Matinee is a 1993 sci-fi horror comedy monster movie directed by Joe Dante (Burying the Ex; Trapped Ashes; Gremlins; The Howling; Piranha) from a screenplay by Jerico Stone (My Stepmother Is an Alien) and Charlie Haas (Gremlins 2: The New Batch; Martians Go Home), the latter also portraying a schoolteacher.
The film is an ensemble piece about a William Castle-type independent filmmaker, with the home front in the Cuban Missile Crisis as a backdrop.
Joe Dante has said that the financing of the movie 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.]” (the film took $9,532,895 at the box office in the United States)
Main cast:
John Goodman (Kong: SkullIsland; 10 Cloverfield Lane; Arachnophobia), Cathy Moriarty (Casper; White of the Eye), Simon Fenton, Omri Katz, Lisa Jakub, Robert Picardo and Kellie Martin. Genre regulars Dick Miller and Kevin McCarthy have cameo roles.
A then-unknown Naomi Watts (Shut In; King Kong; The Ring) has a small role as a character in film within the film, The Shook-Up Shopping Cart.
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In Key West, Florida in October 1962, boys Gene Loomis (Fenton) and his brother Dennis (Lee) live on a military base (N.A.S. Key West); their father is away on a nearby submarine.
After hearing the announcement of an exclusive engagement of Lawrence Woolsey’s (Goodman) new sensational sci-fi horror film Mant! (“Half man! Half ant!” “in Atomo-Vision and Rumble-Rama!”), including Woolsey’s appearance in-person, they arrive home to President Kennedy’s television interruption, stating the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba.
Woolsey concludes that this atmosphere of fear and paranoia is the perfect environment in which to open his atomic-radiation-themed film…
“The scenes from “Mant”, shot in black and white, that Dante and Haas have cooked up are some of the best movie satires on film. It’s not easy to parody a genre that’s already close to self-parody but the filmmakers triumph again and again. Actors such as Kevin McCarthy turn up in cameos for that all important deja-vu effect, and the special-effects are imperially tacky.” Peter Rainer, Los Angeles Times
“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…” The New York Times
“The charm of Matinee, a witty and affectionate homage to the sci-fi trash of yesteryear, is that director Joe Dante (Gremlins) appreciates both the tackiness and the awe.” Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
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Music:
The original score was composed by Jerry Goldsmith (Poltergeist; Alien; The Omen).
Several cues from previous films were also used, arranged and conducted by Dick Jacobs, including music from Son of Dracula (1943); It Came from Outer Space (1953); Tarantula (1955); The Deadly Mantis (1957); This Island Earth (1955), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954); Revenge of the Creature (1955); The Creature Walks Among Us (1956).
Trailer:
Cast and characters:
- John Goodman as Lawrence Woolsey
- Cathy Moriarty as Ruth Corday / Carole
- Simon Fenton as Gene Loomis
- Omri Katz as Stan
- Lisa Jakub as Sandra
- Kellie Martin as Sherry
- Jesse Lee as Dennis Loomis
- Lucinda Jenney as Anne Loomis
- James Villemaire as Harvey Starkweather
- Robert Picardo as Howard, the Theatre Manager
- Jesse White as Mr Spector
- Dick Miller as Herb Denning
- John Sayles (writer of Alligator; The Howling; Piranha) as Bob
- David Clennon as Jack
- Lucy Butler as Rhonda
- Belinda Balaski as Stan’s Mom
- Naomi Watts as Shopping Cart Starlet
