A mash-up of camp and sci-fi
Does Joe Dante consider himself a showman?
Many movie fans who grew up watching his films in the 1980s, when he was one of the elite science fiction and fantasy filmmakers, would say he is.
“I’m not enough of a businessman to be a showman,” said Dante, with a laugh.
Well, judge for yourself. Dante will be in person over the weekend at the Roxie Theater for “Joe Dante’s Films in Films,” a series of four movies being shown over the weekend that demonstrate his love of movies. They include “Twilight Zone: The Movie” and the “Matinee.” But Dante will start with a movie with which you might be less familiar that is sure to get you into the proper spirit for the weekend.
“The Movie Orgy” (4 p.m. Saturday, July 1) was created by Dante and his friends in the late 1960s at the Philadelphia College of Art. It is a nearly fivehour mishmash of old serials, clips, trailers, ads and other odds and ends. Dante got the idea when the 1943 “Batman” serial — all 15 episodes, shown all at once — became a hit at college campuses in the 1960s.
“There’s a certain psychological miasma that takes over after you’ve been staring at the screen that long — and of course, with the aid of pharmaceuticals, it was very popular,” Dante said. “So my friends and I decided to try and imitate that by doing a camp movie night. We went with a Bela Lugosi serial, and added a whole bunch of other nonsense — commercials, pieces of other movies we had collected, and turned it into a sevenhour show. … It’s really a potpourri of pop culture stuff.”
The Schlitz Brewing Company even paid Dante to take a 4½-hour version of “The Movie Orgy,” which was constantly evolving, to college campuses around the country. It was an experience that helped Dante decide to become a filmmaker (he originally wanted to be a cartoonist) and within a few years he was working for Roger Corman, editing Ron Howard’s first film as director, “Grand Theft Auto,” and directing “Piranha,” a spoof of “Jaws” and ’50s sci-fi movies.
Dante hit his stride in the 1980s with films such as “The Howling,” “Gremlins,” “Explorers,” “Innerspace” and “The ’Burbs.”
As a sign of his rising profile in Hollywood, Steven Spielberg invited him to direct an episode of “Twilight Zone: The Movie” (1983), along with Spielberg, John Landis and George Miller. That film screens at 9:30 p.m. Saturday, July 1.
The two-day showcase concludes with 1987’s horror/sci-fi hodgepodge “Amazon Women on the Moon” (6:30 p.m. Sunday, July 2), for which Dante contributed several segments, including “Reckless Youth,” a hilarious riff on “Reefer Madness” starring Carrie Fisher and Paul Bartel.
But before that is a screening of Dante’s sweetest, most underrated film. “Matinee” (2 p.m. Sunday, July 1) stars John Goodman as a William Castle-like producer of horror and science fiction films who is bringing his latest lowbudget atomic horror flick “Mant!” — “half man, half ant!” — to a small theater in Key West, Fla. The producer hits town just as tensions are rising during the Cuban missile crisis, which he immediately exploits to help ticket sales.
The 1993 movie harks back to the 1950s and early ’60s, when Dante was growing up in his New Jersey hometown movie theater. He even directed a 25-minute version of “Mant!,” a spot-on spoof of ’50s sci-fi, most of which appears in “Matinee.”
“Science fiction was topical then because it was what everyone was talking about,” Dante said. “Not only were they talking about UFOs, but they were talking about the upcoming World War III atomic war, and a lot of movies were veiled metaphors.
“Our neighborhood theater had a kiddie matinee, which was 10 cartoons and two features, and I always got up and left after the cartoons. The features had adults in them, and I didn’t think adults were very interesting. Then one day I stayed to see ‘It Came From Outer Space’ in 3-D and realized, ‘Maybe these adults can be interesting in the right circumstances.’ ”
Indeed, that childhood exuberance is still there, and that is the mind-set that will define the weekend at the Roxie.