It’s time to present today’s trio of online store additions: joining the titles on 4xblu.com’s virtual shelves are David Cronenberg’s “Shivers,” “Le Plaisir” by Max Ophüls, and Joe Dante’s “Small Soldiers.”
Like countless filmmakers, Dante got his start working for producer Roger Corman, whose New World Pictures bankrolled his first few movies. He then achieved more mainstream success with “The Howling” and scored the box office smash “Gremlins.” Dante’s subsequent films include “Innerspace,” “The ‘Burbs,” “Matinee,” and “Small Soldiers,” in which Dante introduced another batch of miniature mischief-makers almost a decade and a half after “Gremlins”: a combat unit of action figures made with weapons grade microchips who wreak havoc while attempting to vanquish their enemies, an odd assortment of toy aliens called the Gorgonites.