Caught yesterday on KFJC’s Norman Bates Memorial Soundtrack Show: the audio of the trailer for the astounding movie Mant!, a tale of the horror caused when radiation from an atomic bomb affects both a man and an ant, yielding a — OMG! — half-man half-ant.
Watch the trailer here:
This movie trailer is inside the movie Matinee. From Wikipedia:
Matinee is a 1993 period comedy film directed by Joe Dante. It is a ensemble piece about a William Castle-type independent filmmaker, with the home front in the Cuban Missile Crisis as a backdrop. The film stars John Goodman, with Cathy Moriarty, Simon Fenton, Omri Katz, Lisa Jakub, Robert Picardo, and Kellie Martin. A then-unknown Naomi Watts has a small role as a character in a film within the film.
In Key West, Florida in 1962, boys Gene Loomis (Fenton) and his brother Dennis (Lee) live on a military base (N.A.S. Key West); their father is away on a nearby submarine. After hearing the announcement of an exclusive engagement of Lawrence Woolsey’s (Goodman) new sensational horror film Mant! (“Half man! Half ant!” “in Atomo-Vision and Rumble-Rama!”), including Woolsey’s appearance in-person, they arrive home to President Kennedy’s television interruption, stating the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. Woolsey finds this atmosphere of fear to be the perfect environment in which to open his atomic-radiation-themed film.
Goodman as Woolsey intones:
I feel I should warn you. The story of Mant! is based on scientific fact, on theories that have appeared in national magazines.
Yes, appeared in national magazines, so they must be true. Run, screaming. Now!
(I don’t know how I missed this in 1962. Though that was a very busy year for me, going from Princeton to MIT.)
About William Castle, from Wikipedia:
William Castle (April 24, 1914 – May 31, 1977) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor.
Orphaned at 11, Castle dropped out of high school at 15 to work in the theater. He came to the attention of Columbia Pictures for his talent for promotion, and was hired. He learned the trade of filmmaking and became a director, acquiring a reputation for the ability to churn out competent B-movies quickly and on budget. He eventually struck out on his own, producing and directing thrillers which, despite their low budgets, were effectively promoted with gimmicks, a trademark for which he is best known.
One of his gimmicks:
The Tingler (1959): Filmed in “Percepto”. The title character is a creature that attaches itself to the human spinal cord. It is activated by fright, and can only be destroyed by screaming. Castle purchased military surplus air-plane wing de-icers (consisting of vibrating motors) and had a crew travel from theatre to theatre attaching them to the underside of some of the seats (in that era, a movie did not necessarily open on the same night nationwide). In the finale, one of the creatures supposedly gets loose in the movie theatre itself. The buzzers were activated as the film’s star, Vincent Price, warned the audience to “scream – scream for your lives!” [p. 17] Some sources incorrectly state the seats were wired to give electrical jolts. Filmmaker and Castle fan John Waters recounted in Spine Tingler! how, as a youngster, he would search for a seat that had been wired in order to enjoy the full effect.
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