Matinee

Somebody like Herb or Vincent price, it's like they're my friends. A movie about making movies to scare people set during the Cuban Missile crisis when everyone was scared about global thermonuclear armageddon, and a teenage coming of age story all rolled into one. John Goodman plays a William Castle type director who makes monster movies full of gimmicks. The film within a film here is Mant, being a Man-ant created by a radioactive accident who goes on a rampage. There's a moment in this film in a film where Mant rampages through a cinema, tearing the screen to get at the cinema goers, the camera changes to some audience members pointing at the camera and shouting that Mant is behind you! And then as a gimmick someone in a Mant costume runs through the cinema, scaring the kids. And at this point inside the cinema I was watching this we had someone in a Mant costume running around yelling. It was absolutely fucking amazing! Ever since reading about House on Haunted Hill having a spooky skeleton wooshing above the heads of some cinema audiences in Hollywood back in 1959, and about some of the other gimmicks William Castle would pull off, I've wanted to experience my own William Castle style gimmick, and now I have! Thanks to the Watershed and Bristol Megascreen crew for doing this. Absolute peak cinema. Anyway the film is really good and very funny. A love letter to old 50s and 60s horror and monster B-movies, and to going to the cinema and having a good time and being scared by radioactive monsters, who really are our friends. Well, my friends at the very least. Extra half star just for the authentic Mant experience. You see, the people come into your cave with the 200-year-old carpet. The guy tears your ticket in half. Too late to turn back now. The water fountain's all booby-trapped and ready, the stuff laid out on the candy counter. Then you come over here to where it's dark. Could be anything in there! And you say... "Here I am! What have you got for me?" 1st movie of day 4 of Cinema Rediscovered 2026