Matinee

I love the 1993 movie Matinee, starring John Goodman, directed by Joe Dante, and written by Jericho and Charlie Haas. I saw it in its original theatrical release (one of the few who did, it turns out), and owned it on videocassette and laser disc. However, I hadn’t seen it in quite a few years, until Shout Factory released a special edition blu-ray. When it arrived, my wife and I watched it together. It was her first time viewing it, and I can’t remember how many times I’ve seen it. It absolutely held up to my memories, and she really enjoyed it as well.

Matinee tells the story of the arrival of B-movie producer Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman) and his actress/lover/foil Ruth Corday (Cathy Moriarty) in Key West, Florida. They arrive in October of 1962, just as the Cuban Missile Crisis is heating up. The film also relates the lives of a group of children and teens, and through their eyes, we see both how matter-of-fact and how deeply affecting the Cold War-era paranoia has colored American culture.

Gene Loomis (Simon Fenton) is a military kid. With his father away on one of the ships blockading Cuba, Gene has to become the man of the house, taking care of his little brother, Dennis (Jesse Lee). Gene and Dennis love the schlocky horror movies from producers like William Castle, Roger Corman, and, of course, Lawrence Woolsey. When Woolsey comes to town hawking his latest feature, Mant (half man, half ant), he and Gene quickly bond. The bond forms partly through Gene blackmailing Woolsey with the knowledge that he has actors posing as protesters from the moral right in order to raise the profile of the movie, but mostly through their shared love of horror pictures. One of my favorite scenes features Woolsey explaining to Gene the magic of horror movies, because they give the audience a chance to confront their deepest fears, and experience the sense of relief at making it out okay at the end.

Gene’s friends from school include Stan, played by Eerie, Indiana’s Omri Katz, and Sandra, played by Lisa Jakub. Sandra’s parents are almost stereotypically liberal, insisting that Sandra call them by their first names, and deciding to go see Mant because it’s being protested by the self-declared moral right. Gene first encounters Sandra during a duck-and-cover nuclear bomb drill, where she is taken to the principal’s office because she refuses to participate in what she recognizes as an act of futility. The attraction between Gene and Sandra is almost instantaneous.

Meanwhile, Gene is attracted to Sherry, played by Kellie Martin. Sherry wears puffy dresses, lives in an all-pink bedroom, and has gigantic hair. However, this “good girl” has a past: she used to date Harvey Starkweather, a thug who, she tells Stan, taught her all about her body, and is currently serving a term at reform school. Or so they believe; it turns out Harvey has been released, due to sponsorship from a New York writer who admires Harvey’s genuinely awful pseudo-Beat poetry. When Harvey sees Stan with Sherry, he is not pleased.

The stories all come together at the premiere of Mant, which is being presented in “Rumble-Rama.” This new process includes devices that produce electric shocks in the theater seats, giant speakers that shake the whole building, and an actor in a Mant costume running through the theater. (Who does Woolsey hire to run Rumble-Rama and play the Mant? Harvey.) Gene ends up at the movie with Sandra and Dennis, and Stan with Sherry. 

Everyone settles in to enjoy the show, and the movie gives us plenty of scenes from Mant. This movie within a movie is a genius recreation of the sci-fi movies from the 50s. It completely works because it’s played completely straight. The effects look like they are from that era, but not in a “look how cheesy we can make them look” sort of way. The actors play up the dialogue with heightened performances, just like actors from that period, but they don’t come across as if they are playing it for laughs. They don’t need to; the dialogue is funny enough on its own. My personal favorite line comes from Mant: “Young lady, human/insect mutation is far from an exact science.”

While the movie is playing, the theater owner, played by the always-reliable Robert Picardo, becomes convinced—through a wacky series of misunderstandings, including the alarmingly effective effects created by Rumble-Rama—that the Russians have launched a nuclear attack on America. He tries to reach the bomb shelter he has built in the basement of the theater, but, of course, nothing goes according to plan. 

How does it all end up? You’ll have to see the movie to find out.

I love this film because it works on so many levels. First and foremost, it’s a hilarious comedy, with all the comedy coming from performance and character, not from scripted pratfalls or gag lines. Like the best comedies, the humor comes from the truth of human behavior. We laugh, but we also care about these characters.

It also works as a look at a time in our culture that most viewers today weren’t alive to witness. (I wasn’t; I was born in 1969.) It doesn’t feel like a historically-accurate documentary, but it feels accurate to the way people probably imagine the early 60s and Cold War paranoia actually were. Whether it’s the clothes styles, the cars, the music, the duck & cover drills, the bomb shelter in the theater basement, or the school science teacher recommending eating red meat with every meal (his recommendation for “red meat” is pork or bacon), this is the sort of movie that you watch and think, “Yes, I bet it was very much just like that.”

Finally, this is a love letter to movies, specifically horror movies, and more specifically the sorts of road-show horror movie presentations made popular by producers like William Castle. Yes, Woolsey is a bit of an unscrupulous con-man, but when he talks about the presentation of the movie, it’s clear why the movie business is the con game he’s chosen to go into. He may try to come up with all sorts of schemes to get people to see his films, but in the end, it’s because he loves the magic that cinema can work upon its audience. 

I’ve read various reviews of the movie, many of which focus on what a great homage to 50s films the Mant sequences are, and what a fine performance Goodman turns in as Woolsey, while somewhat dismissing the stories featuring the kids. I supposed this makes sense, since many of those reviews are written by film fans, who would naturally gravitate towards the movie-fan-nostalgia elements. But I feel like that’s narrow-minded, and does the film a disservice.

Certainly, Goodman and the Mant scenes deserve their praise, but the film would be nothing without the kids. It is through them we experience the wonder of the movie-within-a-movie, and through them that the tensions and fears of the era are given very human faces. The kids look and act like kids, but they are able to hold their own against actors the caliber of Goodman, Moriarty and Picardo. This movie is a complete package, and I love every minute of it.

Watching it in 2018, the whole Cold War-era fear mongering has taken on an unfortunately relevant tone again. I often feel that we are living in a time where people’s fears are being used to manipulate them, to the detriment of our society. On the one hand, this movie gave me a chance to laugh at how ridiculous that all is. On the other, it’s a bittersweet laugh, because it brings home how easily manipulated people can be, and how playing on people’s fears is a con that hasn’t gotten old after more than 50 years.

Those feelings aside, it’s a movie that totally holds up, and absolutely deserves the special edition release that Shout Factor has finally given it. I highly recommend checking it out.

This week’s Pop! of the Week is a three-fer. Possibly a three-fur. I’ve been enjoying Funko’s Monsters of Wetmore Forest line quite a bit. They’re adorable in their own right, instead of just being adorable versions of a pre-existing property.

This week, I’m featuring the first Monster in the line, Tumblebee, in three different iterations. So far, they’ve produced Tumblebee in four different versions, and we have three of them. There’s the original Tumblebee Pop!, there’s Tumblebee as part of the flocked Winter Series, and there’s two sizes of Tumblebee as a plush. (We only got the larger size.) They’re all super-cute, so I’m featuring them all together this week.

Tumblebee is the one on the right

Finally, just a quick update to the Trekker Kickstarter I talked about the other week. As I write this today, they have passed the first stretch goal, which means an additional 24 pages of story. which is fantastic. If you haven’t backed the book yet, I recommend reading at least some of the Trekker stories available on the strip’s web site. If you like what you see, please consider backing this campaign to get the next story into print.

That’s it for this week! See you next week!