Fort Union Drive In

In the summer of 2010, I drove here from Albuquerque for the «Alamo Drafthouse» Drive in movie series. The premise was to show movies filmed in the towns they were in on outdoor screens (i.e., «The Blues Brother’s» in Chicago, etc.). For the Las Vegas show at Ft. Union, it was a double feature, Kris Kristofferson’s «Convoy», that was filmed around various parts of N.M., while the second movie was 1984’s «Red Dawn». Nearly all of «Red Dawn» was shot in and around Las Vegas, INCLUDING the Ft. Union Drive-​in (which was used in one of the more memorable scenes of the movie as a prisoner internment camp.).
The theater itself is not modern, the roads rutted, the buildings old, but the nostalgia of a drive-​in still shines all the way through. The food is cheap, there were a couple of teenagers making out in the car next to me, and a whole family tailgating (with beer). The staff was also very friendly, as they even were able to show me different parts of the projectors (they’re original carbon-​arc projectors!)