Gene Loomis is a teenager living on a naval base in Key West in 1962, just as the Cuban Missile Crisis occurs and worldwide tension mounts. At the same time, Lawrence Woolsey, a schlock moviemaker, is premiering his new monster movie, Mant!, at the local theatre. Gene meets Woolsey, who teaches him some tricks of the trade, and Gene and his friend Stan go to the premiere which involves, amongst other things, a mad beatnik in a giant ant costume, Gene getting locked in a nuclear fallout shelter, and Woolsey destroying the entire theatre.
This is a lovely nostalgic movie brimming with funny dialogue and movie in-jokes, brilliantly written by Charlie Haas and featuring wonderfully offbeat characters. It was clearly a great labour of love for the filmmakers and it celebrates not only a bygone age of innocence before the great social upheavals of the sixties but also an unqualified love for the imaginatively nutty fantasy movies of the time. Goodman is simply terrific as Woolsey (loosely based on producer William Castle) - a big kid whose greatest joy is to entertain people but who also has an astute business sense. At one point when he receives a letter threatening legal action over an unpaid bill he says, "Boy this business has changed. These things used to be settled with violence.". Everybody in this movie is tremendous though; all the kids are great, particularly Fenton and Jakub, who make a lovely chalk'n'cheese pair of misfits. Moriarty is a scream as a long-suffering starlet and the great John Sayles (who wrote two of Dante's early movies) has a wonderful little role as a blacklisted writer turned phony morality campaigner. All of Dante's regular stock company have funny bits (Picardo, Miller, Balaski, Hahn), as does writer Haas as a school teacher. Schallert, McCarthy and Cornthwaite are all hilarious and feature unbilled in Mant! (Half-Man, Half-Ant, All-Terror !!), the movie-within-a-movie, which is a lovable and gentle pastiche of the giant ant movie Them. The film also features a wonderful score by Jerry Goldsmith and beautiful Florida location photography by John Hora. There are lots of reasons to like this movie very much, and it's beautifully made, but most of all it simply entertains from start to finish.
This is a lovely nostalgic movie brimming with funny dialogue and movie in-jokes, brilliantly written by Charlie Haas and featuring wonderfully offbeat characters. It was clearly a great labour of love for the filmmakers and it celebrates not only a bygone age of innocence before the great social upheavals of the sixties but also an unqualified love for the imaginatively nutty fantasy movies of the time. Goodman is simply terrific as Woolsey (loosely based on producer William Castle) - a big kid whose greatest joy is to entertain people but who also has an astute business sense. At one point when he receives a letter threatening legal action over an unpaid bill he says, "Boy this business has changed. These things used to be settled with violence.". Everybody in this movie is tremendous though; all the kids are great, particularly Fenton and Jakub, who make a lovely chalk'n'cheese pair of misfits. Moriarty is a scream as a long-suffering starlet and the great John Sayles (who wrote two of Dante's early movies) has a wonderful little role as a blacklisted writer turned phony morality campaigner. All of Dante's regular stock company have funny bits (Picardo, Miller, Balaski, Hahn), as does writer Haas as a school teacher. Schallert, McCarthy and Cornthwaite are all hilarious and feature unbilled in Mant! (Half-Man, Half-Ant, All-Terror !!), the movie-within-a-movie, which is a lovable and gentle pastiche of the giant ant movie Them. The film also features a wonderful score by Jerry Goldsmith and beautiful Florida location photography by John Hora. There are lots of reasons to like this movie very much, and it's beautifully made, but most of all it simply entertains from start to finish.