Joe Dante is not a name like Alfred Hitchcock or Stephen Spielberg in the halls of Universal Studios. He did make Explorers, after all, which wasn’t exactly on their top ten moneymaking movie list. But Joe Dante very well might be one of moviedom’s most knowledgeable movie fans.
He loves movies. I mean he really, really loves them. He created the podcast series “Trailers from Hell” which hearkens back to his early days working for American International with Allen Arkush on their latest trailers for fabled flicks of the Roger Corman exploitation era.
He went on to direct films himself including Piranha, The Burbs, The Howling, Gremlins, and one of my favorite all time films: InnerSpace. Matinee (1993), however, is probably his most overlooked gem (besides Gremlins 2, which is surprisingly awesome and sure to be in an upcoming column).
Matinee is the story of Laurence Woolsey (a William Castle standin) played to perfection by a loveable John Goodman. Woolsey has just directed his latest late 50’s/early 60’s Sci Fi epic “Mant.” (The film-within-the-film has some of the movie’s greatest moments.) He is at a career low and could really use a hit and plans to open his film at a theater in Key West, Florida right at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. A young man befriends the director with their love of monster movies and showmanship in this coming of age while celebrating a by-gone age flick.
It wouldn’t be Joe Dante without his buddy Dick Miller (see him in his own bio-documentary That Guy Dick Miller–highly recommended) and other great cameos. Robert Picardo, in particular, sticks out as the frightened theater manager during this high tension time.
The theme is a tad obvious when you get down to it. It is hard to scare people with a movie about a man with an ant costume on when real life horrors like the Cuban missile crisis are all too real.
For fans of Svengoolie monster flicks of the late 50’s, this entire film is a love letter and a great companion piece to things like It or Stranger Things–despite their 80’s backdrops, they are really more in keeping with this time frame than the 80’s.
It’s all here. The scientist that explains it all (the original Morris the Explainer characters) that literally sounds like a thesaurus at times so that none of the fancier words sail over the head of the kiddies in the audience. The wild, loud military man (played with campy perfection by Dante fave, Kevin McCarthy) and the clueless female lead that seems just a little dumb for loving a man turning into a giant ant.
This might be Goodman’s best character. He plays Woolsey with a bravado while keeping the character centered and kind, where it could have easily come off as egocentric and greedy.
In the end, I love the scenes near the end (I won’t spoil them) that show that the real nature of fear isn’t in loud, bombastic battles with insects of ridiculous size, but a quiet, grim reality that chills while drawing people together.
I have to mention the send up of Disney movies where inanimate objects come to life is worth seeing alone (“The Shook Up Shopping Cart” seemed like they just found the movie and didn’t even bother shooting a new sequence.) Stay, though, for a great film about one of the most interesting periods in film…and show business.
