Though we’re only a few months into 2018, I’m already dead
certain that Shout! Factory’s brand new Blu-ray edition of Joe Dante’s Matinee (1993) will be regarded as one
of the most generous, lovingly produced and expansive reissues of the
year.This remarkable set offers nearly
three hours of beautifully constructed bonus materials to supplement the actual
feature’s ninety-nine minute running time.In case you’re wondering, the short answer is, “Yes.†It’s officially now time to retire your
treasured Laserdisc copy of Matinee as
well as the now-rendered-totally-inconsequential bare bones DVD issued by
Universal in 2010.
Matinee is
an undeniably warm and wonderful film, an affectionate but quirky Valentine.In a series of amazing supplemental features
included with this set, several key members of the film’s creative team suggest
the movie was, in essence, director Joe Dante’s (Piranha, The Howling, Gremlins) very personal love letter to the
art of the B-movie.Critically praised,
but not commercially successful upon its release in early winter of 1993,
Shout! Factory has added this title to its “Shout Select†catalogue designed to
“shine a light†on “unheralded gems.â€This film is certainly one such deserved
jewel, but Matinee Director of Photography
John Hora appears less dreamy eyed than some when offering his own honest post-assessment.
Cognizant that the Hollywood industry was just that, an industry, it was Hora’s contention that
regardless of the immaculate staging and wonderful storytelling of Dante’s very
personal film, he suggested the director would need to pursue a more
traditional career path following the indulgence of Matinee.The age of making
films for what Hora would describe – perhaps too dismissively - as a
“specialized audience,†had passed.Making more marketplace films for consumption by a more general public of
cinemagoers would be the only guarantor of future employment.
If Hora offered a tough in-hindsight assessment, it was
not an unreasonable one.Dante himself
would recall that no one, neither early on at Warner Bros. nor later at Universal,
were particularly optimistic about the film’s potential as box office dynamite.Acknowledging the project as a labor-of-love,
Dante accepted his tribute to the “B-movie†magic of days long gone might best be
realized as an independent film project. When Dante’s early investors reneged
on their promises of bankrolling the production, the director was forced to
negotiate directly with the juggernaut that was Universal Studios for
financing. In Dante’s own recollection, Universal’s accountants emerged shakily
from the board room giving the eccentric project a nervous, wary blessing.It was a rare industry moment, the director
would concede with a sigh, when “Passion won over reason.â€
In hindsight Dante mused that Universal’s green lighting
of Matinee was to “my everlasting
gratitude, their everlasting regret.â€The film is undeniably brilliant cinema and
most assuredly a wonderful time capsule piece; but it was in design and intent an
indie film, one not likely destined for blockbuster status.Dante’s original idea was to bring the film
out in limited release in art house cinemas.He hoped positive word-to-mouth might help create a buzz, and was
confident that this film – one designed for cineastes
in mind - would be met with favorable critical appraisal.But in 1993 Universal was a corporate titanic
that dropped their films into blanketing nationwide release for a quick return
on investment.Sadly, Matinee was too insular a film to appeal
to a mass audience, finishing a disappointing sixth even in its first week or
release.
Originally in development at Warner Bros., writer Jerico
Stone’s original screenplay of Matinee
– which Dante described as a “fantasy†concerning nostalgic friends who
congregate one night at a haunted neighborhood theater - would differ wildly
from the final product.Though Stone,
billed simply as “Jerico,†would share on-screen credit along with screenwriter
Charlie Haas for the original story, he would, much aggrieved, later litigate
unsuccessfully against the Writer’s Guild for screenplay credit.In any event, Warner Bros. would eventually
pass on Stone’s early unmarketable treatment, as would several other
studios.Undeterred, Dante chose to
bring in fellow New Jersey “Monster Kid†and writer Ed Naha (Honey, I Shrunk the Kids) to take a
whack at the script.It was Naha who wove
in the un-credited idea of a beloved TV-horror film host (ala WCAU and WABC’s Zacherley) coming to visit a
neighborhood bijou to promote the latest offering of low-budget cinematic
horror.
It was an interesting idea, and one that certainly
changed the dynamic of the scenario.Regardless, the script was still considered weak and things didn’t
really begin to gel until Dante commissioned Haas (the screenwriter of Dante’s Gremlins 2) for yet another
re-write.It was Haas who fashioned the film’s
provocative Cold War Cuban Missile Crisis back-story. He would also replace
Naha’s idea of “visiting TV horror-host†scenario with an even more colorful
character: an entrepreneurial, self-promoting, cigar-chomping independent film
maverick – one very much in the style of the very real William Castle
(1914-1977).Castle was a
producer-director (often regarded as the “poor man’s Alfred Hitchcockâ€) that cult-filmmaker
John Waters revered as the famed “grifter who made public relations an art form
and turned himself into his own biggest star.â€
Though Castle is usually referenced as the most obvious
figure that actor John Goodman’s Lawrence Woolsey’s character is based upon,
the lively schlock filmmaker didn’t actually make any of the atom-age, mutated
bug-monster movies so endearingly celebrated in Matinee.Dante concedes this,
acknowledging the most memorable sci-fi films of the 1950s were the works of
such directors as Jack Arnold and Bert I. Gordon – films that would mostly pre-date
the 1962 scenario of Matinee.The difference between the former pair of
mostly invisible behind-the-scenes directors and the irrepressible William Castle
was the latter’s prominent public profile and his art of Ballyhoo; this was the
man, of course, who brought “Percepto,†“Emergo,†Illusion-o,†“Fright Breaks,â€
“Punishment Polls,†Ghost-Viewers, Death-by Fright insurance policies, flying
skeletons, and tingling seat buzzers to America’s neighborhood movie
houses.And, yes, we’re a better country
for it.
Goodman, just off his contract as the burly husband in
the TV series Roseanne, was Dante’s
first and only choice to play the wheeling-and-dealing, fast-talking
Woolsey.Goodman, for his part, is absolutely
wonderful in the role, having needed very little coaching to get into
character.Before production was to
commence, Dante compiled a reel of Castle’s wild and wooly trailers to demonstrate
the often outlandish and brash “Castle style†of film promotion to Goodman.To everyone’s surprise, the actor was already
very conversant with Castle’s career, the filmmaker who in his good-natured but
braggadocio manner promised to “Scare the Pants off America.â€Goodman understood intuitively how to
approach the role, and captures Castle’s larger-than-life persona perfectly.He shines every time he appears on screen.
The film itself is set during the third week of October
1962.The broadcast of the lighthearted
antics on The Art Link letter Show on
NBC-TV (a Universal property, of course) is interrupted by a grim-voiced
address by President Kennedy, addressing the existence of Soviet missiles in
Cuba - and the subsequent U.S. decision to counter with a naval blockade.With Cuba only a mere hundred or so miles
from the southern coastline of Florida, the news sends shockwaves throughout
Key West.As troops and anti-ballistic
missiles converge on Key West’s Smathers Beach to protect America’s southern
shoreline, panicked residents raid grocery stores for provisions and schools
institute their wholly ineffective civil defense drills – such as suggesting
students gather in school hallways to “duck and coverâ€.
One student, Sondra (Canadian actress Lisa Jakub)
described by Dante as a “Joan Baez type,†Ban-the-Bomb offspring of pre-hippie-post-Beat
parents, protests this ineffectual civil defense charade.Movie-monster obsessed loner and rootless Navy
brat Gene Loomis (Simon Fenton) is immediately smitten with this bright and
attractive young classmate.They say
that everything is grist for the writer’s mill, and while I don’t wish to speculate,
there’s some indication that several moments captured in Matinee are at least semi-autobiographical to Dante’s own life
experiences.In a 1990 interview
published in the compendium Famous
Monsters Chronicles, Dante recalled to sci-fi film historian Bill Warren
that one of his earliest memories was “being on the way to grammar school when
a little girl told me we could be dead in seconds because the Russians could
drop a bomb on us.â€
Trying their best to remain buoyant in the shadow of
nuclear annihilation, every young person in town congregates the following
Saturday at Key West’s weather-beaten Strand theater to be entertained and
distracted by the atomic horrors promised by Lawrence Woolsey’s new
science-fiction film Mant! (Half-man!Half-Ant!All Terror!).Woolsey and his girlfriend and beleaguered leading
lady and girlfriend (Cathy Moriarty) are in town not only to test market his
new film but to showcase its potential to the cigar-chomping Mr. Spector (Jesse
White), an interested distributor.A
large portion of Matinee takes place
in the lobbies, balcony, side rooms and cellars of the local bijou – a
self-contained world where, in one sense or another, everyone is safe from the
true horrors unfolding in the outside world.
A true masterstroke of Matinee is Mant!, the
aforementioned film-within-the-film.Styled like a vintage B & W 1950s sci-fi offering from American
International Pictures, Dante brought in some very identifiable veteran players
from that era to convey authenticity.Among these was the professorial Robert Cornthwaite, who made a splash
playing know-it-all doctors in such classics as Howard Hawk’s The Thing from Another World (1951) and The War of the Worlds (1953).Kevin McCarthy, the unforgettable fugitive on
the run from the pod people in Don Siegel’s The
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), plays a uniformed General trying to
coax the Mant! from the side of a Chicago skyscraper.William Schallert, a very familiar face on
television screens and an occasional B-film actor with such titles as Port Sinister (1953) and The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) to
his credit, perfectly captures the spirit of a mad dentist who accidentally
creates the Mant via an otherwise routine oral X-Ray having gone terribly awry.The ever dependable Dick Miller, a veteran of
so many Roger Corman horror and sci-fi films of the 1950s and 1960s, does
double duty here; he’s both a soldier in a Mant!
crowd scene as well as one of two shills employed by the irrepressible Woolsey
to drum up business.The second shill is
another famous east-coaster, director-actor John Sayles (Return of the Secaucus 7, Matewan).
The desire to capture the sight and sound of those
original 1950’s “atom age†shockers is abetted by Dante’s masterful use of
musical cues from that era.Though the
film proper would be evocatively scored by Jerry Goldsmith, it was decided that
the Mant! sequences would make use of
original themes found on the scores of such films as The Deadly Mantis, Tarantula!, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Mole
People, and It Came From Outer Space
– amongst others.One of the LPs in the
personal record library of film editor Marshall Harvey was Dick Jacobs and his
Orchestra performing Themes from Horror
Movies in Ghoulish High-Fidelity (Coral 757240).I can tell you from experience that this
particular LP was an object of fetishistic desire, an item coveted by every
twelve-year old boy perusing the Captain Company adverts in the rear of Famous Monsters of Filmland
magazine.In a brilliant move, the
filmmakers secured the rights to the Jacobs’ orchestrations of the works of
such composers as Hans J. Salter, Herman Stein, William Lava and Henry Mancini to
compliment the otherwise original Goldsmith soundtrack.
One will cheat themselves should they choose not to delve
deep into this set’s menu of abundant supplemental materials.It’s of particular interest to see how the
juxtaposition of one technician’s memories of the Matinee project contrasts wildly from another’s.Production Designer Steven Legler beams with justifiable
pride regarding his soundstage mount of the interior of the Key West Strand Theater
circa 1962.Having first worked with
Dante as a member of the art department on The
Howling, Legler’s concept theatre, as it should, appears not as a big city golden
movie palace.It’s a modest,
neighborhood bijou with over-hanging balcony, an unassuming cinema unadorned
but for dullish wallpaper of brown mustard-yellow, threadbare carpets, seat
cushions of faded red and sturdy cedar banisters.Legler’s attention-to-detail matches only
that of helmsman Dante who obsessively decorates and reconstructs movie theater
lobbies with vintage one-sheet posters and modest middle-class homes with
period bric-a-brac.
For his part, Legler recalls scouring through the pages
of vintage magazines and books to best replicate an unassuming movie house of
1962.The marquee built for the faux Key
West Strand is gloriously unassuming and authentic in presentation: a bit dingy
and weathered, but with a beckoning neon glow.Legler was so keen on conveying a sense of realism, that he was
insistent about having a downward sloped floor built – an artistic choice
perhaps, but one both financially and technically imprudent.It looks marvelous on screen, but DOP John
Hora relates that Legler’s too-authentic replication of an actual movie house
caused all sorts of technical difficulties for the camera crew.Though built on Universal’s brand-new
soundstage in Orlando, Legler’s boxy design allowed for no breakaway walls to
allow for unimpeded camera movements.Additionally,
while the sunshine Key West locations bring an undeniable atmosphere to the
film, Hora recalls that shooting on-site in Florida was something of a
nightmare.As weather and natural light
conditions were prone to sudden change, properly illuminating outdoors scenes
was, at best, difficult and inconsistent.
Film editor Marshall Harvey also recalled the travails of
shooting feature films in the Sunshine State.Though Universal had built several soundstages on site, the company was more
deeply invested in the very profitable amusement park surrounding it.Orlando was, to put it mildly, simply not a
media center ala Los Angeles or New York.The soundstages of Orlando were of bare bone construction.There were no on-site lumber supplies, no wardrobe
or set dressing facilities, no prop storages, no camera departments or lighting
barracks on site to utilize.Harvey
recalled Universal Orlando was effectively barely a production studio at all.Most of the so-called “soundstages†were
rented out to various local businesses for the purposes of meetings and events
– not for the purposes of movie-making.
There were other unforeseen problems caused by shooting
on location in Florida.In the interest
of visual authenticity, the self-contained movie-within-the movie Mant! was to be shot – as it would have
been in the silver age of 1950’s sci-fi - on black and white 35mm film
stock.This wouldn’t have been a problem
ordinarily, but since Florida had no laboratories capable of processing B&W
film, all of the day’s rushes had to be first sent to New York City and
couriered back for screening, thus causing delays.The stories shared here are both interesting
and compelling, but ultimately the final product of the company’s efforts and
labor are all that matter… and the resulting film is positively enchanting.
Shout! Factory’s amazing and lovingly assembled “Collector’s
Edition†Blu Ray of Matinee is
presented in 1080p High-Definition widescreen with an aspect ratio of 1:85:1
and in DTS-HD Audio Stereo.The set
includes an absolutely mind-boggling and generous array of special features and
supplements that total nearly three hours in bonus content: Master of the Matinee: Joe Dante, The
Leading Lady: an Interview with Cathy Moriarty, Mantastic!: the Making of a
Mant (featuring Jim McPherson and Mant! actor Mark McCracken), Out of the Bunker: an Interview with Actress
Lisa Jakub, Making a Monster Theatre: an Interview with Production Designer
Steven Legler, The Monster Mix: an Interview with Editor Marshall Harvey,
Lights! Camera! Reunion!: an Interview with Director of Photography John Hora,
Mant! The Full Length Version of the Film with Introduction by Joe Dante, and
Paranoia in Ant Vision: Joe Dante
Discusses the Making of the Film. Simply stated, this remarkable set is a film
geeks dream.Fans of the film will have,
presumably, already added this remarkable “Collector’s Edition†of Matinee to their home video collection.Those who have not yet discovered the
timeless charm of Joe Dante’s most personal film will find they’ve been richly
rewarded in doing so.