Want to know why movie nerds of my approximate age have a real fanboy affection for director Joe Dante? Here's why: Piranha, Rock 'n' Roll High School, The Howling, Gremlins, Explorers, Innerspace, The 'burbs, Gremlins 2, and Matinee. Hell, I even enjoyed his last movie, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, although I seem to be in the vast minority on that one. Unfortunately Mr. Dante is not nearly as prolific as his fans would like, so when word comes down that the flick-lovin' filmmaker has not one but TWO new projects on the horizon, we get all excited. Ooh, and both of 'em are horror movies!

We'd already heard a little bit about Bat Out of Hell, which looks to be a flick that combines air travel, hijackers, and vampires. That script comes from the horror-geek writing team of Scott Swan and Drew McWeeny, and it's one I'm certainly looking forward to. But now comes Shock with some info on another Dante assignment, and it sounds interesting enough: The Hole will be about a family of fugitives who "hole" up in a house that has a very strange ... PIT ... in the basement. Shock's Ryan Rotten says this one will be a PG-13-style horror flick, and in most cases that'd irritate me -- but Joe Dante has never really gone for the hardcore gore or nasty ultra-violence, so in this case I don't feel so bad. (I bet The Howling would be PG-13 if it came out today.)

More on these projects as the info becomes available. I'm still hoping the director decides to remake a certain Dario Argento flick, just so we can see a movie poster that says "(Joe) Dante's Inferno." That'd make me chuckle.

It's been eightteen years since we got The New Batch of gremlins, and twenty-four since they popped on the screen in the first place. Now, for some reason, BT Business decided to revive the little critters and let them wreak havoc on an office and Dragon Den's Peter Jones. Nothing is sacred! This comes right on the heels of this Meat Loaf-ized ad.

Eh, at least it isn't trying to pull up memories of Labyrinth. My god, if the commercial gods somehow convince David Bowie to portray Jareth once again ... for a commercial, I'll just cry -- and not, in any way, out of happiness.

Of course, this new commercial is already brewing thoughts of sequels, and considering the fact that The Lost Boys just headed into that territory, I wouldn't be surprised if we soon got some news on a Gremlins Part 3. (Just stay away from Joe Dante's Innerspace, people!)

Are you ready for more crazy gremlin action?

In case you weren't sure, Zombie Strippers is exactly what it sounds like: a horror comedy about zombified strippers. And like most zombie movies, it has political subtext, though you don't have to worry about it being headier than something titled Zombie Strippers should be. Sure, it claims to be based loosely on Eugène Ionesco's classic absurdist play Rhinoceros and, sure, it features allusions to a number of philosophers, including Camus and Sartre, but really it's dumb and silly and a heck of a good time. Particularly if you're anything but sober. And if you're just looking for a grindhouse sort of guilty pleasure to pass the time.

Zombie Strippers opens with a montage that sets the scene: it's sometime in the near future, and Bush has just been reelected to his fourth term. Already, we know this movie will be a complete farce, but the ludicrous exposition continues, explaining that government scientists have developed a virus that allows soldiers in Iraq to continue fighting after they're killed. Yes, these super soldiers are zombies, a minor twist on Joe Dante's anti-Bush short Homecoming, which was one of the more critically celebrated episodes of the cable series Masters of Horror, and which featured Iraq War casualties rising from the dead in order to cast their vote against Bush's reelection.

Last September was when Jessica shared the news about Mick Garris helming a remake of the 1979 horror flick Thirst -- and then we stopped hearing things. Until now! Here's some rather cool news: Not only has Mr. Garris moved on to do something different (a Stephen King adaptation, imagine that), but it looks like flick fanboy favorite Joe Dante will be settling into the director's chair!

Forgive the exclamation point, but I've been a huge Joe Dante fan since I was old enough to run the VHS all by myself. (For those with short memories: Joe Dante directed Piranha, The Howling, Explorers. Innerspace, both Gremlins, the best segment of the Twilight Zone movie, two episodes of Police Squad, and a whole bunch of other colorful stuff.) Dante's last effort was the under-appreciated Looney Tunes: Back in Action, but according to Fangoria, the veteran flick-maker will be at the helm of Thirst, which is a remake of a fairly obscure Australian thriller that came from director Rod Hardy and screenwriter John Pinkney. It told the story of a vicious cult full of blood-lovers.

Obviously Thirst is a movie I need to rent, because I don't think I've ever seen it! (How embarrassing.) More news on Joe Dante's newest venture when it comes across the wire.

Starting tonight and running through December 17th, Edgar Wright is taking control of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Wright, director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, is programming a festival of his favorite movies, and it's a wonderful and eclectic bunch. He's calling the fest "The Wright Stuff," (also the name of a universally beloved screenwriting column on this very site), and he will be on hand to introduce several screenings with special guests. As always at the New Beverly, one of Los Angeles' absolute treasures, every screening is a double feature.

I'll just tell you about the screenings with special guests, all of which start at 7:30. But don't forget to check the website for all show dates and times. Tonight, Edgar and songwriter Paul Williams will kick off the event with two musicals -- Bugsy Malone and Brian DePalma's Phantom of the Paradise. December 5th, the first feature is Flash Gordon, with special guest (and ex-Bond) Timothy Dalton. The second feature is Mario Bava's Danger Diabolik, introduced by Edgar and the great Joe Dante. On December 7th, Edgar will introduce The Last Boy Scout and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with one of the finest action screenplay writers of our time -- Shane Black. December 10 is John Landis' An American Werewolf in London and Tremors (which I spouted my love for here). Landis will help Wright introduce his film. December 12th is Top Secret! (almost as funny as Airplane and The Naked Gun, in my opinion) and Woody Allen's Bananas, with David Zucker on hand. December 14th is the Roger Ebert - penned Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and Head, hosted by Wright and Micky Dolenz of The Monkees. And on December 16th, Wright will introduce Evil Dead 2 and an all time favorite of mine -- the Coen Brothers' Raising Arizona.

Here is a press release from Edgar with his thoughts on the included films. If you live in the Los Angeles area, there's really no excuse to miss this. See you there!

If you were to ask the 9-year-old version of me what the scariest movie ever made was, he would say it was Twilight Zone: The Movie -- a film so terrifying that I was reduced to tears merely by my father's description of it.

Specifically, he was telling us about the opening sequence, the one that begins with Albert Brooks and Dan Aykroyd listening to "Midnight Special" on a cassette tape and ends with Aykroyd saying, "You wanna see something really scary?" and then making good on his pledge. For some reason, the way my dad retold this story -- which really is a good campfire-type story, when you think about it -- scared the living daylights out of me. I immediately freaked out, sobbing and screaming. The mere idea of the story tormented me, to the extent that I couldn't actually watch the movie for years to come.

(If the preceding anecdote gives you the impression that I was a total pansy as a child, that impression is accurate.)

I did finally watch the film a couple times as a teenager and young adult, and again recently when it was released on DVD for the first time. That prologue with Aykroyd and Brooks? Still pretty great. You don't know it's going to have a scary ending because most of it is just the two men talking about old TV shows and their favorite Twilight Zone episodes. That "You wanna see something really scary?" bit comes as a shock, an abrupt change in tone that exemplifies The Twilight Zone's single best attribute: the ability to surprise us.

I don't believe in movies being tampered with at all after their initial release, whether it's 'flashlights instead of shotguns' or the smallest visual touch-ups. I just think it's a terrible precedent to set and sort of fundamentally at odds with the point of film, which is to freeze a story in a certain place and time. The only time I usually change my position on this is with films like Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, which are completely raped by the studios in their theatrical release, and only really exist in the director's cut. I might also make an exception in the case of Twilight Zone: The Movie -- a solid, scary anthology film that's near-ruined by a couple of ridiculous and outlandish scenes that should be snipped out. I'm talking about those bookends -- an opening one in which a couple of guys traveling in a car along a lonely road get into a discussion about The Twilight Zone show and then one of them turns into the stupidest, most un-scary monster of all-time, and a closing one in which the monster returns for no reason whatsoever except to make us say 'Ooh, there's the monster from the beginning!'

Here's hoping there's a 'bookend-free' edition I can choose in the upcoming, long-awaited DVD release of the film from Warner Home Video. Looks doubtful, though -- aside from some cover art and a firm release date of October 9, there's very little detail given on the Amazon page. Surely they'll load it up with some TV show tie-ins, but I really wouldn't expect much else, although I'm pretty sure they could get Joe Dante to sit down and do a commentary for it. John Landis? Probably not.

While surfing the movie web ether today, I came across a gem that you guys might enjoy. There's a website out there called Trailers From Hell, and the kicker -- it isn't some out-of-nowhere fan web space -- it comes from Joe Dante's Metaluna Productions. Yes, the Dante responsible for Gremlins, Explorers and Innerspace. According to the director himself: "The bromide about these old trailers is that they were better than the movies they promoted. That's only true in some cases, but they did deliver in-your-face excitement and breathless hyperbole at a pace the movies never could." Covering everything from music done "Electronovision" style to horror films, the trailers display what Dante calls "shameless cinematic hucksterism."

What's especially cool -- the site doesn't just have trailers, but well-known names doing commentaries on them. Dante offers two -- The Terror and The Unearthly, while Shaun of the Dead's Edgar Wright chats about the low-budget greatness of Danger: Diabolik, Hocus Pocus helmer Mick Garris tackles House on Haunted Hill and Animal House header John Landis talks about seeing The T.A.M.I. Show live, in his youth. With a well-known name behind the site, I imagine that this is only the beginning as he gets more names involved. There are already 5 more that are coming soon -- Dante on The Incredible Petrified World, Garris on X - The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, Landis on The Fall of the Roman Empire, Wright on Dr. Terror's House of Horrors and a new name -- Pet Sematary director Mary Lambert on Village of the Damned. I'm hoping that they sweeten the pot with some Mystery Science Theater sort of voice-overs in the future, but either way, it's a great way to uncover some old, and sometimes forgotten pulpy goodness.

[via Cartoon Brew]

At the end of an article announcing Master Mind, The Hollywood Reporter slipped in some news that screenwriters Alan Schoolcraft and Brent Simons are busy working on a sequel to Small Soldiers for DreamWorks. This is a bit of a surprise since the original film wasn't quite the 'big movie' the studio's had hoped it would be. There isn't much revealed with this news, but let us hope that Joe Dante is brought to direct. He showed us with Gremlins 2: The New Batch that he can make a sequel even better than the original by giving it just the right amount of self-parody and satire. He also seems like he could use the work.

As a huge fan of Dante's work, I think it is a tragedy how little movies he's been able to put out, especially recently. Still, I was a huge doubter of Small Soldiers, maybe because of how dumb it looked filtered through the Burger King ads, and didn't even finally see the movie until about two years ago. Of course, I loved it, and I regretted not seeing it in the theater. But now my low expectations extend to the sequel, because if Dante isn't allowed to do it, the result will probably be as dumb as I had thought the original was going to be. I am already a bit worried about the unproven screenwriting duo, though I have to remember that Gremlins 2 had a different writer than Gremlins and it worked out brilliantly.

Others that I'd want to return for the sequel are Jay Mohr and David Cross and all the actors who provided their voices for The Commando Elite (hurry, some of the Dirty Dozen guys are getting up there) and The Gorgonites. The rest of the cast, especially Kirsten Dunst, are not required. Dante is supposedly currently working on The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes, a film about his old boss, Roger Corman, and the making of the 1967 film The Trip. But since he isn't going to be involved with Gremlins 3 (such a shame, if it happens that way), he can follow up Kaleidoscope with Small Soldiers 2.

Picture yourself in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies. Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly -- a girl with kaleidoscope eyes. Ok, well not quite. Instead, we've got Joe Dante's The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes. But I should back up. In 1967 there was a Lovely Sort of Death cult film called The Trip. Written by Jack Nicholson and directed by Roger Corman, the film was pretty much a precursor to Easy Rider -- it teamed Nicholson up with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. While the film lacked a cohesive plot, it was the story of a TV commercial director (Fonda) who indulges in his first dose of LSD after getting divorced from his adulterous wife (Susan Strasberg).

Fast-forward to now -- Joe Dante, who has been completely out of the spotlight except for Gremlins rumors, is gearing up to film a movie that is based on the making of the famous drug feature. According to Time Out, Kaleidoscope Eyes will be a fictional account of the shoot, diving into the drug counterculture that it was immersed in. Corman is said to have dropped acid as research for the film, so I'm sure it will mean many high shenanigans and drug-fuelled diatribes. It will be a cheap feature, coming in $7 million, but the cameos will be anything but. If everything works out, you can expect to spot directorial greats -- Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme and my personal favorite, John Sayles. While I've been itching for more Innerspace, I can't complain. What do you think? Will this finally be the return of Joe Dante?

[via CHUD]