Matinee

Schlock of warmongering, vindication of William Castle. "You gotta have a gimmick, y'know?" Key West during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a swirl of panic and adolescent discovery. The junior high-schooler (Simon Fenton) is "a walking encyclopedia" of cinematic lore, Dad is away with the Navy so the creature-feature barnstormer (John Goodman) fills the void, "the screen's number one shock expert." (His latest sci-fi opus, Mant!, shakes up Saturday afternoon with "Atom-o-Vision" and "Rumble-Rama.") The kids are alright, best bud (Omri Katz) and princessy coed (Kellie Martin) and spiky peacenik (Lisa Jakub), plus the gelhead punk (James Villemaire) out of the reformatory and into the rubber monster suit. The adults include Dick Miller and John Sayles for the Citizens for Decent Entertainment committee, and the sardonic leading lady (Cathy Moriarty) playing nurse in the lobby for patrons dying of fright. "Boy, this business has changed." Red-Alert satire, memory piece, spectatorship essay, all served con amore by Joe Dante. Duck-and-cover drills and supermarket hoarders, the inanity of Disney family flicks and the jolt of Lenny Bruce records. The horror producer is a genial huckster who stage-manages the communal spectacle while in the bunker downstairs the paranoid theater owner (Robert Picardo) feeds popcorn to his goldfish. The movie within has the proper cheeseball poetry for saluting Jack Arnold and Gordon Douglas, with William Schallert, Robert Cornthwaite and Kevin McCarthy in the cast. "Young lady, human-insect mutation is far from an exact science." The future is the first kiss between a military brat and a budding hippie in the fallout shelter, the burning screen is a camera trick, pure Dante from beginning to end. American innocence on the beach at the close, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and a premonition of Vietnam. With Jesse Lee, Lucinda Jenney, Jesse White, David Clennon, and Belinda Balaski.