Twilight Zone: The Movie

With as much monkeying-around as his movies frequently display, it should come as no surprise to John Landis fans that one of his earliest inspirations as a filmmaker was the original 1933 version of King Kong. The man behind such carefree comedies as Animal House, Landis has also helped to blur the lines between comedy and horror with such efforts as An American Werewolf in London and Innocent Blood, in addition to crafting such fine-tined social satire as Trading Places.

Born in Chicago in August of 1950, Landis originally worked in the mailroom at Fox and later as a stuntman before making a name for himself as a director. Landis was in his early twenties when he decided it was time to make a feature, and after a brief flirtation with the idea of crafting an underground porn film, the aspiring director raised the funding needed for his directorial debut from family and friends. The result of his tireless efforts was the relentlessly juvenile but infectiously silly Schlock (aka The Banana Monster ¹⁹⁷³). Featuring the director himself dressed in a cheap monkey costume (designed by frequent collaborator Rick Baker) and terrorizing a California town, the film opened a door for Landis when David Zucker spotted him discussing the film on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Mentioning to friend Robert Weiss that he was impressed with the young filmmaker’s energy, Weiss remarked that he was friends with Landis, and the result was The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977).

A dream collaboration in anarchic humor, the wildly irreverent, non sequitur humor of The Kentucky Fried Movie struck a chord with audiences fueled on Saturday Night Live, and natural progression lead to the breakthrough comedy Animal House the following year. Based on the writer’s college exploits and shot in a mere 28 days, Animal House proved an unmitigated smash hit at the box office despite nearly unanimous critical denouncement. Though critical evisceration would become a trademark of Landis films, the following decade found the now-established director in his prime. Given free reign over his next film by Universal, rumors still persist that The Blues Brothers was the first film in cinematic history to begin production without a finalized budget. A loud and spectacular collage of driving blues music and eye-popping car crashes, the film not only made the world record for the number of cars crashed in a movie, but proved an even bigger hit than Animal House.

For his next film, Landis utilized a script he had penned while in Yugoslavia working as a gofer on Kelly’s Heroes in 1969. Though An American Werewolf in London may not have been the first horror film to utilize comedy, its truly terrifying scenes contrasted by an ample dose of dark humor proved the spark that would ignite the horror comedy genre later expanded on by the likes of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson. Yet another runaway hit at the box office, An American Werewolf in London’s shockingly frightful visuals earned makeup artist Baker the first ever Academy Award to be bestowed upon a special effects artist.

As successful as Landis’ career had been to date, trouble was on the way when filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie was ground to a halt following the accidental on-set death of star Vic Morrow and two juvenile actors. When special effects caused a helicopter to crash, killing all three passengers instantly, the director, as well as three other technicians who were working on the film, were charged with involuntary manslaughter. Though all would eventually be found not guilty in the case, the trial would drag on for a decade. Despite the tragedy that beset the production of Twilight Zone, Landis would score a massive hit that same year by wolfing it up with pop-superstar Michael Jackson as the director of Thriller.

The remainder of the 1980s found Landis scoring mild box-office hits with such efforts as Spies Like Us (1985) and Three Amigios! (1986), though it wasn’t until Coming to America (1988) that he would score another direct hit. An ideal vehicle for Eddie Murphy, the film brought the gifted comic actor back into the realm of straight laughs following the one-two action punch of The Golden Child and Beverly Hills Cop II. Though Landis would once again team with Murphy for the third installment of the Beverly Hills Cop franchise, audiences had tired of the comic’s wisecracking cop by the mid-‘90s, and following on the lackluster performance of Oscar (1991) and Innocent Blood (1992), the director’s career went into a bit of a slump. Landis did, however, find moderate success at this point in his career as the catalyst and sometimes director of the popular HBO series Dream On.

When it was announced in the late ‘90s that Landis was set to helm a sequel to The Blues Brothers, fans were left scratching their heads in wonder as to how the film could recapture the chemistry between John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd that had played such an integral part in the success of the original. A rare instance in Landis’ career in which critics and audiences agreed, Blues Brothers 2000 immediately tanked at the box office as mournful fans of the original struggled to comprehend how and why this could have happened. Released straight to video that same year, Susan’s Plan offered an equally abysmal attempt at comedy that went largely unseen.

As willing to jump in front of the camera as behind, Landis has frequently displayed his healthy sense of humor by appearing in such films as The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), Darkman (1990), Vampirella (1996), and 2001 Maniacs (2003). In addition to the frequent use of the phrase “See you next Tuesday” in his films, in-jokes abound and fans can always count on the director to break out the old monkey suit for a laugh if all else fails. —allmovie guide

Undoubtedly one of the most influential film personalities in the history of film, Steven Spielberg is perhaps Hollywood’s best known director and one of the wealthiest filmmakers in the world. Spielberg has countless big-grossing, critically acclaimed credits to his name, as producer, director and writer. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1946. He went to California State University Long Beach, but dropped out to pursue his entertainment career. He gained notoriety as an uncredited assistant editor on the classic western “Wagon Train” (1957). Among his early directing efforts were Battle Squad (1961), which combined World War II footage with footage of an airplane on the ground that he makes you believe is moving. He also directed Escape to Nowhere (1961), which featured children as World War Two soldiers, including his sister Anne Spielberg, and The Last Gun (1959), a western. All of these were short films. The next couple of years, Spielberg directed a couple of movies that would portend his future career in movies. In 1964, he directed Firelight (1964), a movie about aliens invading a small town. In 1967, he directed Slipstream (1967), which was unfinished. However, in 1968, he directed Amblin’ (1968), which featured the desert prominently, and not the first of his movies in which the desert would feature so prominently. Amblin’ also became the name of his production company, which turned out such classics as E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Spielberg had a unique and classic early directing project, Duel (1971) (TV), with Dennis Weaver. In the early 1970s, Spielberg was working on TV, directing among others such series as Rod Serling’s “Night Gallery” (1970), “Marcus Welby, M.D.” (1969) and Columbo: Murder by the Book (1971) (TV). All of his work in television and short films, as well as his directing projects, were just a hint of the wellspring of talent that would dazzle audiences all over the world.

Spielberg’s first major directorial effort was The Sugarland Express (1974), with Goldie Hawn, a film that marked him as a rising star. It was his next effort, however, that made him an international superstar among directors: Jaws (1975). This classic shark attack tale started the tradition of the summer blockbuster or, at least, he was credited with starting the tradition. His next film was the classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), a unique and original UFO story that remains a classic. In 1978, Spielberg produced his first film, the forgettable I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), and followed that effort with Used Cars (1980), a critically acclaimed, but mostly forgotten, Kurt Russell\Jack Warden comedy about devious used-car dealers. Spielberg hit gold yet one more time with Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), with Harrison Ford taking the part of Indiana Jones. Spielberg produced and directed two films in 1982. The first was Poltergeist (1982), but the highest-grossing movie of all time up to that point was the alien story E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Spielberg also helped pioneer the practice of product placement. The concept, while not uncommon, was still relatively low-key when Spielberg raised the practice to almost an art form with his famous (or infamous) placement of Reece’s Pieces in “E.T.” Spielberg was also one of the pioneers of the big-grossing special-effects movies, like “E.T.” and “Close Encounters”, where a very strong emphasis on special effects was placed for the first time on such a huge scale. In 1984, Spielberg followed up “Raiders” with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), which was a commercial success but did not receive the critical acclaim of its predecessor. As a producer, Spielberg took on many projects in the 1980s, such as The Goonies (1985), and was the brains behind the little monsters in Gremlins (1984). He also produced the cartoon An American Tail (1986), a quaint little animated classic. His biggest effort as producer in 1985, however, was the blockbuster Back to the Future (1985), which made Michael J. Fox an instant superstar. As director, Spielberg took on the book The Color Purple (1985), with Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, with great success. In the latter half of the 1980s, he also directed Empire of the Sun (1987), a mixed success for the occasionally erratic Spielberg. Success would not escape him for long, though.

The late 1980s found Spielberg’s projects at the center of pop-culture yet again. In 1988, he produced the landmark animation/live-action film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). The next year proved to be another big one for Spielberg, as he produced and directed Always (1989) as well as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and Back to the Future Part II (1989). All three of the films were box-office and critical successes. Also, in 1989, he produced the little known comedy-drama Dad (1989), with Jack Lemmon and Ted Danson, which got mostly mixed results. Spielberg has also had an affinity for animation and has been a strong voice in animation in the 1990s. Aside from producing the landmark “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, he produced the animated series “Tiny Toon Adventures” (1990), “Animaniacs” (1993), “Pinky and the Brain” (1995), “Freakazoid!” (1995), “Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain” (1998), “Family Dog” (1993) and “Toonsylvania” (1998). Spielberg also produced other cartoons such as The Land Before Time (1988), We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story (1993), Casper (1995) (the live action version) as well as the live-action version of The Flintstones (1994), where he was credited as “Steven Spielrock”. Spielberg also produced many Roger Rabbit short cartoons, and many Pinky and the Brain, Animaniacs and Tiny Toons specials. Spielberg was very active in the early 1990s, as he directed Hook (1991) and produced such films as the cute fantasy Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991). He also produced the unusual comedy thriller Arachnophobia (1990), Back to the Future Part III (1990) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). While these movies were big successes in their own right, they did not quite bring in the kind of box office or critical acclaim as previous efforts. In 1993, Spielberg directed Jurassic Park (1993), which for a short time held the record as the highest grossing movie of all time, but did not have the universal appeal of his previous efforts. Big box-office spectacles were not his only concern, though. He produced and directed Schindler’s List (1993), a stirring film about the Holocaust. He won best director at the Oscars, and also got Best Picture. In the mid-90s, he helped found the production company DreamWorks, which was responsible for many box-office successes.

As a producer, he was very active in the late 90s, responsible for such films as The Mask of Zorro (1998), Men in Black (1997) and Deep Impact (1998). However, it was on the directing front that Spielberg was in top form. He directed and produced the epic Amistad (1997), a spectacular film that was shorted at the Oscars and in release due to the fact that its release date was moved around so much in late 1997. The next year, however, produced what many believe was one of the best films of his career: Saving Private Ryan (1998), a film about World War Two that is spectacular in almost every respect. It was stiffed at the Oscars, losing best picture to Shakespeare in Love (1998).

Spielberg produced a series of films, including Evolution (2001), The Haunting (1999) and Shrek (2001). he also produced two sequels to Jurassic Park (1993), which were financially but not particularly critical successes. In 2001, he produced a mini-series about World War Two that definitely was a financial and critical success: “Band of Brothers” (2001), a tale of an infantry company from its parachuting into France during the invasion to the Battle of the Bulge. Also in that year, Spielberg was back in the director’s chair for Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001), a movie with a message and a huge budget. It did reasonably at the box office and garnered varied reviews from critics.

Spielberg has been extremely active in films there are many other things he has done as well. He produced the short-lived TV series “SeaQuest DSV” (1993), an anthology series entitled “Amazing Stories” (1985), created the video-game series “Medal of Honor” set during World War Two, and was a starting producer of “ER” (1994). Spielberg, if you haven’t noticed, has a great interest in World War Two. He and Tom Hanks collaborated on Shooting War (2000) (TV), a documentary about World War II combat photographers, and he produced a documentary about the Holocaust called A Holocaust szemei (2000). With all of this to Spielberg’s credit, it’s no wonder that he’s looked at as one of the greatest ever figures in entertainment. —IMDb

Joseph Dante Jr. was born on November 28, 1946 in Morristown, New Jersey, and raised in the nearby borough of Parisippany. His parents were professional golf players and his father wrote some books on the instructions of playing golf some of which included Four Magic Moves to Winning Golf, and Stop that Slice. After a bout with polio that nearly crippled him at age 7, he slowly recovered and decided to take up drawing rather than athletics as his parents did.

Dante studied at the Philadelphia College of Art after graduating from high school. As a teenager, he contributed to Castle of Frankenstein and Famous Monsters of Filmland magazines with various drawings, and upon graduation from he College of Art, he became a film critic for the Film Buletin newspaper for which he later became the managing editor. With a friend, named Jon Davidson, Dante cut together a series of movie clips and film trailers and edited them into his first short film which was titled The Movie Orgy (1968) which was shown on college campuses.

In 1974, Jon Davidson was the head of advertising for Roger Corman’s New World Productions and persuaded Dante to move to California to work for them as an editor for various movie trailers and films. In 1976, Roger Corman allowed Dante, to direct his very first feature film with New World staffer Alan Arkush which was titled Hollywood Boulevard (1976), a low-budget feature filmed in black-and-white in just 10 days on a $50,000 budget, in which Date and Arkush inserted stock footage from other Corman-produced films. Hoping to get the jump on the success of the Steven Spielberg film Jaws, Corman commissioned Dante to direct Piranha (1978) around the same time Jaws II was being made. Working with a budget of $660,000 and with a script by John Sayles, Dante had his first serious problems with the filming which included last-minute cast changes, underwater cameras that kept breaking down, union woes, and unusable second unit footage. But the finished film was a miracle of low-budget exploitation filmmaking and has become a cult favorite.

Date worked as a second unit director for Rock and Roll High School (1979), and was then offered by producer Mike Finnell to direct The Howling (1981). With another script by John Sayles and with a budget of over $1 million, the movie about California werewolves proved to be another box-office hit, highlighted by state-of-the-art special effects by Rob Bottin. After directing two out of six episodes for the short-lived comic TV series "Police Squad! (1982), Dante found himself working alongside Steven Spielberg, John Landis and Australian director George Miller for the anthology movie The Twilight Zone, The Movie (1983) in which Dante directed the third segment, a remake of a 1961 original Twilight Zone episode “It’s a Good Life”, which allowed him to draw the script from his love of cartoons which played a major part in the segment.

Steven Spielberg then hired him to to work as director for the Chris Columbus script of Gremlens (1984) which was another box-office success. Dante then directed Explorers (1985) which starred Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix as suburban kids seeking alien life. But the Paramount distributors rushed the film before Dante was finished editing it and the studio’s lackluster effort to advertise it led him to become disillusioned with the movie industry.

He directed some episodes for the Sci-Fi series “Amazing Stories” before directing his next Science Fiction feature which was Innerspace (1987) a take on the 1966 movie Fantastic Voyage, but was another box office failure.

After directing five episode for the series “Eerie, Indiana”, Dante returned to the big-screen with the the well-received Matinee (1993), an affectionate period satire set in 1962 against the background of the Cold War and starring John Goodman as a film director, inspired by gimmick filmmaker William Castle. Dante spent the next several years working for television and re-making several movies such as Runaway Daughters (1994) and directed a satire on politics with The Second Civil War (1997).

Dante’s next two films, Toy Soldiers (1998), and Loony Toons: Back in Action (2004) were not well received by critics. He was recruited by Mick Garris to direct an episode of the anthology series “Masters of Horror” (2005) with the episode “Homecoming” which was played as another angry social commentary and pitch-black political satire on the USA policies. —IMDb