I love to see their little faces light up…
Burning, severed gremlin head in the original GREMLINS.
It’s one of those movies we catch a minute of on TV and we end up watching the whole thing. There are a number of movies like that, and Joe Dante is responsible for a disproportionate number: GREMLINS II, INNERSPACE… if MATINEE, THE ‘BURBS and SMALL SOLDIERS turned up more regularly, they’d probably have a similar effect.
And each viewing turns up more details, like the wonderful puppetry of Gizmo falling asleep to INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS on late-nite TV: fear, sleepy fear, sleep… And a trip to the IMDb turns up more in-joke casting that eluded me, like the fact that the town minister is the guy from The Trouble with Tribbles. Demented gag where he casually encourages one of his parishioners to insert a hand into a mailbox he knows is gremlin-infested, just so he cans see what happens…
At any rate, I’ve contributed a short appreciation of Dante to La Furia Umana, the excellent bi-lingual online movie magazine, and you can read it here.
shadowplay 
January 2, 2012 at 2:42 pm
Great piece David, I really need to check out more Dante (seen and loved the two Gremlins films many times, and saw Small Soldiers years ago)… I suppose I should start with Piranha and take it from there?
January 2, 2012 at 3:14 pm
January 2, 2012 at 3:15 pm
January 2, 2012 at 3:16 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-lY9CQCZ3s
January 2, 2012 at 3:19 pm
I’ve yet to see The Movie Orgy, but I guess that’s the logical start point. For sheer charm, Matinee and Innerspace are the two I’d recommend after the Gremlins films.
January 2, 2012 at 8:36 pm
Oh yes, Matinee is wonderful. Good to see some love for Small Soldiers (another great subversion of the tentpole effects movie) too. The only time I’ve really not liked a Dante film is his Twilight Zone segment, and that’s partly because the original story, It’s a Good Life, was one of the scariest things I’d ever read when I was about fourteen, and Dante, typically, doesn’t go far into the story’s darkness.
January 2, 2012 at 9:59 pm
Somebody here sometime gave a good defense of that episode’s ending, arguing that Dante has planted enough info to subvert any expectation that it’s a happy end. So I’m looking forward to revisiting it with that in mind.
The story is indeed chilling, but not filmable in that form (so much of it’s backstory). Must read some more Bixby.
January 2, 2012 at 11:21 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9g6OnhZ834&feature=related
January 2, 2012 at 11:21 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw2R5a6cggY&feature=related
January 2, 2012 at 11:22 pm
Oh I think it’s plenty dark. Donnie Darko dark.
January 2, 2012 at 11:58 pm
Like I’ve said, the mouthless girl freaked me the hell out. And I love the b&w shadowy corridor.
Nothing can touch the original story for sheer bleakness, but Dante hits a note of outrageous grotesquerie that’s hard to beat.
BTW, Donnie Darko was the last film Ken Russell watched with his missus. He liked the rabbit.
February 9, 2013 at 9:28 pm
Joe Dante is great, and the fact that he rarely gets to make anything for cinema now, is cinema’s loss and ours. I loved Matinee but that’s one of the few Dantes I’ve only seen once on television. I also really liked the tv series Eerie, Indiana he produced particularly the episode Reality Takes a Holiday (a reality-bender in which the magnificent Mr Dante appears and Eerie appears as a set) and a romantic entry which made me tear up as a youth.
I haven’t seen The Hole, perhaps being put off by its young adult-orientation which makes no sense as I’ve watched Gremlins, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Explorers et al many times (particular the first two – Gremlins opening titles to Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home) is impossible to resist with the Bedford Fallsish Kingston Falls as the backdrop and the other references in the background).
February 10, 2013 at 2:34 am
Dante is at work on a new movie now, I believe…
February 10, 2013 at 2:51 am
Excellent news. I hope he has good luck, I must have a look for information on that. He comes across as a great talker and enthusiast (with the added bonus that he’s not irritating like QT) in the interviews I’ve read/seen and seems a nice man.