Those who know me consider me Mr. Entertainment, so I get asked about movies I’ve seen that often go unheralded. I used to see about 70 movies in the theater each year, and often most of those were, sadly, something you would wish upon your worst enemy. Or your grandmother. Or your maternal grandmother. Not saying I have a problem with my maternal grandmother.
However, if you read between the lines, maybe Grandma needs a double dose of The Roommate and The Rite. Maybe Grandma would be better off watching Anthony Hopkins possessed by a demon than calling you every Saturday night. DO YOU HEAR ME, GRANDMA? WATCH YOUR TELEVISION! I WON’T ANSWER THE PHONE!!!
Er…anyway, there’s an old adage that no one sets out to make a bad movie. Truth. But there’s another adage that sometimes people don’t see really good movies. What is wrong with you people? There was no reason to see Norbit. You should’ve seen Starter For 10 instead. It was a great coming-of-age story set in 1985 Britain. But you had to see Eddie Murphy in a goddamn fat suit!
There are four movies from the 1990s that I have a complete passion for, that flopped at the box office, but still live on in the hearts of those who keep them alive. To prove I’m not better than you, lovely reader, I admit to discovering them all on VHS tape except The Limey. That one I paid my hard-earned cash for to see in a rinky-dink movie theater in Pasadena. This was one of those theaters that used to be a large 1920s movie house and they carved the screen into six goddamned screens no larger than a postage stamp! I will see an indie movie on a bed sheet hung over a tree if I have to!
4. Ravenous (1999) was dumped on an unsuspecting public during the spring 16 years ago. In a time when young lovers swoon with ardor and the flowers bloom, a movie that has to do with Native American massacres and cannibalism arrived in theaters. It’s no wonder that people stayed away from it. However, it’s one of the darkest comedies ever, and directed by a British woman: Antonia Bird.
Look, I’m a hungry guy, okay? I can’t pass up a cheese shop without buying some gouda. Maybe I like to have the comfort and convenience of being able to eat French fries on any corner here in Los Angeles. I’m also rather adventurous when it comes to eating. Sure, I’m fine with some spaghetti or some tacos, but if you give me something new to try, I’m game. So if someone said to me that we had there’s a new human joint out on the corner of Cahuenga and Moorpark, I’d reflect very little on the morality of it and wonder if they had free refills on the soft drinks. That’s always the deal-breaker.
Not so for our hero, Capt. John Boyd (Guy Pearce). He arrives to take a new command at Fort Spencer which was grudgingly given for a victory obtained by cowardice. A stranger comes to the fort named Colqhoun (Robert Carlyle) who tells a tale about being trapped with his colonel, Ives. Ives forced the men to eat the dead to survive and found they gained the strength of those men. What Boyd and his ragtag frontier outpost folks don’t know is Colqhoun’s secret, and how they need to defeat him.
This is a wet dream for people who love character actors: John Spencer (The West Wing, in his last role), Jeffrey Jones, Jeremy Davies… all over-the-top in their special way. And Robert Carlyle? Batshit crazy. You know how you just relish watching actors steal the scene from each other? This movie does it every single scene. I spent two hours recently trying to see if there was life in Rachel McAdams’ eyes in Aloha and was convinced that one of the audio-animatrons from Tomorrowland had replaced her. You’ll never question the four actors’ desire to be noticed.
https://youtu.be/GrY5fgfKznw
3. The Limey (1999) was Steven Soderbergh’s siesta in-between Out Of Sight and Erin Brockovich, two popular and critical darlings. The Limey came to theaters (barely) and went (no one noticed). It features some of Soderbergh’s most inventive storytelling devices, as well as a central performance from Terence Stamp that is balls-to-the-wall badass.
Stamp plays Wilson, a British criminal who’s just been released from prison and heard his daughter, Jenny, living in Los Angeles, has died. The official report was an accident but Ed Roel (Luis Guzman), who wrote Wilson about the death, thinks otherwise. Wilson and Roel team up as Wilson exacts vengeance on anyone who stands in his way to the top. The top, in this case, is Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda), a wealthy man who Jenny was living with.
Much of Soderbergh’s virtuosity as a filmmaker is evident in the movie. In a scene with Lesley Ann Warren, where Wilson explains his past to her, Soderbergh shot the same scene in four places, then edited all four together to give the illusion of a long, rambling conversation in both time and space. In flashbacks, Soderbergh used footage from a 1967 film, Poor Cow, to depict Wilson as a young man. His use of sound is also unique. The first line of dialogue is repeated as a mantra, as well as out of context throughout the film, until its chronological placement happens.
None of the technical tricks matter with the heart of the story, which is that of a father who spent all of his time away from his daughter, and when he finally has the time to do so, is cheated out of it by another man. In this regard, action film posturing aside, Stamp plays Wilson as a tragic hero, who knows that vengeance will not fill the emptiness in his heart, but relishes the opportunity to exact it.
2. The Stoned Age (1994) is my own personal pick. The other three movies have enough cult cache to be renowned, plus each of them were released to theaters. The Stoned Age comes from a different time. Come back with me to the time when Blockbuster had two different new release shelves: One for all the movies everyone heard of, and then there was the shelf in the middle, set off, where such classics as Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge and Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil resided. Maybe it was being in my early twenties and not being a film snob that demanded that I rent these films, but rent and view them I did. One of those films was packaged as a low-rent Dazed and Confused.
The Stoned Age is the story of Joe (Michael Kopelow) and Hubbs (Bradford Tatum), two guys looking to get drunk and find some fine chicks. The time is sometime in the 1970s, even though there’s very little effort given to period accuracy. This is part of its charm.
The story follows their adventures through Torrance Beach, Calif. as they drift from party to party, with their source, Tack (Clifton Collins Jr.). After a couple of false starts, they hear that a party is happening down at “the old Frankie Avalon place” and drive Hubbs’ car, the Blue Torpedo, there. Joe’s a sensitive sort, which he attributes to being hit by the laser at a Blue Oyster Cult show and seeing a massive eyeball. Hubbs scoffs at him, claiming both Blue Oyster Cult and Joe are pussies.
There are so many lines I use in real life, especially as shorthand with friends. “But these are TALLS, man!” “Information without transportation equals dick.” “The schnappsteria! (ding)” “He’s just some dude.” My former landlord and soul brother can talk simply in lines from the film.
During the summer of 1995, when we were in our twenty-second year, we’d have barbeques with chicken, burgers, and hot dogs, and make strawberry daiquiris that were 90 percent rum and 10 percent daiquiri. We played The Stoned Age every single Sunday that summer. Sometimes we’d rewind the tape and start it again.
The movie also has a lot of scene-stealing turns, most notably from the late Taylor Negron. Negron, one of the most underrated comedians of the 1980s and 1990s, excels as the butterfly-collared, sympathetic liquor store cashier who wants to know if Joe and Hubs will party “with the foxes!”
Kevin Kilner plays Officer Dean, the policeman who tries hard to ingratiate himself with the kids by claiming he was one of them. Each time Officer Dean catches them doing something illegal, he gives them a lecture from his past, whether he was a teen drinker (“They used to call me ‘Dixie-Cup’ Dean.”) or a thief (“They used to call me ‘Doggie-Door Dean.’ Was a good second floor man, too.”). Last, but by no means least, 1970s relic David Groh plays the parent of one of the chicks at the Frankie Avalon place.
If you’re looking for a film that’s goofy and leaves you with a smile on your face, I can’t think of a better one.
1. Matinee (1993): When I was growing up, the threat of nuclear war was a day-to-day concern. The media fanned those flames of concern with films like Threads and The Day After. (Hey, I finally found a use for some of the knowledge imparted in my “Nuclear Weapons/Nuclear Fear” class in college!) We’d always hear about the fabled red button, and how close we were to utter annihilation.
Nostalgia freaks remember the early 1980s for the music and the movies, but I remember how it was scary to listen to the news as a child and hear about America and the Soviet Union as big bullies who would kill everyone on Earth eventually. Well, America still has potential (yes, Virginia — we’re still No. 1 in potential Armageddon), but the Soviet Union is no more.
Joe Dante grew up in that world too, albeit two decades before me. Today’s kids don’t have that sort of fear (thankfully, terrorism has replaced nuclear Armageddon as fear du jour), and even in 1993, Dante’s Matinee seemed quaint. Coming out the same weekend that President Bill Clinton’s first week in office ended, America turned a corner that didn’t want to dwell on that past.
Dante has directed some of your favorite movies. I guarantee it. His 1980s output rivals Spielberg: The Howling, Gremlins, Innerspace, and The ‘Burbs. I guarantee you that anyone 40 or younger has seen these films about five times each. In addition, he directed the feature Explorers and segments of Amazing Stories and Amazon Women on the Moon. Dante is a man who makes movies for people who love movies.
https://youtu.be/l_kTbWDxITw
Matinee is that kind of movie. At once a love letter to William Castle, the exploitation filmmaker who’d use gadgets like Emergo (a skeleton on wires that traveled across the theater ceiling) during House on Haunted Hill and Percepto (parodied in this film, where a buzzer was attached to the seats of certain patrons) during The Tingler, and nostalgia for pre-Nov. 22, 1963 America, it is a coming-of-age story set against the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman) has come to Key West, Fla. to premiere his new film, Mant! Woolsey tries to stir up a protest with his planted rabble-rousers, but the mood of the coastal town is too dour to have any effect, except on some kids. Woolsey prepares the theater with a special rumbling device for when the giant ant shows up. What could happen at the premiere when a nervous populace, a crowd full of unruly kids, and an untested rumbling device converge?
In its first weekend at the box office, Matinee was beaten by a movie called Sniper with Tom Berenger that no one remembers. It did, however, beat Children of the Corn II, so there was some taste in the audience that final weekend of January 1993. Matinee has a 93 percent Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is an achievement unto itself. It’s the best movie that you’ve probably never seen. On the out-of-print LaserDisc, Dante even re-edited Mant! from all its footage in the film to watch as a whole. You can find its 1950s B-movie glory on YouTube.
On a personal note, frustrated for many years by having an (out-of-print) bare-bones DVD, I asked Dante via Twitter if there was any special edition on the horizon. He mentioned there was a French Blu-ray out there, but no special edition here. This is a sad thing for all of us. We could all use a little Mant! in our lives.
