Film Series
Joe Dante at the Movies
Joe Dante’s films brim with anarchic, inventive energy, and are indebted to (and a celebration of) the cartoons, comics and creature features that animated his childhood. Dante got his start working for Roger Corman, cultivating an appreciation for unpretentious ingenuity and a sharp satirical streak. His subversive forays into science fiction, fantasy, and horror deliver genre thrills while also coming laced with cutting critiques of American society and pop culture. This retrospective brings together Dante’s film and television work with unsurprisingly offbeat favorites hand-picked by the director.
Pint-sized terror invades Small Town, USA in Dante’s offbeat Christmas classic.
Toy action figures become mini killing machines in Dante’s subversive adventure fantasy.
Dante indulges his love for atomic age creature features in this 1960s-set comedy.
Dante’s sequel to his biggest commercial hit sends up the original.
This epic pop culture mash-up is a wild ride through the mass media of the 50s and 60s.
Mike Judge’s cult classic screens with Dante’s black comic immigration satire.
Dante’s directorial debut screens with his scenes from Amazon Women on the Moon.
Roger Corman produced this Jaws spoof, which delivers its own visceral thrills.
This program brings together two of Dante’s bitingly funny, made-for-television films.
This pair of thrilling noirs feature stylish cinematography and ingenious plots.
Dante channels the anarchic spirit of the original cartoons in this turbo-charged update.
Dante’s black comedy screens with a showcase for W.C. Fields’ boozy, misanthropic genius.
Dante’s turbo-charged update screens with Frank Tashlin’s satire of 1950s comic book culture.
Dante’s take on the werewolf genre screens with horror maestro Mario Bava’s gothic fantasy.
Dante’s ode to 1950s science fiction screens with William Cameron Menzies’ hallucinatory B movie.
Dante’s inventively zany sci-fi comedy screens with Jack Arnold’s existential masterpiece.
Tom Hanks is a crazed NIMBY in Dante’s black comic spoof of small town Americana.
This biting satire is the only feature film directed by legendary TV producer Norman Lear.
Cult auteur Edgar G. Ulmer’s ultra-perverse Poe adaptation screens with Roger Corman’s drive-in classic.
A pair of films featuring ambitious explorations of 3D.
Dante brings screwball zaniness to this “incredible shrinking” sci-fi comedy.
Warren Beatty is a paranoid stand-up comic in this existential, Euro-chic puzzle film.
Dante’s sequel to his biggest commercial hit sends up the original.
A shape-shifting serial killer stalks a news anchor in Dante’s take on the werewolf film.
Dante’s nostalgic love-letter to creature features screens with a charming British comedy.
Vincent Price is at his scenery-chewing best as a murderous Shakespearean actor.
An avant-pulp oddity starring Vincent Price screens with Servando González’s haunting pastoral.
This cult favorite is part hard-boiled noir, part shaggy-dog spoof of the genre.
The two films Dante directed for Showtime’s Masters of Horror pack a subversive punch.
Dante’s ode to old-school B horror screens with Albert Brooks’ dissection of love and heartbreak.