Review of Matinee (1993) by Maxwell D — 14 Jun 2010

In the Last Days of Innocence.

Honestly, the film's setting during the Cuban Missile Crisis is already an anachronism. The glory days of gimmicked horror movies were in the '50s, and most of the story's sillier background details link more to that time than 1962. However, its setting is important to the story it's telling, and maybe the fact that its story is just that anachronistic makes it better. In just over a year, Kennedy will be assassinated, something essentially no one within the movie can remember a parallel to. (The previous Presidential assassination was that of William McKinley, nearly sixty years earlier.) A lot of ideals got thrown out the window that day in 1963, though I think the groundwork was set during the time shown in this movie. The dreams of prosperity in horror gimmickry will not come true, because its time is at an end. Still, there is hope for all that, and maybe things will work out after all.

Gene Loomis (Simon Fenton, exactly two months older than I am) is a Navy brat currently living in Key West, Florida. His father (voiced by Brett Rice) is on a blockade ship off Cuba. Gene has to deal with his father's being away, being less than a hundred miles from Cuba, and being the new kid in school. He's been the new kid in school every year, though, so he's used to that. He has found solace in monster movies, which are at least a constant. Then one day, he sees a preview for the new Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman) movie, and he finds out Woolsey is actually coming to town to promote it. Gene catches him in a publicity stunt, and he uses it to convince Woolsey to let him help out with the preparations. He also makes friends with townie Stan (Omri Katz, also about my age), an Ordinary Guy with a crush on Sherry (Kellie Martin, over a year older), a pretty local girl. Who has, in her past, juvenile delinquent Harvey Starkweather (James Villemaire), who also ends up in Woolsey's circle of influence.

Another anachronism is the lovely Sandra (Lisa Jakub, younger than us and once the responsibility of the Mountie). Okay, I'm sure there were already girls like her, but she even seems to have hippy parents. Sandra refuses to go along with the air raid drill, pointing out (quite accurately) that ducking in the hall with your hands behind your neck will not save you from a nuclear blast, and anyway radiation poisoning is no fun even if it does. She has the long, straight hair which will become popular later in the decade, and unlike the other girls, she doesn't wear crinolines. Naturally, outsider Gene falls for outsider Sandra, not that they're outsiders in quite the same way, of course. Not unlike a lot of children of liberal parents, she gets taken to a movie she doesn't really want to see, because by watching it, she is able to make her own opinion instead of bowing to Them. (The idea that your opinion can be "I'm not really interested in that" never seems to cross anyone's mind.) Though of course, it sets up the ending.

As, of course, does Harvey Starkweather. His name, for those unfamiliar with 1950s spree killers, is a play on Charles Starkweather, executed in 1959 for a string of eleven murders, including three members of the family of his girlfriend and maybe-accomplice, Caril Ann Fugate. (She served time in prison for the killings, though she always denied having killed anyone and claimed to have been Starkweather's hostage the whole time.) He's probably a play on several others as well, given that he's released from prison early because "some guy in New York" likes his poetry (which is very bad). He is dressed like a '50s hood, like the evil Fonzie. He is also arguably a symbol of the failing of innocence. For one, Sherry only slowly realizes that he's not the charming rebel she thought he was. For another . . . the spectre of the "JD" seems so naïve now. Oh, he was later sanitized as, well, Fonzie, but even the guy with the switchblade pales in comparison with the spectre of my childhood, the gang member with an automatic weapon.

All in all, the word which most frequently springs to mind is "charming." An intellectual look at the film probably makes us sympathize most with Ruth Corday (Cathy Moriarty), Woolsey's long-suffering girlfriend. She goes along with Woolsey's vision, but with a heavy sigh and an eye-roll. She'll dress up as a nurse for the gimmick of having kids sign releases to say that they won't sue if they faint, but she really resents having to be carried around by the guy in the Mant suit. (Half man, half ant, all terror!) So tedious. She'll act in the films, too, along with old hands Kevin McCarthy (whose body was not snatched) and Dick Miller. However, unlike everyone else, she's standing outside events. Leave it for Woolsey to get caught up in the film and theatre manager Howard (Robert Picardo) to get caught up in preparing for Armageddon. We may not be as cyncial as Ruth, but we also don't have to live it--or be the one to pay the bills.