Tiger Drive-In

The Tiger Drive-In on Highway 49 is the only operating drive-in theater left in Mississippi, and one of fewer than 300 still operating in the entire United States. It shows double features on Friday and Saturday nights, and sometimes Sunday and during school holidays. Tune your car radio to the broadcast frequency for the audio; bring your own food or use the snack stand.

The experience is genuinely enjoyable — families in lawn chairs, teenagers in truck beds, the movie projected on a screen you can see from 100 metres. The films are usually recent releases rather than classics. The drive-in is south of downtown Hattiesburg on Highway 49; you'll see the screen from the road. Gates open about an hour before showtime. Arrive early on summer weekends to get a good spot.

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Drive-in theaters peaked at around 4,000 screens across the US in the late 1950s and have declined to fewer than 300 today. The Tiger Drive-In is the last one operating in Mississippi. It has survived partly by being genuinely cheap (significantly less than a multiplex), partly by leaning into the nostalgia, and partly because the radio-broadcast audio means you watch in your own car with your own snacks — a format that turned out to be unexpectedly appealing during COVID, which drove the drive-in revival more broadly.

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