You sometimes hear genre fans angrily decrying PG rated horror movies. As if there shouldn't be fright movies made for the young. Or the young at heart for that matter. I never quite understood it. As if all horror should be hardcore stuff designated for adults.
Most of us that love horror nurtured that love when we were young. I cut my horror viewing teeth on old black and white classics. Most of which are amazingly tame by today's standards. I generation of fans came up reading Goosebumps, and later were reading and watching the Twilight Series. Hopefully they went on to better choices for their horror fixes.
Didn't your uncle, older brothers, parents, take you to see horror movies made for young viewers? Didn't you get delightfully scared by them? I know of people that became fans by being taken to see The Gate, or maybe Ghostbusters.
Joe Dante is the fan's horror director. He lovingly uses classic genre trappings and actors from days past in his films. And after his first few movies as a director, Dante became known as a guy that made family-friendly horror and science fiction movies. I consider them all classics: Gremlins, Explorers, Innerspace, Matinee, The 'burbs.
Sadly, though, Dante has fallen from grace in the fickle, myopic world of film production. I know that he hasn't had a hit in a while, and that Looney Tunes Back In Action was a flop. That's a pity, because the film was smarter than its audiences were.
Look at Gremlins though! That was an enormous hit for Warner Brothers. Good Lord, the merchandising alone had to have made them a bundle. That's ancient history to the moneymen that run the entertainment industry.
After the failure of Looney Tunes Back In Action it seemed that Dante's career was shot. He did a mostly-lame, low budget anthology horror picture called Trapped Ashes, and various bits of TV work. His Masters of Horror episodes are, like the majority of that show's history, better forgotten.
Fans were excited to hear that Joe Dante was back with a kid-friendly horror movie called The Hole. That it was a 3D production disappointed some people, but I liked the idea. We waited to see The Hole. And waited. And waited.
The Hole was never released in the United States. Not in theaters and not on DVD. At least not so far. However it was released on disc in a foreign DVD in widescreen and an all region code. I bought myself a copy because I simply had to see it.
Well, there's good news and there's bad news. I'll give you the bad news first. The plot is nothing special. We've heard it all before. A decent teenaged boy and his kid brother move from the big city to a rural area. He isn't happy, at least until he develops a crush on the cute girl across the street. Jump a couple of quick chapters ahead and they discover a padlocked hole in the basement of their new home. Beneath it is, you guessed it: The Gate To Hell. Or at least to some demon-infested inferno.
Honestly, it's not an awful screenplay, but I think it's beneath Dante's talent.
On the positive side, the youthful cast is likable and competent in their roles. There are a few genuinely unsettling moments of dread. Bruce Dern is in The Hole, and so is Joe Dante regular, Dick Miller. The aged Miller's part barely qualifies as a cameo, but it was still cool to see him.
The whole story was moving along nicely enough until the finale, when the lead teen goes into the hole for a would-be mind-blowing 3D extravaganza conclusion. Sort of like with Insidious, that's when decent movie descended into hokum.
All in all, if you get a chance to see The Hole, take it. Just don't pay a lot of money to do so. Keep your expectations in check and you're liable to enjoy the movie. Especially if you're already, like me, a Joe Dante fan.
A new production for Joe Dante has been announced. It's got a cool title, Monster Love, and it's supposedly about a group of werewolf teens in Paris. Production hasn't begun so far, but I have my fingers crossed for it.
You know what I would have really liked? Super 8 was a cool movie, and I loved it. It would have been so awesome if, in the early pre-production phases of it, Steven Spielberg had told writer-director J. J. Abrams this: "JJ baby, I love your script and we're gonna do the movie, but I want to offer it to my old pal Joe Dante. This sort of material is perfect for him."
Most of us that love horror nurtured that love when we were young. I cut my horror viewing teeth on old black and white classics. Most of which are amazingly tame by today's standards. I generation of fans came up reading Goosebumps, and later were reading and watching the Twilight Series. Hopefully they went on to better choices for their horror fixes.
Didn't your uncle, older brothers, parents, take you to see horror movies made for young viewers? Didn't you get delightfully scared by them? I know of people that became fans by being taken to see The Gate, or maybe Ghostbusters.
Joe Dante is the fan's horror director. He lovingly uses classic genre trappings and actors from days past in his films. And after his first few movies as a director, Dante became known as a guy that made family-friendly horror and science fiction movies. I consider them all classics: Gremlins, Explorers, Innerspace, Matinee, The 'burbs.
Sadly, though, Dante has fallen from grace in the fickle, myopic world of film production. I know that he hasn't had a hit in a while, and that Looney Tunes Back In Action was a flop. That's a pity, because the film was smarter than its audiences were.
Look at Gremlins though! That was an enormous hit for Warner Brothers. Good Lord, the merchandising alone had to have made them a bundle. That's ancient history to the moneymen that run the entertainment industry.
After the failure of Looney Tunes Back In Action it seemed that Dante's career was shot. He did a mostly-lame, low budget anthology horror picture called Trapped Ashes, and various bits of TV work. His Masters of Horror episodes are, like the majority of that show's history, better forgotten.
Fans were excited to hear that Joe Dante was back with a kid-friendly horror movie called The Hole. That it was a 3D production disappointed some people, but I liked the idea. We waited to see The Hole. And waited. And waited.
The Hole was never released in the United States. Not in theaters and not on DVD. At least not so far. However it was released on disc in a foreign DVD in widescreen and an all region code. I bought myself a copy because I simply had to see it. Well, there's good news and there's bad news. I'll give you the bad news first. The plot is nothing special. We've heard it all before. A decent teenaged boy and his kid brother move from the big city to a rural area. He isn't happy, at least until he develops a crush on the cute girl across the street. Jump a couple of quick chapters ahead and they discover a padlocked hole in the basement of their new home. Beneath it is, you guessed it: The Gate To Hell. Or at least to some demon-infested inferno.
Honestly, it's not an awful screenplay, but I think it's beneath Dante's talent.
On the positive side, the youthful cast is likable and competent in their roles. There are a few genuinely unsettling moments of dread. Bruce Dern is in The Hole, and so is Joe Dante regular, Dick Miller. The aged Miller's part barely qualifies as a cameo, but it was still cool to see him.
The whole story was moving along nicely enough until the finale, when the lead teen goes into the hole for a would-be mind-blowing 3D extravaganza conclusion. Sort of like with Insidious, that's when decent movie descended into hokum.
All in all, if you get a chance to see The Hole, take it. Just don't pay a lot of money to do so. Keep your expectations in check and you're liable to enjoy the movie. Especially if you're already, like me, a Joe Dante fan.
A new production for Joe Dante has been announced. It's got a cool title, Monster Love, and it's supposedly about a group of werewolf teens in Paris. Production hasn't begun so far, but I have my fingers crossed for it.
You know what I would have really liked? Super 8 was a cool movie, and I loved it. It would have been so awesome if, in the early pre-production phases of it, Steven Spielberg had told writer-director J. J. Abrams this: "JJ baby, I love your script and we're gonna do the movie, but I want to offer it to my old pal Joe Dante. This sort of material is perfect for him."
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