Matinee - Die Horrorpremiere

I had just recently watched Matinee for the first time in a few years. I forgot how much fun and how very funny a film it was. Having grown up watching some of William Castle's and Roger Corman's hokey but very entertaining early horror films it was like a stroll down memory lane on my Saturday's. Goodman captured the essence of a movie showman who always had or wanted to have a gimmick to go with his B movie pictures. Cathy Moriarty is excellent as his favorite leading lady. I must be showing my age because I still remember the duck and cover and other little things associated with everyday life and times during the late 1950's and early 1960's that were in the movie. The movie was entertaining and a very nice parody, if not dedication to the men who made B movies as part of our culture. I have to believe this dedication to men like Corman and Castle would have to be a bit of a tongue in cheek parody for it to be a very sincere dedication. The movie does an excellent job of bring back the life and times and the performances as pretty good. Aaaahhhh the memories. The cold war and much simpler times and classic B movies. It don't get any better than this.

One of those films that deserved to reach a huge audience but somehow slipped away, Joe Dante's affectionate homage to creature features and B-movie king William Castle is a joy from start to finish. This is due to both Dante's direction - and obvious love of the script - and John Goodman's delightful performance (what was he doing in crap like "Coyote Ugly?"). Even the movie-within-a-movie - "Mant!" ("half man, half ant - all terror!") is fun. The only downside is that this rarely turns up on TV and hasn't been released on DVD in the UK. A scratchy vhs is better than nothing I suppose...

"This is Lawrence Woolsey and ...." starts this movie in great style as a 1960's style of movie promo. The movie starts starts very well and only gets bogged down late in the film when a couple of kids get shut into a bomb shelter by mistake.

This film portrait of the 1960's schlock entertainer Woolsey (as portrayed by John Goodman) continues to be his best film role. Goodman who is now one of the spokes people for Duncan Donuts (quickly putting Starbucks out of business), is perfect for the role of Woolsey. He is surrounded by a lot of old time talent & some younger folks who manage to put over an active film story.

Two coups of this are the film within a film setting which is employed successfully with the cutting between them being made smoothly without losing the plot line and the melding of some old timers into the film in support. William Schallert is used very effectively in the MANT film within the film. Jesse White is just as effective as the guy who is trying to evaluate Woolsey's show.

The film is a send up of lots of themes from Civil Defense, to the Missile Crisis, to movies in general, to sci-fi 1950's films, to spoofing life itself. There are even spoofs of characters within the film including a broad send-up of two Liberal Parents and their attitude towards raising their daughter.

This film is loaded with everything including the theater sign which has now failed, "Fight Pay TV". If you like John Goodman, this is his best role to date outside of Dan on Roseanne, a must see film for the Goodman fan.

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.

Certainly John Goodman portraying Lawrence Woolsey as a film director bent on all kinds of creative devices to lure audiences in to see his sci-fi/horror movies is a homage to the King of Gimmicks himself, William Castle. This movie is not great by any standards, but it sure is a lot of fun. It is a trip down memory lane for many. Although I am not old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis nor William Castle movies premiering, I am given a pretty accurate feel of the times through Matinee. The best part of the movie, however, is the movie within a movie....MANT...the story of a man that is half-man and half-ant. The scenes of this film alone are good enough reason to see Matinee. The one scene where the Mant character throws an ant farm to the ground and yells "You're free, You're free" is hilarious. The movie characters are also made up of old sci-fi stars Kevin McCarthy(Invasion of the Body Snatchers), William Shallert(Hundreds of films it seems), and Robert Cornwaithe(The Thing). Also look for John Sayles and Dick Miller in smaller roles hamming it up. Goodman is larger than life in his portrayal, much the same way that Castle was. And certainly, we in the audience that are great genre fans dream what it would have been like to help William Castle...I mean Lawrence Woolsey...make a picture.