Matinee (1993)

Is there anything more satisfying as a film fan than discovering a forgotten gem? How about a forgotten gem that expresses a bleeding heart love for cinema? Matinee is a fantastic nostalgia trip about the Cold War & the opportunity movies provide for anyone looking to escape reality, while coming out more fully understanding it. Dante walks this balance through honesty about the time, & a whole heap of loving humor about suburban paranoia.

Joe Dante's Matinée is a bewilderingly overlooked little gem about a period when going to the movies was a far more innocent experience. Directors such as William Castle would turn a trip to the cinema into something all the more involving for the audience, pulling stunts such as rigging audience's seats with buzzers to shock the viewers whenever a fright occurred on screen, or even allowing them to choose their own ending. It was a time when a film-makers could make a decent buck with a bit of old-fashioned theatrics and a genuine passion for delivering an exciting experience for the paying punters. Matinée is also about the loss of such innocence, both at the movies and in the U.S.A. as a whole.It's 1962, and avid young horror buff Gene Loomis (Simon Fenton) spends his days at the movies with his little brother while his father is away on a submarine. He's recently moved to Key West, Floria, where just over the horizon the Soviets are storing missiles in Cuba, and President Kennedy has just announced the threat of nuclear destruction. Gene dotes on the prettiest girl in school, Sandra (Lisa Jakub) while his new best friend Stan (Omri Katz) tries it on with Sherry (Kellie Martin), whose ex-boyfriend is a flick- knife wielding senior. While the whole town is in a subdued panic, charismatic B-movie schlock extraordinaire Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman) arrives to personally promote his new film Mant!, a cheapo creature feature about a man turned into an ant by nuclear radiation or something or other.There was very little time spent during my viewing of Matinée without a smile plastered across my face, which is what you would expect from a Joe Dante movie during the best spell of his career. This is a picture for those who truly love the movies from a guy who clearly loves movies too. In one of Matinée's most bewitching moments, the camera sweeps into Key West's cinema with the same sense of awe I experienced as a child, when I remember gazing at posters of the upcoming movies adorning the walls and being hit with that sickly smell of popcorn. Sadly, I wasn't around for the black- and-white kitschy B-movies of the 50's and 60's (the earliest memory I have is watching Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves with my brother back in 1991), but the affect is still the same.Cathy Moriarty also stars as blonde bombshell Ruth Corday, an actress and also Woolsey's girlfriend, eternally grumpy with the man she sees as full of out-of-reach dreams and cheap gimmicks, but demonstrating loyalty by dressing up as a nurse stationed outside the screening in case anybody falls ill because of the 'horror' on show. The Cuban Missile Crisis coincided with the decline of such showmanship, as American cinema evolved into something all the more serious, cynical and paranoid, and Matinée waves goodbye to such innocence. But it does so with a smile, and Goodman is terrific as the larger-than-life promoter who is perhaps a version of Dante himself, or at least the more flamboyant directors Dante grew up admiring. Matinée has a lot to say about our love for the movies and of the important role it plays in our general society, but more importantly it is joyous, funny and often extremely touching.

I felt that the advertising for this movie was somewhat misleading. I expected to see a film about John Goodman portraying a loose characterization of showman William Castle. Instead, the main focus of the film is a young boy, Gene Loomis, whose father is a soldier who is dispatched to active duty during the Cuban missile crisis, which is the time period in which this film is set. You have your typical coming-of-age themes revolving around Gene and his friends as they discover their own emerging adolescence, and this consists largely of tired material that has been done to death.Somewhat in the background we have John Goodman as old-fashioned showman Lawrence Woolsey, a vaudevillian stuck in the age of cinema who wants to put the show back in picture shows. He is tied into the film because Gene enjoys Woolsey's showmanship as a way to forget about the world around him which seems to be on the brink of self-destruction. Woolsey pulls such stunts as having his girlfriend (Cathy Moriarty) dress a a nurse and ask patrons to sign a waiver releasing Goodman's character from liability in case they die of fright during the movie. This is based on a similar stunt by William Castle and his movie "Macabre". Woolsey also wires the seats to produce a mild electric shock during a key moment in a film, which he labels "Atomo-Vision." That antic is based on what William Castle did during the showing of "The Tingler". Then he rigs still another device to shake things up as buildings on the screen are tumbling and calls it "Rumble-Rama." Again, these are all very similar to the showman-like stunts of William Castle during the 50's and 60's.The best part of the movie is when Woolsey comes up with an atomic-age monster movie entitled "Mant" that is a composite of cheesy 50's horror films such as "The Fly," and "Them!". "Mant" is about a mutant that is half-man and half-ant and is a total riot. Woolsey's schlock merchant displays just the right mix of con-man materialism and childlike glee at his own bogus movie magic. It's too bad that Goodman's character and his showmanship weren't the main focus of the movie - Goodman was truly born to play the part of Lawrence Woolsey.Watching this movie really made me happy that some of William Castle's films have finally been coming out on DVD in the last couple of years, through both traditional DVD releases and through the Warner Archive manufacture on demand program. At any rate, enjoy.

This is a perfectly balanced, consistently funny movie, especially for those who either a) grew up in the early 60s or b) enjoy the campy SF movies of the late 50s/early 60s. I fit in both categories, so this movie makes me laugh out loud every time I watch it.Joe Dante and his screenwriters do a deft balancing act between a charming teenage love story, a recollection of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, and a spot-on satirical look at old "nuclear monster" movies and the king of that genre, William Castle. The script moves each portion of the story along seamlessly, with a marvelous cast of characters led by John Goodman, the Barnum-like movie showman.Much of the film actually takes place in a theater, where all the strands of the story come together in a long crescendo that ends in a disaster with a happy ending. Personally, my favorite parts of the film are the black-and-white clips from the feature "Mant," which deftly skewer all the clichés of the genre (down to the scientist who has to explain every big word he uses). Seeing William Schallert and Kevin McCarthy in uncredited roles was a bonus.A tip of the hat to Jerry Goldsmith for his nostalgic score, and to the music department who put together some old radio tunes for authenticity.Watching "Matinee" is a delightful way to spend 100 minutes, whether you're a kid, or an old fogy who actually remembers what things were like in 1962.