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“Mant! Half Man, Half Ant – All Terror!” Piranha,
Gremlins, Innerspace, The 'Burbs, Gremlins 2: The New
Batch, Small Soldiers – chances are you've seen one or all of these
Joe Dante films – but what about his 1993 ode to B-Movie showmanship Matinee?
Picture the scene: the year is 1962, the location – Key West, Florida – and the
Cuban Missile Crisis has struck fear into a nation. Paranoia is rife, if it's
not reds under the bed then it's the shared nightmare of an invading bomber
dropping Atomic destruction from the skies. This could be the last weekend of
their lives – so there's nothing left to do other than hit the Saturday matinee
showing of a brand new monster movie, in which atomic radiation and a bite from
an ant turn a shoe salesman into a giant, rampaging … Mant!
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screenshots…
“Everybody's scared – everybody in the world.”
Inside the confines of the one-screen Strand Cinema, monster mad Gene (Simon
Fenton, The Bill, Grange Hill) and his little brother Dennis
stare in awe at a preview trailer for “Mant!”. Introduced in a majestic
silhouette profile – giant cigar billowing smoke as the camera creeps forth – is
“the screen's No. 1 shock expert” Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman, Roseanne,
The Big Lewbowski), the film's cross between Alfred Hitchcock and
William Castle. Captivated, Gene and his little brother (who peers in fright
through his fingers) leave the cinema in a youthful daze – they've got to
see this movie and nothing is going to stop them … except, perhaps, nuclear
annihilation.
“Yes, the atomic bomb is terrible, but more terrible
still are the effects of atomic mutation.” Alienated from the town and his
high school peers, Gene is a child of the US Navy – and his father has just
shipped out as the Cuban Missile Crisis escalates. Cutting into the scheduled
television programming, President Kennedy informs the nation of the seriousness
of their collective situation – the quiet terror written across the faces of
Gene and his mother says it all. The end is nigh and they're all on the knife
edge waiting to tip into oblivion. This is the era of “Duck and Cover!”
drills in school, where every plane flying overhead could be the one to blow
them all to smithereens – these young kids' lives could be over before they've
had a chance to live.
“You think if the bomb were about to fall she'd do it
with me?” The high drama of the socio-political situation aside, this
is a coming of age comedy. Gene strikes up a friendship with Stan (Omri
Katz, Eerie Indiana) – Stan's got the hots for Sherry (Kellie
Martin), and Gene's attention has been drawn to Sandra (Lisa Jakub, Independence
Day). Sherry's the pretty-in-pink blonde goody-two-shoes – but she's
been hanging out with poet-cum-greaser criminal Harvey Starkweather (James
Villemaire) – while Sandra is the socially conscious ban-the-bomb
protesting offspring of her hipster parents. If they're all going to die any
minute (the beach has been militarised with surface-to-air missile launchers),
they might as well have dates for the Saturday matinee.
“Boy, this business has changed … I used to settle
these things with violence.” Meanwhile, Lawrence Woolsey and his
long-suffering actress/partner Ruth Corday (Cathy Moriarty, Raging Bull)
are in town for a very special screening of “Mant!” at the Strand. He's broke,
but a terminal huckster, and this one is going to be big because he's got a host
of gimmicks lined up to scare the pants off his willing audience. The bomb
might be about to drop, so this is the perfect time to première “Mant!” – “This
war stuff spooks them, then we come in – POW! The main event!” he says,
proudly. Will the cinema goers of Key West get a good scare, or will they be
wiped out by mutually assured destruction?
“This guy Woolsey, his pictures are all the same – a
cheap, sick thrill for a bunch of hop-headed teenagers.” Written by
Charlie Haas and Jerico, Matinee nonetheless has Joe Dante written all
over it. Gene is a stand-in for the director – his movie posters, drawings, and
collection of Famous Monsters magazine are all Dante's own – and the director's
love of B-Movie cinema is writ large here. Having grown up with low budget
shockers and kicking off his career cutting trailers for Roger Corman, Dante's
movie-within-a-movie “Mant!” feels exceedingly authentic. The music (including
needle-drops from classics of 1950s atomic cinema), the bold and swooping
titles, the hammy acting, and the black & white photography (lovingly
recreated by John Hora) scream the film's infectiously nostalgic intentions
from the rooftops.
Quite possibly his most personal film, Dante pursues a
message of positivity in the face of adversity – the world might eager to waste
itself, but the schlock-horror monster pictures of the time were the release
valve for the public. Like all great genre films they acted as a cathartic
exercise in regaining control of your very real fears. In many ways the message
of Matinee, which was a bit of a commercial flop in 1993, has now become
relevant again. As low budget genre films have exploded across our screens once
again in the wake of Rodriguez & Tarantino's Grindhouse, the human
race at large face the fears of international terrorism, social upheaval, and
political paranoia. As real-world politicians evacuate the centre ground (condemning
the silent majority to one maddening policy statement after another), and
censorious web-watchers seek to destroy lives because someone they've never met
said something they don't like, audiences flock to cinemas to witness
superheroes setting the world to rights. Matinee's message, extolled by
Woolsey in his more rapturous moments, of 'everything is gonna work out in the
end' is needed now more than ever.
“Now they got bombs that'll kill a half a million
people, nobody's had a good night's sleep in years – so you gotta have a
gimmick, something a little extra.” Indeed, for all the film's glances
to the past, more than twenty years on there are subtly satirical new layers to
be discovered here. Sandra's hipster parents, with their fretting over what is
the most 'right-on' thing to do, say, and think, are weirdly retro-prescient
for the 2010s age of the ultra-PC whingebags obsessed with getting offended on everyone
else's behalf. The insecurity of their middle class academic minds, when faced
with a furious protest by Citizens For Decent Entertainment, shows up how
easily anyone can be swayed by a convincing loud mouth. In many ways it seems
like only the monster movie fans have it figured out in this picture. Woolsey's
unbridled love for the power of cinema to lift the burdens of life from the
shoulders of the public speaks of a belief that, serious stumbles aside,
mankind always figures it out in the end – a stark contrast to the other adults
in the film.
“They tell you put your hands behind your neck and
they keep building bombs.” The townspeople are panic-buying and getting
into fights over the last box of cereal, Gene and Stan's mothers are paralysed
with fear (stay within seventeen minutes of home and don't look at the
flash!), while theatre owner Howard (Robert Picardo, Star Trek
Voyager) surges with barely contained paranoia. Constantly plugged-in
to government broadcasts, Howard's even got a nuclear bunker built in to the
foundation of the Strand cinema with room enough for him and his goldfish.
However, when the screening of “Mant!” gets out of hand – seat buzzers and
'rumble-rama' tricks all firing – the foolishness of his uncontrolled fear
comes like a call for everyone to just calm down and take a breath. Even the
teachers at Gene's school are trapped within ignorance (three portions of
red meat a day, kiddies) and lies (sure, you can survive a nuclear
strike, because won't that be fun?!).
“I feel I should warn you – the story of Mant is based
on scientific fact – on theories that have appeared in national magazines, yes,
these terrible events could happen in your town, in your home, and they will
happen in this theatre in Atomo Vision, the new motion picture miracle that
puts you in the action.” And what about Matinee's biggest
success? “Mant!”, the movie-within-a-movie, is a sheer joy to watch. Littered
with goofy lines – some of them plucked directly from the very films it is
spoofing – and low budget-like effects that riff on films such as The Fly
and Them! (there's even a cameo from Kevin McCarthy), it tingles
all the right zones in a film fan's mind. Indeed, Matinee is a love
letter to a bygone era of film-making and theatrical exhibition, boasting Joe
Dante's deft balancing of the light and the dark – after all, this is the man
who made putting a snarling gremlin in a blender fun for all the family. Deeply
layered throughout and comical in a variety of ways, Matinee is a
heartfelt good time.
“Insecticide?! Where?!” Arrow Video's 2016
two-disc Blu-Ray/DVD breathes new life into Joe Dante's lesser-known gem with
an absolutely stellar visual presentation – which still preserves that lovely
grain of celluloid – and a lossless stereo audio track. Extras-wise the only
thing missing is a commentary, otherwise you get a solid selection that
includes: interviews with Director Joe Dante, Director of Photography John
Hora, and Editor Marshall Harvey; a half-hour making-of documentary sourced
from the 2011 French release, behind the scenes footage from Dante's personal
archives, a small selection of deleted/extended scenes, the original EPK from
1993, the obligatory Arrow Video booklet, and lastly film-within-a-film “Mant!”
in all its glory – an intro by Dante, the trailer, and all 16 minutes of
footage cut together like a mini film. No surprises here – Arrow Video has gone
and done it again – a superb release affording prestige-level attention to
another little cracker of a flick that definitely deserves the love.
Fun fact: Naomi Watts makes an early on-screen appearance as
an actress in the other movie-within-a-movie “The Shook Up Shopping Cart”.
N.B. Screenshots are taken from the DVD copy of the film.
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