Dante's output includes the films Piranha (1978), The Howling (1981), Explorers (1985), Innerspace (1987), The 'Burbs (1989), Matinee (1993), Small Soldiers (1998), and Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003).

His work for television and cable include the social satire The Second Civil War (1997), episodes of the anthology series Masters of Horror ("Homecoming" and "The Screwfly Solution") and Amazing Stories, as well as Police Squad!

His father was a professional golfer who encouraged him to play sports; however, Dante was more interested in drawing cartoons and frequenting Saturday matinees at the cinema.

[7][8] Other established directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Peter Bogdanovich had already emerged from Corman's de-facto film school.

[3] In 1975, Dante moved up to directing when he collaborated with fellow Corman school alumni Allan Arkush to make the satirical exploitation film Hollywood Boulevard.

[3] In 1979, Dante directed some scenes of Rock 'n' Roll High School when Allan Arkush fell ill due to exhaustion, but remains uncredited.

[11] Dante again collaborated with John Sayles when he enlisted him to rewrite the previously adapted draft of Gary Brandner's werewolf tale The Howling.

His approach was to disguise it as long as possible and make it look like a slasher film — which was a lot more popular at the time — "and then bring in the supernatural elements slowly so that the audience could get acclimated and not immediately reject it as something old-fashioned.

"[13] The film's special effects, which at the time were considered state-of-the-art, were completed by Rob Bottin after Rick Baker left to work on An American Werewolf in London.

Due to their work on The Howling, Dante and producer Michael Finnell received the opportunity to make the film Gremlins by Steven Spielberg.

[14] Dante's segment, a remake of the original Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life",[17] features cartoon-style special effects, revolving around a woman played by Kathleen Quinlan who is 'adopted' by an omnipotent boy.

Dante also took over editing duties on George Miller's segment of the film, after he left the project feeling repulsed by the news of the fatal helicopter accident.

[15] The film follows a teenager, played by Zach Galligan, who inadvertently breaks three important rules concerning his new pet and unleashes a horde of malevolently mischievous monsters on a small town.

[20] In the spring of 1985, Paramount changed the film's initial release date from late August to early July, telling Dante and the editors to stop editing and deliver a shorter rough cut.

Dante said he had a "wonderful experience" making Innerspace, mainly because of the cast which included actors Dennis Quaid, Martin Short, and Meg Ryan among others.

However, after one particular day of filming, Dante recalled that studio executives from Warner Brothers had invited him out to lunch and told him that what he was doing was not funny and described Short as being "not very attractive", wanting to recast the role.

Dante and producers Larry Brezner and Michael Finnell agreed that Tom Hanks would be the most suitable actor to portray the married Ray Peterson, a suburban homeowner who tries to introduce excitement into his life by investigating the activities of his mysterious neighbors.

"There was a lot of temptation to broaden it and go outside the neighborhood, but it seemed to violate the spirit of the piece," Dante said, "It's almost the kind of thing that could be a stage play except that you could never do on-stage what we've done in this movie.

After those ideas fell through, the studio returned to Dante, who agreed to make the sequel after receiving the rare promise of having complete creative control over the movie as well as a budget tripling that of the original film.

He referred to it as "one of the more unconventional studio pictures ever," imagining it as a satire of Gremlins and sequels in general,[26] resulting in a film with several meta-references and self-referential humor.

Charles S. Haas wrote two more films for Dante; one an unproduced script about Chuck Jones' early years at Termite Terrace[27] and the other, Matinee about the Cuban Missile Crisis.

[7] When Dante began pre-production work for Small Soldiers, a film about toy action figures who come to life, he was told to make an "edgy picture for teenagers."

Later, after Burger King became a sponsor to promote the film, he was told to soften it as a "kiddie movie" and as a result, several of the action and explosion scenes were edited out.

He agreed to direct the film to pay tribute to his idol Chuck Jones, and as somewhat of a placeholder for his unmade biographical comedy Termite Terrace.

Among them were the anthology film Paris, I'll Kill You, the werewolf feature Monster Love, and the Roger Corman biopic The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes.

Dante served as executive producer on the independent feature length thriller Dark, starring Whitney Able and Alexandra Breckenridge, directed by Nick Basile.

In October 2016, Dante directed a live table-reading of the film's script at the Vista Theatre in Los Angeles, which starred Bill Hader as Corman, Jason Ritter as Peter Fonda and Ethan Embry as Jack Nicholson.

[112][58] Dante has cited Roger Corman, Chuck Jones, Frank Tashlin, Ernst Lubitsch, Mario Bava, James Whale and Jean Cocteau among his major influences.

[113][114][6] Some of Dante's favorite films include Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be (1942), Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958), Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (1955) and James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein (1935).