Legendary filmmaker Joe Dante is a titan in the film industry, having directed everything from Gremlins and its sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch to classics such as Piranha, The Howling, Explorers, Innerspace, The ‘Burbs, Matinee, and Small Soldiers. He even got behind the camera for segments in Twilight Zone: The Movie and Nightmare Cinema, not to mention episodes of “The Twilight Zone”, “Amazing Stories”, “Eerie, Indiana”, and even “Masters of Horror” (S1 & S2 are both now streaming on Screambox).
And between creating new horror classics, Dante is also behind the awesome Trailers from Hell and “The Movies That Made Us” Podcast. Talk about keeping busy!
As you know, Bloody Disgusting recently took the reigns on the newly-relaunched Screambox, a subscription-based streaming platform loaded with movies that also hosts our live channel, BDTV. We have such sights to show you over the next year, but we kicked it off with five films Barbara Crampton is watching on Screambox and followed it up with six from veteran horror director Mick Garris!
Today, we’re digging deep into our catalog with Joe Dante, who curates six films he’d have pulled straight off the video store shelf!
Go straight to Joe’s picks here. And read his write-ups for each of the films below!
CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA
In 1960 Roger Corman decamped to Puerto Rico to shoot another of his non-union FilmGroup productions, The Last Woman on Earth. But never one to waste an opportunity, he called upon his longtime scribe Charles B. Griffith (A Bucket of Blood) to come up with a quick script for another picture to be shot there with the same cast and crew. It took 3 days to write, 5 days to shoot. The result was one of the wackiest (and tackiest) sci-fi spoofs of the era, recycling the plots of two earlier efforts, Naked Paradise and The Beast from Haunted Cave. Grifters plan to rob the Cuban treasury by faking a sea monster to scare the authorities away. Only (you guessed it) it’s real! At one point the action pauses for the heroine to sing a torch song with the lyric, “Kiss me, baby, and The Creature from the Haunted Sea”. Most people saw this on TV, with added material shot by Monte Hellman to pad the brief running time.
HORROR EXPRESS
Spottily released in 1972 in a fuzzy dupe of the rough cut, this Spanish-made sci-fi-horror hybrid fell into the public domain and has since been restored to its original state. It’s 1906 and anthropologist Christopher Lee’s frozen fossil of the missing link has gone astray on the Moscow-bound Trans Siberian Express. The humanoid fossil has been invaded by a shape-shifting alien, which absorbs the minds and bodies of various period characters, including a mad monk and a lusty Cossack played by Telly Savalas. This is one fun ride, smarter and wittier than you might expect. It was Lee’s 18th co-starring role with his friend Peter Cushing of the 22(!) they made together.
THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN’T DIE
A sleaze classic. Filmed in 1959 at Tarrytown, NY, as The Head That Wouldn’t Die, this sat on the shelf til it was finally picked up for release by AIP in 1962. A randy mad doctor keeps his fiancée’s severed head alive in a tray, along with a monster in the closet, while he scouts the strip clubs for nubile bodies to plop her head atop. Cheap, overwrought and tasteless, but entertaining in a scuzzy, demented way. The head is played by Virginia Leith in what must be deemed a comedown from her debut in Kubrick’s maiden effort, Fear and Desire.
MESA OF LOST WOMEN
“Have you ever been kissed by a girl like this?” The mind reels at this, the next best thing to an acid trip without acid. Cobbled together from the ruins of an aborted project, this plotless farrago is a uniquely cracked parade of mad doctors, mutant dwarfs, sexy spider women and off-the-charts acting by a crew of exploitation stalwarts. Jackie Coogan, in full Uncle Fester mode, is the mad doctor obsessed with turning spiders into, what else, buxom temptresses. It doesn’t make a lick of sense, but movies this strange don’t come down the pike every day, so you need to take this trip at least once. The constantly repeated flamenco guitar riff by cartoon composer Hoyt Curtin is literally mind-bending.
SPIDER BABY
I once likened Jack Hill’s quirky debut film to a sitcom directed by Luis Bunuel. This one-of-a-kind jet-black comedy casts Lon Chaney as the harried caretaker of an inbred family of homicidal maniacs. Weird, dark and funny, with standout performances by Chaney, Sid Haig and the mesmerizing Jill Banner, 17 years old in her debut here, who died in a car accident at 39. Director Hill was disappointed when release of his low budget $55,000 12-day movie was sidelined by bankrupt producers and it sat undistributed for years. It nearly became a lost film, impossible to see, until it was rescued by home video in the late 90s.
CURSE OF THE DEMON
Director Jacques Tourneur reconnects with some of the Val Lewton magic he brought to chill classics like The Cat People and The Leopard Man with this creepy 1957 occult thriller that ranks as one of the finest supernatural movies ever made. Skeptical psychologist Dana Andrews finds more evil than he bargained for while trying to expose devil cultist Niall MacGinnis, one of the most dangerously magnetic Satanists in horror history. Atmospheric, literate and beautifully made, this was cut down to 83 minutes for easier double billing, but restored to its original 96-minute length for home video. There remains some controversy as to whether the titular demon was meant to be shown onscreen or left to the imagination, but what we get to see really does look like Hell.
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