briggs" is that of an unapologetic redneck Texan with an avowed love of the drive-in theaters.

He specializes in humorous but appreciative reviews of B-movies and cult films, which he calls "drive-in movies" (as distinguished from "indoor bullstuff").

In addition to his usual parody of urbane, high-brow movie criticism, his columns characteristically include colorful tales of woman troubles and high-spirited brushes with the law, which inevitably conclude with his rush to catch a movie at a local drive-in, usually with female companionship.

"Briggs" revealed in an interview that he intended the character to have an ambiguous sounding name and initially thought of calling himself "Bubba Rodriguez", but was told that the name Rodriguez would be perceived as racist and decided to go with: "The whitest name I could come up with."

The reviews typically end with a brief rating of the movie in question's "high points", including the types of action (represented by nouns naming objects used in fight scenes suffixed with "-Fu"), the number of bodies, number of female breasts bared, the notional number of total pints of blood spilled, and for appropriately untoward movies, a "vomit meter".

A typical review summary might read: ""No dead bodies.

One hundred seventeen breasts.

Multiple aardvarking.

Lap dancing.

Cage dancing.

Convenience-store dancing.

Blindfold aardvarking.

Blind-MAN aardvarking.

Lesbo Fu.

Pool cue-Fu.

Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Tané McClure.

Joe Bob says check it out.""

Originally, Bloom's film reviews as "Briggs" were limited to pictures shown at local drive-ins.

Later, after a tongue-in-cheek "battle" with his own convictions in Joe Bob Goes Back to the Drive In, he also began reviewing films released on VHS and DVD.

During the early 1980s, when New York City was in the planning stages of redeveloping its run-down 42nd Street, Times Square area, which included closing many grindhouses showing B-movies on double and triple bills around the clock, as well as many porn theaters, Briggs encouraged a "postcard-Fu" campaign encouraging genre-film fans to write to city officials and pressure them into saving "the one place in New York City you could see a decent drive-in movie".

He is known for having hosted Joe Bob's Drive-in Theater on The Movie Channel from 1986 to 1996, the TNT television series MonsterVision from 1996 to 2000, and The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs on Shudder beginning in 2018.

In 1986, as a result of the stage show, "Briggs" was asked to be a guest host on Drive-in Theater, a late-night B-movie show on The Movie Channel (TMC).

This led to his hosting Joe Bob's Drive-in Theater, which ran from 1986 to 1996, It was twice nominated for the industry's CableACE Award.

In the late 1990s, "Briggs" spent two seasons as a commentator on Comedy Central's The Daily Show (under his given name, John Bloom), with a recurring segment called God Stuff.

He appears in Frank Henenlotter's documentary Herschell Gordon Lewis – Godfather of Gore.

After the show ended, he hosted the TNT network's similar MonsterVision for four years through July 2000.

In 2018, the horror-themed subscription video on demand service Shudder, owned and operated by AMC, signed Briggs for a new series, The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs, which premiered as a 13-film marathon on July 13, 2018.

During the premiere, Shudder's servers crashed as a result of a large number of subscribers attempting to access the show.

Shudder streamed two shorter marathons on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day 2018 Beginning in March 2020, the show returned to Briggs' old double-feature format.

In 2019, he was named the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards' Monster Kid of the Year, and in 2023 was inducted into the Rondo Hatton Awards' Monster Kid Hall of Fame.

A second season consisting of 10 films premiered April 24, 2020.

Season 3 began April 16, 2021.