The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)

GIANT SPIDER INVASION (1975) One star
Alan Hale’s opening line informs us we’re dealing with a bad movie: HI, LITTLE BUDDY.

Amazingly, THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION did not credit Sherwood Schwartz, the writer-producer responsible for both “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch,” for that line. Hale played the Skipper on “Gilligan” and I kept looking for Bob Denver as the Skipper’s local hick deputy or a drunk in a bar presided over by a bartender named Dutch. Denver never showed up, but did Hale show up in Denver’s “The Wackiest Wagon Train in the West.” This is a tough question.

Hale’s first line references his old TV show and one of his last lines references JAWS. His character’s all quips in this movie, asking the visiting NASA scientist if he’s seen JAWS and when our resident intellectual answers in the affirmative, Hale says “[This giant spider] makes that shark look like a goldfish.”

Well, I’ll quip right back: JAWS makes THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION look like a bad home movie or a film student’s very first production.

Bill Rebane films certain scenes in ways that approximate good old Roger Corman. The camera loves this absolutely precious little nymphet. We get tight shots of her cleavage and her crack barely seeping out of her scant panties. There are two dirty old men who make passes at her. She lists her measurements at 35-24-35. Turner Classic Movies did not dub in the Commodores’ “Brickhouse,” although the precise body measurements are different. The opening credits list her as “introducing Dianne Lee Hart.” Bet she never shows her grandkids this film. However, she manages to survive a 50-foot spider’s attack. Bet Rebane wanted her back for the sequel.

Her older sister (Leslie Parrish) did not luck out. First and foremost, she’s a lush. She outdrinks Ken Curtis in THE KILLER SHREWS and competes with Carolyn Brandt from THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES for the crown of B-Movie Drinking Champion. She’s made a mutant spider’s snack. This was obvious from her first scene. She drinks straight from the bottle, makes a pass at her younger sister’s date, and displays the first hint of any nudity. This is why her character obviously deserved to die.

The film has its dubious charms. Dutch rounds up a local good old boy and good old girl brigade that will take on a 50 ft. spider and fail miserably – amazingly, this mob did not cry out THEY’RE TAKING OUR JOBS! How often do citizen action brigades succeed in the movies? There’s a carnival scene and my first thought was WILL THE SPIDER ATTACK THE CARNIVAL? A follow-up question: ARE THERE STARS IN THE SKY? There’s a lot of scientific jargon read with a straight face . . . “unpredecented phenomena” . . . gamma ray shower . . . decreased barometric pressure . . . 600 gram charge . . . 360 degrees . . . “shower it with neutrons.” And nine, wait, thirteen dead cattle (where’s PETA?) and three explosions, no, wait, it may have been four. I obviously lost track. Oh, there’s a revivalist preacher intoning “hellfire and brimstone,” “locusts,” and “abominations.” I thought his last proclamation came after he caught a sneak preview of this film. The Sheriff reads a book titled FLYING SAUCERS WANT YOU. The giant spider here may have made the shark in JAWS look like a goldfish but the film JAWS made THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION (again) look like a bad home movie. You win some, you lose some.

Matinee (1993)

DAY 3, MATINEE

MATINEE (1993) Four stars
I still cannot believe, Mr. Sisney, that it took you until 2018 to finally see MATINEE. Better late than never, though.

I know, right, especially since Joe Dante’s one of my favorite directors and I cannot think of a single time when he’s let me down.

Just rattle off the titles to prove the case that Dante’s an American cinematic treasure of the highest degree.

We have PIRANHA (1978), THE HOWLING, GREMLINS, INNERSPACE, THE ‘BURBS, GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH, SMALL SOLDIERS, and LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION.

Please don’t forget “It’s A Good Life,” his segment from the highly uneven TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE or that Dante was pursued to direct a third JAWS film planned as a horror spoof titled JAWS 3, PEOPLE 0.

Oh, if only that would have been made rather than what turned out to be JAWS 3.

Or just imagine Dante’s remake of Dario Argento’s INFERNO.

Yeah, you’re right, Dante’s INFERNO just rolls straight off the tongue.

Oh, Dante also directed an early dance sequence in ROCK ‘N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL, the one when Mary Woronov’s fascist Principal Togar meets P.J. Soles’ Riff Randell for the first time, I do believe. Apparently Dante helped out fellow director Allan Arkush when the latter suffered from exhaustion.

I generally prefer Dante over both Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, who often strayed too far over into strained seriousness for their (and our) own good.

Few directors have been as explicit as Dante about being an unabashed film buff with a steady stream of references and that’s just one of the many joys found within his films. Granted, you don’t have to be a film buff to enjoy a Dante movie, but the pleasures can be limitless if you are one.

MATINEE expresses that more than any other Dante film.

It gives us an independent film producer named Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman), visiting Key West, Florida, to promote his latest greatest monster movie named MANT!, a half-man, half-ant epic in “Atomo-Vision and Rumble-Rama!”

It also gives us Gene Loomis, our resident teenage film buff who knows just about everything there is to know about the movies. You can just bet your bottom dollar that Dante was like that growing up.

Woolsey’s latest masterwork comes in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis and why, of course, you can’t have a frivolous entertainment like “Mant!” in the middle of the Cold War, the Red Scare, and, of course, nothing less than the End of the World.

That’s why you have concerned citizens (a.k.a. busybodies, killjoys, spoilsports) like the members of Citizens for Decent Entertainment milling around. Of course, there’s more to it than meets the eye.

Woolsey initially calls to mind Alfred Hitchcock, but there’s also William Castle (inspiration for Woolsey), Samuel Z. Arkoff, Roger Corman, and other figures of a bygone era evoked throughout MATINEE.

Castle perpetuated enough gags for a lifetime and he filmed HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL in “Emergo,” THE TINGLER in “Percepto,” and 13 GHOSTS in “Illusion-O.”

Film director John Waters touched on Castle, the director who made Waters want to make films (yes, blame it on Castle, lol): “William Castle simply went nuts. He came up with ‘Coward’s Corner,’ a yellow cardboard booth, manned by a bewildered theater employee in the lobby. When the Fright Break was announced, and you found that you couldn’t take it anymore, you had to leave your seat and, in front of the entire audience, follow yellow footsteps up the aisle, bathed in a yellow light. Before you reached Coward’s Corner, you crossed yellow lines with the stenciled message: ‘Cowards Keep Walking.’ You passed a nurse (in a yellow uniform?…I wonder), who would offer a blood-pressure test. All the while a recording was blaring, ‘Watch the chicken! Watch him shiver in Coward’s Corner!’ As the audience howled, you had to go through one final indignity – at Coward’s Corner you were forced to sign a yellow card stating, ‘I am a bona fide coward.'”

Meanwhile, Arkoff, through American International Pictures, produced everything from the Beach Party movies to biker films to Pam Grier to Ralph Bakshi to C.H.O.M.P.S. Arkoff created his own formula, The Arkoff Formula: Action, Revolution, Killing, Oratory, Fantasy, Fornication.

Corman, through both AIP and New World Pictures, directed or produced such notables as ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS, A BUCKET OF BLOOD, THE WASP WOMAN, THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, TARGETS, DEATH RACE 2000, GRAND THEFT AUTO, PIRANHA, and ROCK ‘N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL. Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Jack Nicholson, Ron Howard, Sylvester Stallone, James Cameron and, of course, Dante are just a few of the famous names who got their start or big break working for Corman behind or in front of the camera.

You might say that they don’t make ’em like they used to, back in the glory days of Castle, Arkoff, Corman, et cetera.

That’s not true and Dante’s films are exhibits for good “B” movies still being made.

Dante cast regulars Robert Picardo, Kevin McCarthy, Belinda Balaski, and, of course, “that guy” Dick Miller are in MATINEE. Miller has appeared in every one of Dante’s films, and he’s one of the main links with the cinematic past and present. I’m always glad to see Miller.

Both the main story of MATINEE and the film-within-the-film work, and I’ve largely touched on just the film buff aspect of the production.

Bottom line: MATINEE gets straight to the heart of why we love movies both good and bad. Just look at that beautiful advertising poster.

Christine (1983)

DAY 2, CHRISTINE

CHRISTINE (1983) Three-and-a-half stars
Back in college, during my first assignment for the school paper, I wrote a section about how Americans love their cars, from Route 66 and Jack Kerouac to James Dean and back. The summer editor took out the Americans love their cars section and now, it’s a suitable introduction for John Carpenter’s CHRISTINE, an adaptation of a Stephen King novel that does put a novel spin on some American fiction tropes.

We’ve seen many, many (arguably too many) films where boy meets girl and it’s love at first sight, but this is a film where it’s boy meets car and they meet cute with the car in shambles and up for sale by a codger who’s suspiciously quick to accept any price for the car. The boy’s arguably not in any better shape than the car.

The boy in love is Arnie Cunningham, a nerd supreme, and the car is a 1958 Plymouth Fury named Christine that’s definitely “bad to the bone” or at least bad to the bumper. Arnie, who dwells in 1978 California, might have liked to seen the 1957 Detroit prologue where an assembly line worker’s killed by the devil car, but Arnie and Christine are definitely meant for each other.

True love at first sight for both parties, and it will not be denied.

Yeah, you might say the film’s ridiculous, but most horror films are ridiculous, of course, and CHRISTINE works partly because it’s a love story with a twist in the main premise that we can appreciate. We love our cars, of course, but our love thankfully never reaches Arnie and Christine levels. It’s undeniable, though, to watch it happen to somebody else in a movie.

CHRISTINE also works because of the lead performance by Keith Gordon as the super nerd Arnie, who might be the cousin of Terry the Toad. He’s transformed by his love for his car into somebody foreign to his parents and his best friend Dennis, a football jock who sticks up for Arnie in the face of relentless school bullies and who questions Arnie’s purchase of the car right from the start. With this special car in his life, Arnie becomes a new young man by discarding his old taped-up horn-rimmed glasses, dressing like a latter day James Dean (ideal since Christine only plays ’50s rock ‘n’ roll), and becoming first arrogant and later belligerent, especially whenever any one comes between him and Christine. Fools they are, several individuals mess with the boy and car or just the car alone and they usually face gruesome consequences for their reprehensible actions.

We like this Arnie character and Gordon performance even more when Arnie starts taking a walk (or drive) on the mean side.

Anyway, the new brimming-with-confidence Arnie begins seeing the hot new girl in school, Leigh Cabot, and their relationship needless to say is complicated by Christine. Romantic triangles are frequent in the movies, but CHRISTINE might be the first and only one with a boy, a girl, and a killer car.

The girl and the car are both jealous of each other and that leads to the classic moment at the drive-in when the car attempts to kill the girl. Serves her right.

Needless to say, the girl wants very little to do with the boy after surviving this moment and the boy and the car become even closer, all leading us to a thrilling duel-to-the-death climax between machines in a garage.

John Rockwell and Alexandra Paul are just fine in their roles as best friend Dennis and would-be girlfriend Leigh, respectively, and if Columbia Pictures had its way, casting would have been disastrous with Scott Baio in the Arnie role and Brooke Shields as Leigh. Egads! Thankfully, the filmmakers insisted on lesser known actors. Kevin Bacon auditioned for Arnie, but he went off to do FOOTLOOSE instead and that obviously worked out best for all parties involved.

Gordon, who had previously appeared in JAWS 2 and DRESSED TO KILL, gives the defining performance of his career and his Arnie Cunningham rates with the greats in screen nerddom.

Veteran character actors Robert Prosky, Harry Dean Stanton, and Roberts Blossom (three of the best) are on hand and their old-fashioned grit and grime mesh well with the teeny boppers and the possessed car.

We talked about the subtle twists CHRISTINE puts on formula material. Well, the final line reading gives us Leigh declaring “God, I hate rock ‘n’ roll.” Probably the first teenager to ever say that in a film.

Frogs (1972)

DAY 1, FROGS

FROGS (1972) Three-and-a-half stars
“Today the pond . . . tomorrow the world.”
— FROGS tagline

FROGS is a creepy, malevolent little thriller with one of the best taglines in the history of promotion. Writer and satirist Fran Lebowitz called FROGS “the best bad movie I have ever seen in my life.” Yours truly calls it a damn good time at the movies.

We have a remote island ’round the Florida Everglades owned and operated by a crotchety old wheelchair bound millionaire named Jason Crockett (Ray Milland). See, Crockett’s a miserable old coot akin to both Dickens’ Scrooge and Disney’s Scrooge McDuck. Crockett bosses around everybody in his orbit and it’s a joy to behold. Bet this old man wishes that he could have been in A CHRISTMAS CAROL rather than FROGS. Seeing Milland in a wheelchair created recollections of Jimmy Stewart in REAR WINDOW. Yeah, Stewart and his character got a better deal.

Crockett throws himself a major shindig (family and their friends) celebrating both our nation’s birthday and the patriarch’s birthday. By the way, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died July 4, 1826, our country’s 50th anniversary. Mass amphibians and reptiles play the role of the ultimate party crashers here, taking over the Crockett mansion and isle. Bet this never happened to the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts and the Waltons.

There are frogs, toads, snakes (both land and water), lizards, turtles, alligators, spiders, and leeches, an impressive unwanted guest list and cast. They’re not mutated in size, only numbers. Apparently. Like Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS, nobody explains this phenomenon in clinical detail. We do not require an explanation. An explanation would only cheapen the effect. Interesting tidbit: 500 Florida frogs and 100 giant South American toads made a great escape during the production of FROGS.

Aesthetically, we get extended close-ups of frogs and toads. Even the frog statues owned by Crockett are ominous. All these close-ups reminded yours truly of both DUCK AMUCK and SUNSET BOULEVARD, where Daffy Duck and Gloria Swanson demanded close-ups. Daffy and Gloria should have been in FROGS. Would Ms. Swanson have played a frog? You can bet Daffy would have.

On top of that, the massed amphibians and reptiles pick off the Crockett family and friends one-by-one as if they have studied horror film killing techniques. They are smooth and systematic operators, and they give Milland one of the great telephone scenes in movie history. Bet they Dial M for Murder! It’s all a whole lot of fun.

I believe all the way back in the BAT PEOPLE review we covered how snakes and spiders are creepy, although usually more so in real life than movies. Yes, indeed, they are creepy, especially in a film where Les Baxter’s musical score sounds like it was affected by radioactive waste. Here we have a claustrophobic wheelchair bound old man on an island of his own design,who believes in spraying every living intruder dead with pesticides and finally all these pests are his uninvited guests at his funeral. This is a film that crowds in on its characters and we get a legitimate sense of the suffocating Southern Gothic atmosphere of this island and how some of these characters have already lost their damn minds after centuries of incest and years of pesticides. Eat the rich, indeed. What a great little bad movie.