How to get into horror movies, according to Joe Dante
It’s possible that no director has introduced more young people to horror films than Joe Dante. His Gremlins films combine Looney Tunes humor with gore that could only be considered “family friendly” in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Those films inspired countless people toys, lunch boxes and new T-shirts. And the series continues to draw kids into the world of slightly scary media: the latest cartoon spin-off, Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwaipremiered on Max in 2023, and a second season, Gremlins: The Wild Batchwas just announced for the fall.
Dante’s later films never quite reached Gremlins‘ dominance of pop culture, but he continued to think of ways to position horror for younger audiences, including 1993’s Matinee, set in Key West against the anguish of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the tension of a horror film director embarking on his next big project. A showpiece for the lovable John Goodman, the film embodies elements of Alfred Hitchcock, Roger Corman and William Castle while promoting an all-time great film-within-a-film: Mant!
Matinee – too long underrated and hard to find – is now available on Blu-ray and 4K UHD. To mark this occasion, I had the chance to ask Dante, who introduced so many 80s and 90s kids to horror, where he would recommend a young newcomer to the genre to start today. What follows is an edited version of his guidance:
I would send them to William Castle. My favorite Castle movie is House on Haunted Hillbecause it has such a good script. You can go back to early John Carpenter (The thing, Halloween). You can go back to Wes Craven (Scream, A nightmare on Elm Street).
It depends on how old they are and what they have already been exposed to. (If they are younger) they probably haven’t seen the Universal (Monster movies). Those films were a gateway for me because I had never seen them when they appeared on television in the late 1950s. They hadn’t been shown in theaters for years. I didn’t know them all. We kids were all new to this. The Famous monsters magazine came out purely because there was this whole audience of kids who were suddenly fascinated by these movies that they didn’t know existed. And these actors, many of whom were dead, were now very iconic. And (kids) wanted to see more movies with these actors.
Joining the horror movie community (now) is probably a great way to learn more about what’s out there. You can also log in to my website, Trailers from hell. There are like a thousand trailers narrated in different ways by people who are filmmakers: writers, directors, editors and actors. You play the trailer and they talk about the movie. And they suggest that if you liked that this movie, you might like this (other) movie. It’s very satisfying when people come up to me and say, “I just saw this movie and I never heard of it until I saw it on your website. And now I really want to see more pictures of that man.” So it helped a lot. It’s like a mini film school.