Neil Baker and Agnes SajtiMatinee and Strait-Jacket are available to rent, buy or stream.
DOUBLE BILL
MATINEE (1993)
Mention the name Joe Dante, and Gremlins, Explorers, or Innerspace usually come to mind. Yet, Matinee is undoubtedly one of his most personal movies. In Matinee, Dante takes his inspiration from the 1950s comic books and films that inspired him as a kid while exploring the true horror of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Placing his story in the hands of a character not dissimilar to movie mogul and showman William Castle, Dante would weave theatrical showmanship, escapism and change with silver screen dreams.
It’s 1962, and John F Kennedy is president of the United States. However, the optimism of his inauguration in January 1961 has been replaced by paranoia and the fear of a possible Nuclear War. Movie Mogal and live theatre impresario Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman) is preparing to launch his latest monster flick, ‘Mant’ and where better place than Key West, Florida? After all, just off the coast, the horror and fear of the Cuban Missile Crisis is unfolding, leaving everyone on edge. Gene (Simon Fenton) lives on the local army base with his younger brother, mum and absent navy dad. He spends his days with his best friend, Stan (Omri Katz), buried in monster magazines, movies, and science fiction as the world changes around him. However, Gene is aware that teenage life will soon invade, and Stan is already beginning to favour girls over the local cinema, but thankfully no girl is going to trump seeing Woolsey’s new film ‘MANT’ on the big screen in a cinema rigged with theatrical tricks.
Matinee is a love letter to a now-bygone era of cinematic showmanship from directors like Castle, who enthralled, enticed and entertained behind auditorium doors. If, like me, you spent your weekends as a kid in the safety of a cinema where your feet were stuck to the floor, Matinee is a sublime slice of nostalgic movie-making. This is Dante’s childhood and teens, laced with elements of fiction as he reminds us of the power cinema can wield in our younger years and the reality that the adult world is far scarier than anything on the screen. Matinee marks the end of the fantasy and wonder of our early teens through a glorious haze of buttered popcorn, movie magic, cheers, and screams. It is the ultimate love letter to cinema, dreams and teenage awakenings.
▽
DOUBLE BILL
STRAIT-JACKET (1964)
William Castle’s 1964 B-film, Strait-Jacket, is a psychological horror that follows Lucy Harbin – Joan Crawford, in the worst wig of her career – who has recently been released from a psychiatric hospital, having decapitated her husband and his mistress in front of her three-year-old child. But as Harbin moves back in with her daughter, Carol (Diane Baker), a series of murders once more haunt the town. As horrifying as all this sounds, Castle’s film is more camp-horror than shocker, primarily due to the film’s low budget, cartoonish, bloodless beheadings. But this only adds to the fun of Castle’s horror romp. Written by Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho, Strait-Jacket could be described as Psycho’s less scary twin, despite some visual shocks and a twisty ending. Yet it quickly forgoes its horror in favour of the ridiculous reasonably early on, marking it out from Hitchcock’s 1960 masterpiece.
Strait-Jacket follows the so-called hagsploitation trend set by Robert Aldrich’s cult classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). This horror subgenre predominantly featured a formerly glamorous older woman who was mentally unbalanced, joyously tormenting all those around her. Undoubtedly, Joan Crawford proved to be an excellent choice for the lead, her delightful performance elevating the film. However, her performance is also surrounded by a hint of sadness, as the parallels between Crawford’s declining career and her character’s inability to be taken seriously by society haunt each scene. Throughout the film, Castle tries to surround the narrative with discussions on trauma, internal pain and personality disorder to varying degrees of success. But in the end, Strait-Jacket can’t help but succumb to Castle’s B-Movie splendour, and while that may not lead to anything ground-breaking, the ride is certainly fun.
