10 Best Joe Dante Movies, According to IMDb

Joe Dante is a unique director with a penchant for blending horror, comedy, and satire. He was on fire in the 1980s and ’90s, churning out a string of gems like The Howling, Gremlins, and Innerspace. Often, his movies invert genre tropes or take established stories in new directions. His movies can get dark, but they’re all fundamentally crowd-pleasing in the best way. Dante lives to entertain.

Not all of Dante’s movies stick the landing, but the best of them have become iconic: everyone recognizes the Mogwai from Gremlins, for example. Likewise, The Howling influenced many later werewolf movies, and Innerspace is the quintessential shrinking movie. His projects vary considerably in tone but are united by a madcap sense of fun. These are the best of his movies, as ranked by the users of IMDb.

10 ‘Small Soldiers’ (1998)

IMDb Score: 6.2/10

“I love the smell of polyurethane in the morning.” Small Soldiers introduces us to the fictional company Globotech Industries, which manufactures highly advanced action figures called the Commando Elite. However, a mix-up at the factory sees the toys being fitted with microprocessors intended for the Department of Defense. As a result, these action figures become aggressive, formidable fighting machines. It’s up to teenager Alan (Gregory Smith) to diffuse the situation before it spirals out of control.

The story is a little lackluster, but decent puppetry and CGI, along with some likable protagonists, carry Small Soldiers over the finish line. There’s also a fair amount of military satire just beneath the surface: Dante pokes fun at war movie clichés and lobs a few shots at the military-industrial complex.

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9 ‘Gremlins 2: The New Batch’ (1990)

IMDb Score: 6.5/10

Gremlins 2 picks up where the first one left off, with Gizmo, the cute, furry Mogwai, trapped in a high-tech research facility in New York City. Chaos ensues when a new batch of mischievous Gremlins is unleashed, this time with even more bizarre and unpredictable mutations. The story isn’t quite as engaging as the first, but it makes up for it with several decent gags and an infectious sense of fun.

Specifically, the movie works because Dante took the franchise in something of a new direction. Gremlins 2 is kind of a parody of the original, and of Hollywood sequels in general. “We decided to do a movie that not only made fun of the first movie and all those horror movie tropes but got away with some social satire as well,” Dante explains. In the process, he reaches new heights of zaniness.

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8 ‘Explorers’ (1985)

IMDb Score: 6.4/10

A young Ethan Hawke made his feature debut in this coming-of-age sci-fi adventure. It’s about three friends, Ben Crandall (Hawke), Wolfgang Müller (River Phoenix), and Darren Woods (Jason Presson), who share a common dream of building a spacecraft. Their vision becomes a reality when Ben experiences vivid dreams containing blueprints for an interstellar spaceship. With Wolfgang’s technical prowess and Darren’s resourcefulness, the trio constructs a homemade spacecraft out of an old tilt-a-whirl car.

To their astonishment, the makeshift spacecraft not only works but takes them on a journey beyond Earth’s atmosphere and into the depths of space, where they encounter far more than they bargained for. Despite this killer premise, Explorers was a box office flop, grossing just $9.9m against a $20-25 m budget. Nevertheless, it has garnered a legion of devotees over time and is now something of a cult film.

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7 ‘Twilight Zone: The Movie’ (1983)

IMDb Score 6.4/10

John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, and George Miller teamed up for this anthology film based on the classic TV show. Each of them directed a different one of its four segments. Dante helmed the third entry, “It’s a Good Life”, which was a remake of a Twilight Zone episode that aired in 1961. It’s about a boy named Anthony who has godlike powers, which he uses to oppress those around him.

The original is frequently ranked among the greatest Twilight Zone episodes ever, so Dante had huge shoes to fill. His version isn’t as good as the original, but he does a decent job; his segment is arguably better than those by Spielberg or Landis. Most importantly, Dante’s obvious affection for the show clearly shines through here.

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6 ‘The Howling’ (1981)

IMDb Score: 6.5/10

Karen White (Dee Wallace) is a television news reporter who is being stalked by the serial killer Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo). Traumatized by her encounter with Quist, Karen seeks solace at a secluded resort called The Colony, recommended by her therapist Dr. George Waggner (Patrick Macnee). Unbeknownst to Karen, The Colony is inhabited by a pack of werewolves. Naturally, all manner of mayhem ensues.

The Howling represented a big step forward for the werewolf subgenre, serving up a creepy atmosphere alongside wildly gory practical effects. In fact, it boasts what was probably the most impressive werewolf transformation in film up til that point. Dante gleefully unleashed violence that the old Universal monster movies could only hint at, paving the way for later gems like Cat People and Near Dark.

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5 ‘The Second Civil War’ (1997)

IMDb Score: 6.6/10

The Second Civil War is a TV movie that Dante made for HBO. It’s a political satire that focuses on the issue of immigration. Beau Bridges plays Idaho governor Jim Farley who closes his borders completely to illegal immigrants, kicking off a media frenzy and constitutional crisis before he ultimately declares secession from the United States. A huge war breaks out between the US Army and the Idaho National Guard.

It’s goofy, but there’s some sharp political commentary behind some of the gags. In some ways, the movie was ahead of its time, like the way it uses documentary-style handheld cameras to lend it an air of reality, a trick which would later be used by shows like The Newsroom and Veep. The movie’s depiction of bumbling politicians may also have been prophetic.

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4 ‘Innerspace’ (1987)

IMDb Score: 6.8/10

Innerspace follows Lt. Tuck Pendleton (Dennis Quaid), a hotshot Navy pilot who volunteers for a groundbreaking experiment in miniaturization. However, things take an unexpected turn when a high-tech heist interrupts the experiment, and Tuck’s microscopic vessel is injected into the body of an unsuspecting hypochondriac named Jack Putter (Martin Short). Tuck must survive his sojourn through the human body, in the process uncovering a plot involving industrial espionage and a mysterious computer chip.

Dante has called Innerspace “probably the movie that I had made up to then that was the closest to my intention. As a result, I was very happy with it. When I look at it today I still think it’s a tremendous amount of fun.” He’s not wrong. It’s a simple but effective premise, which he pulls off with aplomb. The visual effects are also solid for the time and won the film an Oscar.

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3 ‘The ‘Burbs’ (1989)

IMDb Score: 6.8/10

The ‘Burbs features Tom Hanks in one of his early starring roles as Ray Peterson, a suburbanite who becomes suspicious of his new neighbors, the mysterious Klopeks, after a series of strange occurrences in the neighborhood. Convinced that the Klopeks are part of a Satanic cult, Ray teams up with his friends Art (Rick Ducommun) and Rumsfield (Bruce Dern) to uncover the truth.

It makes for a fun black comedy and send-up of suburbia, held together by charming performances and a steady supply of shenanigans. It’s at its best when poking fun at these average Joes desperately trying to be tough-guy heroes. Critics were lukewarm toward The ‘Burbs on release but it has also since become a cult movie. ​​​​​​​

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2 ‘Matinee’ (1993)

IMDb Score: 6.9/10

This period comedy is set in 1962, around the Cuban missile crisis. President Kennedy‘s announcement that Soviet missiles were stationed in Cuba creates an atmosphere of fear and tension in Key West, Florida. Eccentric B-movie producer Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman) sees this as an opportunity to market his latest trashy horror movie. Two teenagers, Gene (Simon Fenton) and Stan (Omri Katz) get swept up in Woolsey’s harebrained schemes.

Matinee is a love letter to the movies – even the awful ones. Dante succeeds in conjuring up a believable picture of that era and its pop culture which is part parody and part nostalgia trip. The script is frequently hilarious too, with Goodman and Cathy Moriarty evidently taking delight in some of their wacky lines.

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1 ‘Gremlins’ (1984)

IMDb Score: 7.3/10

Gremlins begins with a quirky inventor, Randall Peltzer (Hoyt Axton), bringing an unusual creature called a Mogwai to his son Billy (Zach Galligan) as a Christmas present. This being, named Gizmo, comes with three crucial rules: never expose him to bright light, never get him wet, and never feed him after midnight. When these rules are inevitably broken, malevolent Mogwai spawn, transforming into destructive creatures known as Gremlins.

Gremlins is far and away Dante’s most beloved and most commercially successful movie. It quickly seeped into the zeitgeist, spawning toys, video games, a sequel, an animated series, and even appearances by the critters in Space Jam: A New Legacy and ads for Mountain Dew. It’s a testament to how well the creatures were designed. On top of that, Gremlins is often surprisingly dark for a kid’s movie, taking cues from several classic horror films. It’s just pure fun from front to back, and it’s likely to keep entertaining audiences for a long time to come.

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