His most recent movie, The Hole, has languished stateside even after winning the first ever 3-D Persol Award for Best 3-D Stereoscopic Film of the Year at the Venice Film Festival in 2009. A spooky adventure story about a bunch of kids who discover a mysterious chasm in their basement, it stars Bruce Dern and features a bunch of "gotcha"-style 3-D moments that we imagine would compare favorably to The Mad Magician with Vincent Price. Alas, we'll have to imagine those effects since the Music Box is not outfitted for the kind of digital 3-D that's needed to project The Hole. Frankly, the fact that it's the Chicago premiere of a new Dante movie is enough for us.
Then at midnight the fun continues with Gremlins 2: The New Batch, which to our minds is hands down Dante's best movie. The original made such a huge pot of money for Warner Bros. that when Dante finally agreed to a sequel, the studio gave him carte blanche. The result is a completely wacked out assemblage of gags that alternates between snide satire and goofy parody. It's also stuffed to bursting with purposely gratuitous celebrity cameos by the likes of Hulk Hogan, composer Jerry Goldsmith, Tony Randall (as the voice of Brain Gremlin), John Astin, Henry Gibson, Christopher Lee, and most memorably Leonard Maltin. It's being screened in an archival 35mm print.
Admission for the double feature is $15. The Music Box is at 3733 N. Southport Ave.