Innerspace 4K (1987)

Director Joe Dante’s comedic take on FANTASTIC VOYAGE, and the film he made in between EXPLORERS (1985) and THE ‘BURBS (1989), is getting a 4K UHD and Blu-ray release from Arrow.

Washed up pilot Tuck Pendleton (Dennis Quaid) agrees to take part in a miniaturisation experiment in which he, inside a special submersible, is going to be injected into a rabbit called Bugs (well, this is a Warner Bros. picture after all). However, bad guy Victor Scrimshaw (Kevin McCarthy) and bad girl Margaret Canker (Fiona Lewis) plan to steal the miniaturisation technique so shifty character The Cowboy (Robert Picardo on top silly voiced form) can sell it to the highest bidder. When the robbery goes wrong Tuck ends up injected into supermarket assistant manager and hypochondriac Jack Putter (Martin Short). Will Jack listen to the voice that is now actually in his head and help Tuck get back to normal size?

According to a number of the (very good) extras on this disc, INNERSPACE started life as a straight idea but thanks to a complete rewrite by Jeffrey Boam (THE DEAD ZONE) and the efforts of all concerned, it became on Oscar-winning (for its special effects) comedy. While the script is funny and Joe Dante is no stranger to making things entertaining the real key to the success of INNERSPACE is its cast, especially Quaid and Short who only have one scene together but nevertheless have a dialogue chemistry that sparkles. The part of ‘the girl’ is played by Meg Ryan just before she got famous and her star quality is obvious as well. Combine that with familiar faces from the Dante repertory company and cult film fans will have a ball.

Arrow’s disc comes with two commentary tracks. The first is from 2002 and features Dante, producer Michael Finnell, VFX master Dennis Muren, and actors Picardo and McCarthy. Think you’re good at spotting Dante’s in-jokes? Well there are some here that completely passed me by but they’re all pointed out in this engagingly chatty track. Author and critic Drew McWeeny provides a brand new commentary that is as respecting of Dante’s work as it is enthusiastic and provides a nice ‘fan’ track to go alongside the film-makers’ one.

Other extras include a brand new hour-long making of featuring Dante, Finnell, Muren, Picardo and others where some of the material from the commentary is understandably repeated, while the VFX are gone into in greater illustrative detail. There’s 24 minutes of Joe Dante’s personal behind the scenes footage from the film and 20 minutes of footage from ILM. You also get storyboard galleries, continuity polaroids, production stills and a poster gallery. Arrow’s limited edition also comes with a booklet with new writing on the film, a double sided poster and reversible sleeve.

Joe Dante’s INNERSPACE is out on 4K in individual UHD and Blu-ray editions on Monday 27th April 2026

Matinee (1993)

Charming...Nostalgic...But With Bite!!!

Joe Dante’s loving tribute to 1950s monster movies set against the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis gets a dual format UK DVD & Blu-ray release from Arrow.

         Key West, October 1962. While the threat of nuclear war begins to loom large, a local cinema is preparing for a very special event. Cigar-chomping shlock-horror specialist Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman) is coming to town to make a personal appearance and introduce his latest gimmick-filled black and white horror sensation, Mant! 

         Young Gene Loomis (Simon Fenton) has just moved to the local military base and his father has been posted overseas to take part in defending the US against potential soviet threat. He and his younger brother Dennis (Jesse Le Soffer) love monster movies, and now that their father’s life may be in peril they need the solace of a good scare more than ever. And so, it seems, does the rest of the town. As a packed audience sits down to enjoy Mr Woolsey’s latest, complete with electric shock seating and ‘Rumble-rama’, the show promises to be just the experience to help them cope with the life-changing events going on in the world outside.

Joe Dante has always been a clever, witty and subversive film-maker, and MATINEE is one of the best of his films to display these talents. His love for the cinema of the period means that Mant!, our film-within-a-film is spot-on for a 1950s monster movie (cinema had moved on to other things by 1962). Of course, 1962 was when the career of the mighty William Castle, the exploitation maestro upon whom John Goodman’s character is based, was just getting going. Castle never made a monster movie as such but if he had one imagines Mant! would have been just the thing, ‘Rumble-rama’ and all.

As usual, Dante is aided in his storytelling by a cast of familiar faces (Robert Picardo, Dick Miller, Belinda Balaski and John Sayles among them) as well as, of course, John Goodman, who’s just excellent as the huckster with a heart of gold who genuinely believes his pictures are good for people (which, of course, they are!).

          Arrow’s Blu-ray gives us a nice, bright transfer. There’s no commentary track but there is a host of extras, some ported over from previous releases, including the full, uncut 20 minute movie version of Mant!, plus an introduction from Joe and a Mant! trailer.

Best of the extras is a new set of interviews with Dante and his ‘repertory company’. You also get a making of, on set footage, deleted and extended scenes, the original electronic press kit and a trailer, plus a Graham Humphreys cover. As with so many Arrow releases, this is the best presentation of MATINEE out there. Excellent stuff and well worth getting. 

Joe Dante's MATINEE is out on dual format DVD and Blu-ray on Monday 12th September 2016

The 'Burbs (1989)

Is there any director whose body of work contains more quirky feel-good movies than Joe Dante? A genial satirist who started off under the auspices of Roger Corman’s New World pictures and quickly graduated to ‘A’ class projects like GREMLINS and INNERSPACE, Dante remains, along with his contemporaries David Cronenberg, George Romero and John Carpenter, a director whose sensibilities were retained, rather than compromised, following his move to larger budget studio pictures.

THE ‘BURBS was made just before arguably his best films (GREMLINS 2 and MATINEE) and benefits from a Tom Hanks on the cusp of mega-stardom, as well as the usual kind of quirky character actors Dante had established a reputation for working with from the beginning of his career (Bruce Dern, Wendy Schaal, Dick Miller, Robert Picardo). 

When the unseen Klopek family (Henry Gibson, Brother Theodore and Courtney Gains) move into the weird old house in their neighbourhood, ‘ordinary’ suburbanites Tom Hanks, irritating Rick Ducommun and raving mad Bruce Dern decide to investigate, discovering human bones, weird goings-on at night, and a huge furnace in the Klopek basement. Things reach a climax when they cause the Klopek’s house to explode and the secret of what has been going on in there is finally revealed.

Joe Dante’s THE ‘BURBS is a satire on multiple levels. The American suburb in which the film is set is not typical of real America, but its television equivalent, and its filming on the Universal backlot where many of the television programmes of Dante’s youth were made (including Leave It To Beaver and The Munsters) is significant. The film allows the viewer to side with any of the three points of view on offer - the weird Klopeks, the ‘normal’ suburbanites, or the teenagers led by Corey Feldman, who are there to watch the show put on for them by their elders-but-not-so-betters. Like much of Dante’s work, THE ‘BURBS is not strictly definable in terms of genre. Many scenes are played as a comedy of manners, but it’s just a bit too weird for the straight comedy audience. The plot is a little bit too slight for feature length, leaving the cast to do an admirable job of ad-libbing. As a result THE ‘BURBS is never less than interesting, even if it cannot be considered amongst the best of Dante’s work.

Arrow’s Blu-ray begins with a note about the pains taken to provide the transfer on the disk. There’s still a lot of grain on the image but a look at one of the extras - a feature length work print with extra scenes - shows you how cleaned up this new transfer is. As well as the work print we get an excellent documentary on the making of the film from High Rising Productions. It runs for just over an hour and includes interviews with Dante, Corey Feldman, Wendy Schaal, Courtney Gains, DP Robert Stevens and PD James Spencer. There’s also an alternate ending that’s well worth a look (I preferred it to the actual ending of the film), a trailer, a featurette comparing the differences between the work print and the final movie version, a new commentary track with screenwriter Dana Olsen, and an isolated music and effects track. 

Arrow Films released Joe Dante's THE 'BURBS in regular and limited steelbook Blu-ray editions on 15th September 2014