Matinee | |
---|---|
Directed by | Joe Dante |
Screenplay by | Charles S. Haas |
Story by |
|
Produced by | Michael Finnell |
Starring | |
Cinematography | John Hora |
Edited by | Marshall Harvey |
Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
Production company | Renfield Productions |
Distributed by | Universal Pictures (United States and Canada) Pandora Cinema (International) [1] |
Release date |
|
Running time | 99 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $14 million [2] |
Box office | $9.5 million |
Matinee is a 1993 American comedy film directed by Joe Dante, written by Jerico Stone [3] and Charles S. Haas, and starring John Goodman, Cathy Moriarty, Simon Fenton, Omri Katz, Kellie Martin, and Lisa Jakub with supporting roles done by Robert Picardo and Jesse White (in his final theatrical film role). It tells the story about a William Castle-type independent filmmaker promoting the premiere of his latest movie during the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Despite critical acclaim, the film was a box office failure.
In October 1962, in Key West, Florida, Gene Loomis and his younger brother Dennis live on a military base with their mother Anne while their father is away on a United States Navy submarine. At a local movie theater one afternoon, Gene and Dennis see a promo for an exclusive engagement of producer Lawrence Woolsey's sensational new horror film entitled Mant!
Woolsey is scheduled to appear in-person at the theater the following Saturday. After the boys return home to the base, the Loomis family watches President Kennedy deliver a speech confirming the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba.
Arriving in Florida with his actress girlfriend Ruth Corday, Woolsey finds the fearful atmosphere created by the ongoing crisis perfect for hosting the premier of Mant! Woolsey has brought along two of his actors Herb Denning and Bob to portray outraged citizens protesting the theatrical exhibition of Mant! However, local couple Jack and Rhonda advocate for allowing the premiere based on First Amendment rights. Later at home while reading an issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland , Gene recognizes Herb as having starred in an earlier Woolsey film The Brain Leeches.
At school, Gene gradually befriends one of his classmates Stan. He also becomes infatuated with Jack and Rhonda's daughter Sandra after she receives a week-long detention for protesting against the uselessness of a "duck and cover" air raid drill, insisting that immediately dying from the effects of an atom bomb is preferable to dying from acute radiation syndrome caused by fallout. Stan has a crush on another girl at school Sherry. However, violent juvenile delinquent/Sherry's ex-boyfriend Harvey Starkweather threatens Stan, so he lies to her out of fear, calling off their first date.
Woolsey continues to devote himself to promoting Mant!, hiring Harvey to dress as the titular mutated half-man half-ant creature from the film. He also installs large subwoofer-type speakers as the first phase of a new film gimmick he names "Rumble-Rama". The cinema's manager Howard warns about Rumble-Rama's potential effects on the old and fragile balcony area which has a maximum capacity of 100 people.
At the Saturday matinee, Sherry encounters Stan who is attending the premiere screening with Gene and Dennis. Initially upset that he deceived her, she later reconciles with him when Gene intercedes on the couple's behalf. Sandra attends the premiere with her parents, but leaves them to watch the film with Gene. When Harvey (costumed as the Mant! monster) sees Sherry and Stan kissing during the film, he attacks Stan in a rage, then punches Woolsey after he tries to intervene, and a chase ensues. Stan takes a shotgun from a fallout shelter located in the theater's basement and uses it to frighten off Harvey. Sandra and Gene are unintentionally locked inside the shelter when the door is accidentally closed and its time-lock activated. While trapped inside, the two comfort each other, eventually sharing their first kiss.
Woolsey helps rescue the pair from the shelter before their oxygen supply runs out. Harvey reappears and holds his switchblade to Ruth's throat, demanding the movie premiere's cash receipts from Woolsey. As he steals the cash, he kidnaps Sherry and escapes. Howard immediately calls the police and Harvey is quickly arrested after crashing Woolsey's Cadillac outside the movie theater. Sherry and Stan happily reunite after this ordeal. Woolsey also realizes that Harvey has turned the "Rumble-Rama" machinery up so high that the now-overcrowded theater balcony is starting to collapse from the heavy sound vibrations. Assisted by Gene, Woolsey projects trompe-l'œil footage of an atomic bomb mushroom cloud that appears to blast a hole through the screen and the theater's outside wall, quickly evacuating the now panicked audience to safety.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis has ended, Ruth and Woolsey leave for another premiere in Cleveland bidding goodbye to Sandra and Gene. Woolsey has grown fond of the two kids, telling Ruth he might like to have two children after they marry. Sandra and Gene watch them drive away in Woolsey's new Cadillac. Navy helicopters fly over the beaches in Key West, implying that Gene's father will soon return home.
Joe Dante says the financing of the film was difficult:
Matinee got made through a fluke. The company that was paying for us went out of business and didn't have any money. Universal, which was the distributor, had put in a little money, and we went to them and begged them to buy into the whole movie, and to their everlasting sorrow they went ahead and did it. [Laughs.] [4]
Principal photography began on April 13, 1992. Filming took place in and around the state of Florida, including the towns of Cocoa, Maitland, and Key West. The interior sequences in the school and the movie theater were filmed on set at Universal Studios Florida in Orlando. The street scenes were filmed in Oxnard, California. Production was completed on June 19, 1992.
The original film score was composed by Jerry Goldsmith. Several cues from previous genre films were also used, arranged and conducted by Dick Jacobs. These included "Main Title" from Son of Dracula (1943); "Visitors" from It Came from Outer Space (1953); "Main Title" from Tarantula (1955); "Winged Death" from The Deadly Mantis (1957); two cues from This Island Earth (1955), "Main Title" and "Shooting Stars"; and three cues from the Creature from the Black Lagoon trilogy: "Monster Attack" from Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954); "Main Title" from Revenge of the Creature (1955); and "Stalking the Creature" from The Creature Walks Among Us (1956).
Joe Dante had cast character actor Dick Miller in each of his movies, casting him in Matinee as one of the men protesting the monster movie's release, and as a soldier holding a sack of sugar in Mant. Also appearing in supporting roles are William Schallert and Robert O. Cornthwaite (who both appeared in scores of low-budget films of all genres); Kevin McCarthy (perhaps best remembered for his role in Invasion of the Body Snatchers ) as well as Robert Picardo, both of whom appeared in several of Dante's films. John Sayles, who collaborated with Dante on earlier films, appears as one of the men who is protesting the release of Mant.
Woolsey's low-budget Mant! is a parody morphing of several low-budget science fiction horror films of the 1950s (many in black and white) that fused radioactivity with mad science and mutation. Similar films include Tarantula (1955), wherein a scientist is injected with an atomic isotope formula with disastrous results, and the films Them! (1954); The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955) The Deadly Mantis (1957); The Black Scorpion (1957); The Amazing Colossal Man (1957); Monster That Challenged the World (1957); Beginning of the End (1957); War of the Colossal Beast (1958); The Fly (1958) and The Alligator People (1959). The depiction of Mant!'s use of Rumble-Rama is a riff on William Castle's many in-theatre gimmicks ("Emergo", "Percepto", "Illusion-O", "Shock Sections" etc.), however, the only "monster movie" produced or directed by William Castle before 1970 was 1959's The Tingler , which did not have a radiation theme. Rumble-Rama is also a nod to Sensurround, Universal's sound process of the 1970's. Matinee also mentions some of Woolsey's earlier horror movies: Island of the Flesh Eaters, The Eyes of Doctor Diablo, and The Brain Leeches (not to be confused with the real-world 1977 film of the same name).
Although Matinee is set in October 1962, its other film within a film, the family-oriented gimmick comedy The Shook-Up Shopping Cart (featuring an anthropomorphic shopping cart), is a reference to some color Disney comedies that came later in the decade: The Love Bug (1969) in particular, and The Ugly Dachshund (1966); Monkeys, Go Home! (1967); Blackbeard's Ghost (1968); The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit (1968); The Million Dollar Duck (1971); Snowball Express (1972) and The Shaggy D.A. (1976) in general. [5] [6] The film features Naomi Watts as the niece of a man transformed into a shopping cart.
Matinee was released on January 29, 1993 in 1,143 theatres. It ranked at #6 at the box office, grossing $3,601,015 in its opening weekend. The film went on to gross $9,532,895 in its theatrical run.
Matinee received critical acclaim and has a 93% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes, based on 42 reviews with an average rating of 7.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads "Smart, funny, and disarmingly sweet, Matinee is a film that film buffs will love -- and might even convert some non-believers." [7]
Roger Ebert gave the film three and half out of four stars and wrote "There are a lot of big laughs in Matinee, and not many moments when I didn't have a wide smile on my face". [8] Gene Siskel gave the film three and half out of four stars and remarked that the "boring title...doesn't communicate the joy within this film". [9] In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote "Matinee, which devotes a lot of energy to the minor artifacts of American pop culture circa 1962, is funny and ingenious up to a point. Eventually, it becomes much too cluttered, with an oversupply of minor characters and a labored bomb-and-horror-film parallel that necessitates bringing down the movie house". [10] Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B+" rating, and Owen Gleiberman wrote, "In Matinee, Dante has captured the reason that Cold War trash like Mant struck such a nerve in American youth: The prospect of atomic disaster was so fanciful and abstract that it began to merge in people's imaginations with the very pop culture it had spawned. In effect, it all became one big movie. Matinee is a loving tribute to the schlock that fear created". [11]
In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Peter Rainer wrote of Dante's film: "He pulls out his bag of tricks and even puts in an animated doodle; he's reaching not only for the flagrant awfulness of movies like MANT but also for the zippy ardor of the classic Warner Bros. cartoons. He does everything but put a buzzer under your seat". [12] In his review for the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote "At the same time that Dante has a field day brutally satirizing our desire to scare ourselves and others, he also re-creates early-60s clichés with a relish and a feeling for detail that come very close to love". [13] In her review for The Washington Post, Rita Kempley wrote "In this funny, philosophical salute to B-movies and the B-moguls who made them, Dante looks back fondly on growing up with the apocalypse always on your mind and atomic mutants lurking under your bed". [14] In his review for the USA Today, Mike Clark wrote "Part spoof, part nostalgia trip and part primer in exploitation-pic ballyhoo, Matinee is a sweetly resonant little movie-lovers' movie". [15]
Bride of the Monster is a 1955 American independent science fiction horror film, co-written, produced and directed by Edward D. Wood Jr., and starring Bela Lugosi and Tor Johnson with a supporting cast featuring Tony McCoy and Loretta King.
Robert Alphonse Picardo is an American actor. He is best known for playing the Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager. He also appeared as Richard Woolsey in the Stargate franchise, the Cowboy in Innerspace, Coach Cutlip on The Wonder Years, and Captain Dick Richard on the ABC series China Beach. He is a frequent collaborator of Joe Dante and is a member of The Planetary Society's Board of Directors.
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is a 1953 American independent monster film directed by Eugène Lourié, with stop motion animation by Ray Harryhausen. It is partly based on Ray Bradbury's 1951 short story of the same name, which was later reprinted as "The Fog Horn". In the film, the Rhedosaurus, a giant dinosaur is released from its frozen state in the Arctic by an atomic bomb test. Paul Christian stars as Thomas Nesbitt, the foremost surviving witness of the creature before it causes havoc while traveling toward New York. Paula Raymond, Cecil Kellaway, and Kenneth Tobey are featured in supporting roles.
Harold Arnold "Herk" Harvey was an American film director, screenwriter, actor and film producer, perhaps best known for his 1962 horror film Carnival of Souls.
Gremlins 2: The New Batch is a 1990 American comedy horror film and the sequel to Gremlins (1984). It was directed by Joe Dante with a screenplay by Charles S. Haas and creature designs by Rick Baker. Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Dick Miller, Jackie Joseph and Keye Luke reprise their roles from the first film; Belinda Balaski also returns, this time playing a different character. New cast members include John Glover, Robert Prosky, Haviland Morris, Robert Picardo and Christopher Lee; additionally, the film features Tony Randall providing the voice for one of the gremlins. The story continues the adventures of the creature Gizmo, who spawns numerous small monsters when wet. In the first film, Gizmo's offspring rampaged through a small fictional town. In Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Gizmo multiplies within a skyscraper in New York City after his owner dies. The new creatures thus pose a serious threat to the city should they be able to leave the building and the story revolves around the human characters' efforts to prevent this disaster.
Larry Buchanan, born Marcus Larry Seale Jr., was a film director, producer and writer, who proclaimed himself a "schlockmeister". Many of his extremely low-budget films have landed on "worst movie" lists or in the public domain, but all at least broke even and many made a profit. Most of his films were made for television and were never shown theatrically.
Joseph James Dante Jr. is an American film director, producer, editor and actor. His films—notably Gremlins (1984) alongside its sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)—often mix the 1950s-style B movie genre with 1960s radicalism and cartoon comedy.
The Howling is a 1981 American horror film directed and edited by Joe Dante. Written by John Sayles and Terence H. Winkless, based on the novel of the same name by Gary Brandner, the film follows a news anchor who, following a traumatic encounter with a serial killer, visits a resort secretly inhabited by werewolves. The cast includes Dee Wallace, Patrick Macnee, Dennis Dugan, Christopher Stone, Belinda Balaski, Kevin McCarthy, John Carradine, Slim Pickens, and Elisabeth Brooks.
The Relic is a 1997 American monster-horror film directed by Peter Hyams and based on the best-selling 1995 novel Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. The film stars Penelope Ann Miller, Tom Sizemore, Linda Hunt, and James Whitmore. In the film, a detective and a biologist try to defeat a South American lizard-like monster which is on a killing spree in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
Rodan is a 1956 Japanese kaiju film directed by Ishirō Honda, with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. Produced and distributed by Toho Studios, it is the debut film of the titular monster Rodan, Toho's first kaiju film to be shot in color, and one of several giant monster films that found an audience outside Japan. Rodan would become a staple monster later crossing over into the Godzilla franchise. The film stars Kenji Sahara and Yumi Shirakawa.
The Eye Creatures is a 1967 American made-for-television comedy horror science fiction film about an invasion by a flying saucer and its silent, shambling alien occupants.
Robert Rae Cornthwaite was an American film and television character actor.
The Giant Gila Monster is an American 1959 monster film directed by Ray Kellogg and produced by Ken Curtis. A famous B-movie of the era, the film stars Don Sullivan, a veteran of several low budget monster and zombie films, and Lisa Simone, the French contestant for the 1957 Miss Universe, as well as comedic actor Shug Fisher and KLIF disc jockey Ken Knox. The effects included a live Mexican beaded lizard filmed on a scaled-down model landscape.
A monster movie, monster film, creature feature or giant monster film is a film that focuses on one or more characters struggling to survive attacks by one or more antagonistic monsters, often abnormally large ones. The film may also fall under the horror, comedy, fantasy, or science fiction genres. Monster movies originated with adaptations of horror folklore and literature.
Creature Features is a program of horror shows broadcast on local American television stations throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The movies broadcast on these shows were generally classic and cult horror movies of the 1930s to 1950s, the horror and science-fiction films of the 1950s, British horror films of the 1960s, and the Japanese kaiju "giant monster" movies of the 1950s to 1970s.
The Giant Claw is a 1957 American monster film from Columbia Pictures, produced by Sam Katzman, directed by Fred F. Sears, that stars Jeff Morrow and Mara Corday. Both Sears and Katzman were well known as low-budget B film genre filmmakers. The film was released as a double feature with The Night the World Exploded.
Day the World Ended is a 1955 independently made black-and-white post-apocalyptic science fiction film, produced and directed by Roger Corman, that stars Richard Denning, Lori Nelson, Adele Jergens, Paul Birch and Mike Connors. Chet Huntley of NBC, later of The Huntley-Brinkley Report, served as the film's narrator. It was released by American Releasing Corporation as a double feature with The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues.
Alex Gordon was a British film producer and screenwriter.
The fifth and final season of the military science fiction television series Stargate Atlantis commenced airing on the Sci Fi Channel in the United States on July 11, 2008, concluded on the same channel on January 9, 2009, and contained 20 episodes. The show itself is a spin off of its sister show, Stargate SG-1. The season upgrades previous supporting characters cast members such as Richard Woolsey and Jennifer Keller. Amanda Tapping's character Samantha Carter was downgraded to recurring character in this season. The fifth and final season is about a military-science expedition team fighting against the Wraith from their base of operation, Atlantis. The Wraith primary goal is to gather a fleet to invade Atlantis and find their new "feeding ground", Earth.
Monsterwolf is a 2010 Syfy original television film directed by Todor Chapkanov and stars Leonor Varela, Robert Picardo, and Marc Macaulay. An oil rig crew drills in a Louisiana community where they awaken an ancient and terrifying wolf-like beast sworn to protect the ecological balance of its environment - and kill anyone who threatens it. The film was part of Syfy's 31 Days of Halloween 2010 and premiered on Syfy October 9, 2010.