Matinee

This unfairly neglected made-for-TV Canadian horror movie has so much more going for it than its current obscurity might suggest. Set in the small rural 'nothing ever happens here' community of Holsten B. C, the sleepy town's bucolic ennui shattered by the brutal slaying of a female cinema goer during a special screening of splattery slasher 'Bad Blood' and two years later with the pending horror festival to include a premiere screening of 'Bad Blood II' the increasingly angsty locals fear yet another tragedy and sleazy local reporter, Geoff (Timothy Webber) is keen to capitalize on the escalating mania as stolid, ex-city cop Al (Ron White) investigates the escalating midnight movie madness!

From the tense slasher-movie-within-slasher-movie opening whereby the histrionic screams upon the screen echo bloodily in the packed theatre, Midnight Matinee provides some ironical, B-Horror escapism. This playful Canadian chiller is a bargain Bin Bobby Dazzler, packed with more red herrings than Lenin's lunch box! Relatively bloodless, there are a number of splendiferous, Giallo-esque set pieces evoking the sinister stylings of maestro, Lamberto Bava. There's even one gnarly kill mirroring the audacious slicing n' dicing behind the flickering screen from 'Demons'! The inventively dispatched victims are a likable cotton-tailed bunch, the nimble narrative maintains interest and it's always cool to see, William B. (Smoking Man) Davis appear in anything! The feisty final curtain proves suitably fatal and I, for one, would certainly stay up late for the welcome return of this mental midnight matinee!

Shudder savouring fans of similarly quirky cult shockers 'Fade to Black' and 'Popcorn' should get a moderately blissful B-Horror buzz from, Richard Martin's Giallo-centric Canadian creep-fest 'Midnight Matinee', as it resolutely remains a late night terror treat ideally suited for stupefied schlock rockers, B-Slasher epicureans, macabre murder misfits and avid Canuxploitation completists alike!

I like Canadian movies, the made for TV ones tend to be pretty good. This is a nice little thriller/horror that keeps the story moving along.

It is set mostly around a cinema with mostly unlikable characters. I don't know why, but I was hard pressed to find at least one sympathetic character apart from the young lead actress.

I have to admit, I did not see the ending coming, so extra points for that.

While it is not a perfect movie, it is an entertaining one. The actors do a good job and it was nice to see so many that had appeared in the X Files, so that was fun.

This is a movie that delivers what it promises, There are some solid kills and a couple of actually scary moments.

This is my version of comfort food horror, something that I enjoy with a warm drink and a bowl of popcorn.

Two years ago the local movie theater had a horror film festival, during which a local teen was murdered at the same moment and manner as the on screen character. Now another horror movie festival is set to happen, and some people feel history will repeat itself.

I was fairly amused with the film starting out with the Kevin Bacon death scene from "Friday the 13th" (though without Bacon himself and the movie renamed "Murder Camp"). This seemed to bode well for how the rest of the film would go.

And then, well, the film goes nowhere... we have a few amusing scenes with a guy dancing on a skateboard, and you get to see a blonde, curly mullet and Major Briggs from "Twin Peaks". But, yeah, being made-for-TV it is pretty tame and not the bloody slasher it should be.

This made-for-TV Canadian production was an acceptably entertaining, if predictable whodunit thriller using horror references (posters and images) and backdrop tools (horror movie festival) to suck in genre fans. Well those novelties do amuse. As it is, it holds your interest, but can be plodding and flat with its flabby material covering the conventional basics and having an overly talky script. You got the usual red herrings (the movie geek, weathered cop, seamy newspaper reporter, repressed mother, two rebellious teens and the list goes on… and on) and dramas (forbidden love to lurking secrets) in a more bounded by reality than most stalk and slash items that are screening at the movie festival. However some certain plot aspects seem to be just there or just non-effective (like the police investigation). Everything is done in a subdued manner (from the minor list of off-screen killings to the performances) and drills out a sombre vibe. Disposable performances are passable and there are some recognisable faces in the way of Don S. Davis and William B Davis that add some class. Director Richard Martin slack handling doesn't build much in the way of suspense or etches much style. Despite being steadily well presented (the score is competently suited), it's wooden all round and shows it TV origins.

MATINEE (1989) 2 out of 10 stars Time to Read: 1:35 min

BASIC PLOT: A murder at a small town movie theater, sets off more murders. A jackass big city cop comes to town to hide from his past, and stop the killings. He does neither, and the self-righteous, shallow, vacuous people of Holsten, British Columbia continue with their pointless lives.

WHAT WORKS: *THE ACTING IS ABOVE AVERAGE and it's wasted here, wasted on a TERRIBLE plodding and pedantic film.

*DECENT FILMMAKING There are some beautiful shots that took real talent to get, but they are wasted on a script that's tedious and telegraphed.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: *PACING PROBLEMS This movie is slow! And not only is it slow, but even when things do happen, they are filler, boring filler.

*TERRIBLE ATTEMPT AT NEO-NOIR, and at using the grey, dreary background of Canada as an atmospheric. It could have been outstanding for this type of slow burn, but instead it's pitiful.

*TELEGRAPHED FROM START TO FINISH, From Al (Ron White) and Marilyn's (Gillian Barber) conversation at the diner, where he says, "I guess I never see what's right in front of my face", to Marilyn's family pictures that give away EVERYTHING, you know all the answers from the beginning of the film! There's no big reveal, the whole movie is a spoiler! There's foreshadowing, and there's giving everything away, and this is the latter.

*I HATE EVERY SELFISH F___ING PRIG IN THIS MOVIE Cops that punch reporters, and railroad teenagers, because that want to impress a woman, doesn't make them a flawed, neo-noir protagonist, it just makes them a blind, ignorant jackass. I'm supposed to care about Al Jason (Ron White), but I don't. He's just irritating.

Sherri (Beatrice Boepple) turns on her boyfriend Lawrence (Jeff Schultz) all the time, and he's the only decent character in the whole film!

Earle Gardner (Don S. Davis), the gay theater owner, wants to shoot his boyfriend, Warren (R. Nelson Brown), simply because he's playing mind games with the police, who are trying to railroad him. What? You want to shoot your boyfriend because he's being snarky to the homophobic police?!

And don't even get me started on Lawrence Shaw Sr. (Walter Marsh), who treats his grandson Lawrence, the only likable character, like crap.

Every character here is a PRIG! This movie should have been called, "Prigville", because that's what it is. Everyone here thinks they're better than everyone else, they are disgusting. It's a bunch of weak, pathetic useless people, WHO AREN'T INTERESTING TO WATCH! I kept hoping a tornado would touch down and kill everyone, then I remembered it was Canada.

*CHARACTERS HAVE NO DEPTH and they should! With pacing this slow, there should have been tons of character development, but there wasn't. The characters are flat, and uninteresting.

TO RECOMMEND, OR NOT TO RECOMMEND, THAT IS THE QUESTION: *I cannot recommend this movie to anyone except insomniacs, because it will put you to sleep! The only thing good about it is it's good for an Arquivo X (1993) drinking game. There are 9 actors from the Arquivo X (1993) in this movie - Gillian Barber, Timothy Webber, Don S. Davis, R. Nelson Brown, Matt Hill, William B. Davis, Stephen E. Miller, Kerry Sandomirsky and Walter Marsh. Take a drink every time you find one of them, and then maybe it will become watchable.

CLOSING NOTES: *I HAVE NO CONNECTION TO THE FILM, or production in ANY way. This review was NOT written in full, or in part, by a bot. I am just an honest viewer, who wishes for more straight forward reviews (less trolls and fanboys), and better entertainment. Hope I helped you out.