First Time Watch of the Week: Joe Dante is for The Children

We don't do enough for the kids man. I'm always thinking this. We could always do more. As the mighty Ol' Dirty Bastard said in 1998, when he crashed on to the stage at the Grammy Awards before Kanye West was doing it, "Wu Tang is for the Children". We could all learn from that. Get involved in your community. Help out the kids.

The Saturday Matinee has always been a great gift programmed to the children. Without a doubt something you can't let die. Not to be confused with that theatre malarkey. Similar concept but that's for nerds with free afternoons. Whereas, I'm talking about the kids. It's origins lie in the old 1930s/40s serials such as Flash Gordon and Buck Rodgers. They even did a lot of the Marvel and DC superheroes. Except back then they were camp, they had style and knew their audience.

Now, if you've ever seen one of these, you'll know the format is quite striking. Normally running times can be anywhere between 200 to 250 minutes. Except they weren't designed to be watched in one go. Each week you went down your local cinema and watched an episode which would run 15 to 30 minutes. About a reel of film or two at most. The set up was this: a narrator would catch you up to speed with the events of the previous week. Someone like Batman runs in to save the day and there's the most chaotic fight scene you've ever seen in your life. This was many years before David Leitch and Chad Stahelski of John Wick fame were running things.

Blocking hadn't really developed at all in those days. So there's no real choreography. Yet I always really enjoy these disorderly brawls. They have such a charm and genuinely look dangerous in their disorganisation, which is a lot more that can be said about some fight scenes in Hollywood today.

At the end of an episode, Robin being as useless as ever, would get captured by some goons and the narrator comes in with an urgent message you can't ignore like, "Will Batman save Robin? Or will he fall victim to Riddler's trap? Find out next week on Batman and Robin!". The narrator was always so convincing and made a pretty strong case. You were coming back the next week. You had to.

There's such a cheesy and campy element to it, that once you start watching them you wished there was still something like that available. Why didn't that grow? About the closest you'd get to it now is an animated superhero show (which are oddly about a million times better than anything you could possibly watch in the MCU). Usually when I've got my kid round he shows me his Spiderman shows and they're great. I recently found out that one of the best DJs of all time John Digweed (check out his Renaissance and Northern Exposure mixes for proof) used to do the score for the spiderman animated series of the 2000s. Couldn't find any of it on Spotify but there's like a 2 minute clip on YouTube. Assume it's a rights problem as to why more can't be uploaded. Imagine that though, the friendly neighbourhood spiderman slinging webs and beating up the bad guys to Trance bangers! What ever happened to DJs taking over Hollywood soundtracks? Give me back the days of people like Paul Oakenfold being in charge of the sound of Swordfish and Jason Bourne. Give DJs the keys to Hollywood again!

Another show I can't stop watching at the moment is the Spiderman one from the 80s. Animated again. MF Doom fans will know every word of this one. That little bastard has made an entire career of sampling this one show. From the theme song to dialogue of Doctor Doom himself. RIP by the way. Greatest rapper to ever do it.

One project that came remarkably close to the tone of serials, even if not in form, in a live action sense was Schumacher's Batman films, which are brilliant by the way. Don't let anyone tell you they're not. They're masterpieces of camp. But oh no the fucking Tim Burton nerds had to come in and say in the words of the world's greatest songwriter, Leonard Cohen, "We Want it Darker". Go wank off to some German Expressionism Tim!

Still I can't help but think you know what would be cool? Batman done again as a live action serial. I'll let it off not being so light if someone other than Tim Burton directs. Maybe if they kept it to the same kind of style as Batman Beyond or one of those decent DCAU movies like Subzero or Mask of Phantom. Imagine it? Like 15 minutes or so of Batman interrogating Jokers thugs and looking for clues each week. I'm all in. Bring in the comics more too. Plenty of material there and with the time slot you could stick to the essentials rather than adding hilarious side stories to fill the feature length run time like with The Killing Joke when he starts banging Batgirl behind Jim Gordon's back for a solid 40 minutes or so.

Naughty Batman!

About the only thing that comes close to serialised storytelling today is the work of Olivier Assayas, who there is a strong argument to say is the greatest director of the last like 30 years or so. His films such as Carlos and The Wasp Factory have the free flowing nature of the old school serial. In these spies and terrorist bounce about to great music and engage in wild endeavours like they're James Bond in a kind of episodic fashion.

More recently he re-did his film from the 90s Irma Vep as a literal serial. A project inspired by Les Vampires from 1915, a more arty serial than the superhero stuff and more of an early crime epic. Its director Louis Feuillade is a master of the labyrinth storytelling. It could well be ancient but I really have never seen anything quite like it just because the format isn't so regularly adopted. Although more adult oriented, Assayas seems to be the only one still flying the flag but as I said at the start we need more for the kids!

Obviously the director of Matinee is a little too young to have been watching those original serials and so his is about a different period. His film is an ode to the matinees of his youth, which were the 50s creature feature. These trashy films became so popular amongst teenagers because they were growing up living in fear of the bomb. Nuclear threat was constant and the cold war was on the way.

Paranoia spread and so these silly monster movies where spiders and even women could grow to 50 feet took on a whole new meaning. So these went from disregarded trash to potentially works of art. The key to them was a good subversive and sneaky writer who could create a solid b movie and hide in little messages about the times. Communists became giant bugs I shit you not. This is dudes down bad. I try to wrap my head round it. Like imagine being so down bad you start turning communists in to massive insects. Americans when they're at their most terrified make the most creative and brilliant cinema I swear. All the terror and panic starts slipping on to the screen.

Before watching Matinee, I'd suggest checking out a few films from the era itself. If I had to recommend the two most interesting it would be Them and The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Firstly, Them has the radiation and nuclear weapon fears on display and was one of the first to do it. As for the original The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, that's a perfect exploration of the Mccarthy witch hunts and red scares. After watching these two, you'll get the gist of what these movies are about. Themes wise they just start finding new ways to repeat themselves but I do love 'em! If you do happen to develop a "fix" or more appropriately a "bug" upon seeing those two classics I suggest moving on to anything directed by Jack Arnold. He'll scratch that one for you.

Adorably, Dante sets his film in October 1962 allowing it to be a nostalgia piece. You don't got to be a history buff to know what was going down that year with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Never fails to amuse me that one. Just like alright Russia, we'll park your missiles over here for you, right opposite our joint enemy. Set them down right over there. The yanks had previously pissed off the Cubans the year before with disgusting Bay of Pigs.

Kennedy is seen as one of most liked and beloved presidents and in the grand scheme of how shit they all are he probably was one of the better ones. Regardless, he's got a lot to answer for on the Bay of Pigs. There's a great defence of his case in saying he could do little to stop that and these people even bring in Vietnam in to this equation. The conspiracy theorist followers will even know of that one where Kennedy could have been assassinated due to his attempts to pull troops back from Vietnam. Guess they didn't like his exit strategy. Above all though, JFKs time in office will make you wonder, do presidents actually have any influence? I mean I haven't read nearly enough about that stuff but I get the impression he had some good intentions and couldn't fully carry them out. Either way, the Cubans did have a full on right to be more than a little pissed off with Bay of Pigs.

As a result the yanks were shitting themselves for a good couple of weeks with these nukes pointed directly at them. All of them were on edge just waiting to hear the emergency sirens and to get down on the floor with their head in hands like the public service videos were informing them. Bring in Lawrence Woolsey played by John Goodman. Into the film world that is of course. Woolsey is something of an exploitationer with a clear love of the old carny tactics. Probably the most similar person to him in real life would be William Castle. Fantastic director in the late 50s and early 60s who made The Tingler, House on Haunted Hill and StraitJacket.

When other people are freaking out, Woolsey has this grand idea that it's time to get people in the cinema. If you look at the way people obsessed over the return of the cinema postcovid you'll realise things haven't changed at all. Personally, I think it's kind of wholesome. Woolsey is an absolute prophet who like myself agrees that cinema works best when the Yanks are petrified.

In all the madness of those few weeks, Woolsey decides it's the perfect time to get the kids in the cinema for some escapist entertainment with a little subtext. A way of dealing with all the chaos in a comedic and safe manner. Therefore, he's going to have a premiere of his latest film, Mant. A creature feature about a giant man turned spider that seems like a massive rip off of The Fly or The Wasp Woman.

As far as films set within a cinema this ranks with the best of them, i.e. Inglorious Basterds and Demons. What makes Woolseys matinee experience differ from others is that he has a few tricks up his sleeve. This is what makes him like William Castle. He spends a lot of the film setting up electrified seats to shock the kids, wall shaking and has even hired a guy to walk round in a costume scaring the kids. These are the same kind of tricks deployed by Castle and would later go on to inspire John Waters Odorama for Polyester (in which the audience were given a selection of smells they had to take in at certain points in the film, a bit like 4D except more disgusting).

Woolsey is just about the most friendly character I have ever seen in my whole life. He seems to take a lot of pleasure in his work for the children and even rescues a few in the final act. Goodmans perfect for this and he brings that warm persona he had from Monsters Inc playing Sully. There's something so homely about that voice of his. You never feel more safe hearing it.

Unfortunately, though I'm not fully sure there were many people that existed like this Woolsey character in the exploitation racket. I can't say for sure what Castle was like outside his amazing films. However, if you go off the most known exploitationers like Herschell Gordon Lewis, Doris Wishman and Russ Meyer I don't think they particular cared about the kids. Or even just in a horror sense, did someone like Val Lewton really care about the kids? I simply don't know but doubt it.

Probably the most fitting of this type would be to see John Goodman in Trumbo. In that he runs some b movie making independent studio and threatens someone with a baseball bat whilst producing some of the greatest lines in cinema. He goes on a rant saying, "I don't think me and you are going to be pals. Want to stop me hiring from the union? I'll go down and hire me a bunch of winos and Hookers. It doesn't matter. I make garbage. Want to call me a pinko for the papers? None of the people who go to my fucking movies can read! I'm in this for the money and the pussy. And they're both falling off the trees".

Regardless, even if the depiction of a producer in Joe Dante's Matinee is false, you gotta love it just for being so damn wholesome. I want to believe there are people out there like Woolsey keeping the kids entertained on a Saturday morning.

Probably the best way to take this film is like one of Tim Burton's only decent movies, Ed Wood. He sort of dumbs down some of the darker elements of the story like Bela Lugosi's Heroin addiction and Woods wife beating but as a kind of fictional biopic playing with real life characters it's amazing. The fact it's done in the style of the people involved is way better than any bland by the numbers retelling.

Matinee is about taking multiple factors of the time and putting them together going off the legends rather than the truth itself. It never positions itself as serious and should be taken as loving fun or even homage.

I'm a huge fan of Joe Dante. He brings his love of the 30s and 50s monster movies every time. There's a humour in his work you just don't get any more. The other day I watched his film The Hole. It isn't particularly good but there's this bit where a toy clown starts attacking a kid and I couldn't help but think most directors wouldn't shoot it this way these days.

Everyone tries to make such ridiculous antics needlessly and routinely scary and it comes off pathetic. They would do well to learn from Mr Dante who brings in a sense of mischief. That's what makes his classics like Gremlins and Small Soldiers so good. In effect, they actually do come scarier because they work on pure manic energy.

He's a director who clearly loves what he does and they're my favourite types. Matinee is a film that loves cinema.

You can't help but feel that love too just watching it.

The passion is contagious. It'll take you back to your own childhood and that sort of magical creative intersection you could find so easily back then but along the line closed a window at some point in your life to get there.

Other than Ed Wood other films to compare this with would be the Coen Brothers Hail Caesar and Hairspray. Like the latter film, the soundtrack here is an absolute delight. Little Eva, The Platters and Skeeter Davis. All your 50s rock'n'roll and doo wop. My only complaint with this film is that the characters in the real world, other than Woolsey seem a little undeveloped. We get some stories in there like these kids going on their first kind of dates, which is nice.

Still think they could have been explored more in a hangout way like Dazed and Confused or Mean Streets. Yeah Mean Streets maybe an odd comparison but this is definitely the kids version of it in a way. That films about a bunch of people trying to survive in the streets and ritualistically going the cinema (always tickles me that scene where they basically rob some teenagers and their first thought is let's go the cinema and spend the money as though it's some routine). I don't see that life as being too far from Matinee. These are kids scared of the bomb and finding escape in the cinema. When life gives you lemons, go the cinema. That's what it's all about. And think about the kids a little more you know.

Down at the cinema these days

I notice they do make some effort by having kids movies run longer and maintaing that Saturday morning slot. But I don't think that's enough. Back in the days of drive ins when they were first kicking off they'd have Disney specials to get them all down. We need more like that. Specially designed programmes and all that jazz. Because if there's one thing that still holds true, every kid deserves a good childhood. Cause it's all downhill from there.

Oh what a treat of a movie

Matinee is. Honestly, it's just a few undeveloped Characters, about three set pieces and a couple of Doo Wop songs away from being 5 stars and one of my absolute favourite movies.

Bonus Points for:

-John Goodman being wholesome

-The William Castle tricks

-The movie-in-the movie being a 50s style creature feature

-Incorporating the Cuban Missile Crisis

-The 50s Doo wop and Rock'n'roll soundtrack

-Joe Dante bringing back the Saturday matinee for the kids

Overall Score: 4.5/5