9:30 p.m.: Dante will present the Midwest Premiere of The Hole, his still-undistributed 2009 horror film. The film marks Dante’s confident return to a genre he invested with great B-movie scares and wit in The Howling, Piranha, and Gremlins. Chris Massoglia and Nathan Gamble star as two brothers who discover a mysterious hole in the basement of their new home and, along with their next-door neighbor (Haley Bennett), start poking away at the void. Needless to say, they stir up a heap of supernatural trouble, and Dante ekes both laughs and shocks from this terrifying hell-pit. Though originally shot in 3-D, this screening will be presented in 2-D.
Between screenings: A Q&A session with Dante.
Midnight: Dante will introduce his brilliant 1990 sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch, shown here in a pristine 35mm print from his own personal library. After he delivered Warner Brothers a hit in 1984’s Gremlins, Joe Dante got the keys to the kingdom for Gremlins 2 and delivered one of the most gloriously anarchic films in recent studio history, a $50 million exercise in barely controlled chaos that doubles as a Mon Oncle-esque comment on sterile, mechanized modernity. Most of the action takes place in an ultra-sleek, gadget-filled New York corporate office, where the cuddly Mogwai Gizmo is subject to genetic testing that leads, inevitably to an insane multiplicity of havoc-wreaking gremlins. Dante sides with the mischief-makers.
sleestakk logged 2 movies during Joe Dante Double Feature. Back to Events Overview.
| Title | Director(s) | Year Released | Viewed On |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gremlins 2: The New Batch | Joe Dante | 1990 | 08/10/2012 |
| Hole, The | Joe Dante | 2009 | 08/10/2012 |