Joe Dante

Adam says he loves Dante's films so much that they spent a lot of them early on. Chris loves Gremlins, and Adam calls Matinee Dante's love letter to old monster films, though Lee found its first hour slow. Lee also rated Dante's Masters of Horror episode Homecoming as good. On Gremlins 2, Adam says Dante only agreed to a sequel with complete creative control, and proved to the producers that the cinema gag would work.

In their own words

• Lee And he he's one of the masters as well. Joe Dante is one of the best there is for mixing comedy and horror. Fantastic.

  Theatre of Blood

• Adam The Burbs was episode 59. So that's the last time we've done any Joe Dante so, you know, sorry, Joe, I love his films so much, I can't believe we haven't done but I think that was the thing, I think because we love them, we splashed out really early on a lot of his stuff.

  Ep 213 Gremlins 2

• Chris And I thought, oh yeah, well they've been mentioned a lot, I love Gremlins, that was probably a good one.

  Ep 142 The Northman

• Adam In but instead of you turning to a fly, you've become a giant praying mantis. And it's so it's sort of references them and the Tingle and the Fly. And it's just a real it's and it's Joe Dante, so it's just a real it's like his love letter to all those sort of films.

  Ep 111 The Fly

• Lee Yeah. Um. So I, so Joe Dante's uh Matinee, I liked it. It took a very long time. Like the first hour, nothing happens and I'm like, is Adam told me about the right film.

  EP 112 The Fly 1986

• Lee Good.

  Ep 135 3 Dogs for the price of 1

• Adam So he just for making money basically. And so Warner Brothers shopped it around a lot and tried to get other directors in and everything. And that process was going on for ages, obviously, and eventually they went back to Joe Dante and he just said, yeah, I'll do it if I have complete creative control.

  Ep 213 Gremlins 2

• Adam And then it goes into a John Wayne Western, but they've sort of put the Gremlins in there too like John Wayne telling them to get off his land and they're behind a cow laughing at him in cowboy hats. But apparently this was one of the things where like the producers were all sort of like saying to Joe Dante no you can't do that cinema bit because people will think it's gone wrong in the cinema. And basically Joe Dante proved to them he did like he showed us he did a screening and he was like, look no one thought for a second that's what had happened as soon as the Gremlins popped up.

  Ep 213 Gremlins 2