60. Matinee

As Hollywood studios bemoan their every shrinking bottom line, pointing fingers at everyone but themselves, how quickly they forget that they dug the very hole in which they have become entrenched. It first happened more than half a century ago, when television gave theaters a run for their money, and audience. Ironically, the studios ended up competing with themselves, creating the very television programming that was keeping paying audiences home.

In order to draw them back, Hollywood had to make going to the theater an event. New processes, new formats, and new gimmicks were developed and marketed as only being available at a theater near you. Gimmickry led to exploitation, and leading the pack was a master of both, William Castle, who lured curious audiences into theaters with bold claims of in-your-face audience participation. Skeletons flew through the air, theater seats were rigged with electronic buzzers, off-stage receptacles pumped distinctive aromas into the auditorium, monsters leaped from the screen and into the audience. Most of Castle's films, House on Haunted Hill, 13 Ghosts, and The Tingler have since become camp classics, but were more noted for Castle's showmanship than craftsmanship.

Matinee, director Joe Dante's 1993 comedy starring John Goodman as showman and filmmaker Lawrence Woolsey, fondly and respectfully recaptures the time and spirit of Castle's reign. Of course Woolsey is actually Castle, a thinly (or in Goodman's case, portly) veiled tribute to a man who truly loved the show in showmanship. Set in Key West at the height of the Cuban Missile crisis, Matinee affectionately recreates the style and sensibilities of a "B" movie and a world facing an uncertain future. Dante’s ability to turn big buck mainstream entertainment into personal observations makes him the perfect person to bring all of this madness to the screen. The best Joe Dante films take place in small town America, Normal Rockwell paintings where first-time love is the biggest problem facing a teenager. Screenwriter Charlie Haas complicates the process by turning an idyllic paradise into a breeding ground for paranoia and unselfish heroics. Anyone who ever sat through a cheesy cold war science-fiction horror film will appreciate all of Dante's trappings, in-jokes, nostalgic swipes and the ever present "nurse" available in the theater lobby to ensure the health of all patrons. (John Larsen)