Cinefantastique Online

You are browsing the archives of 2008 April.

Den of Geek has an interview with Michale Staininger, who is making his directorial debut with a contemporary film adaptation of Edgar Alan Poe’s “Ligeia” (which previously furnished the inspiration for 1964’s TOMB OF LIGEIA, starring Elizabeth Shepherd in the title role). The story follows a man who believes his late wife willpower was strong enough [...]

The Vault of Horror reports the sad news that actress-writer Kay Linaker has died. Linkaker has a small but significant role in horror movie history: under her pen name Kate Phillips, she co-wrote the screenplay for the 1958 version of THE BLOB, the film “That Made Steve McQueen a Star and Gave Horror a New [...]

Keith Brown at Giallo Fever gives the run down on LUCIO FULCI REMEMBERED, VOLUME 1, a DVD consisting of interviews with cast and crew who worked with Lucio Fulci.  The Italian director became a cult figure for such splatter-fests as ZOMBIE and THE BEYOND, but he also made some decent giallo thrillers like LIZARD IN A [...]

Esplatter posts a news bit from Reuters, revealing Eli Roth’s next project will be rated PG-13:
“This will be my first big-budget, PG-13, mass-destruction movie. I want total chaos and pandemonium.”
There will be a “big announcement” about the “Transformers“-style project next month. “I feel like I pushed the violence in R movies about as far as [...]

 
In the Wall Street Journal article “Can These Heroes Save Summer,” Lauren A. E. Schuker and Peter Sanders take a look at the upcoming summer movie season and note that it is filled with superheroes, who Hollywood hopes will save them from low attendance and sagging receipts. On the list of big-budget releases is IRON [...]

The Los Angeles Times confirms what has been expected for months: Guillermo Del Toro will direct two films inspired by Tolkien’s The Hobbit. The first will portray the events of the book; the second will cover the gap between the book and LORD OF THE RINGS. Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh will executive produce the [...]

This 2007 killer crocodile movie from Greg McLean (writer-director of WOLF CREEK) finally gets a limited theatrical release. After PRIMEVAL (a rival killer crock film) bombed last years, ROGUE’s planned released in 2007 was pushed back, and at one time it seemed doomed to go direct-to-video. So we should be thankful that it is appearing [...]

This is the last Hammer horror film to feature the studio’s essential triumvirate of director Terence Fisher and stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Made when the studio was looking for new ideas, but before it had begun its later decline, THE GORGON is an interesting addition to the company’s pantheon of classic monster movies [...]

The little, low-budget opus belatedly attempts to cash in on CAT PEOPLE, but it has little of the subtlety and none of the style of the 1942 Val Lewton production. In a strange way, CAT GIRL seems more old-fashioned than its model: the limited production values, melodramatic tone, and outdated attempts at spooky atmosphere suggest a [...]

Fringe film-making can be a fascinating subject, and certainly many of the subjects of Kirk Lodes’ book Cheesy, Sleazy, Mixed-Up Astro-Zombies: The 100 Worst Actors and Directors of All Time are deserving of greater critical attention. Unfortunately, this isn’t the book that brings a balanced look at the strengths and weaknesses of the filmmakers it [...]

Director Yimou Zhang’s follow-up to HERO (2002) is another high-class, artsy interpretation of the martial arts genre. Like its predecessor (and like CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON), HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS takes ideas and elements seen in dozens of Hong Kong, Cantonese-language movies and synthesizes them into an elegant, beautiful piece of film-making. The studied, artistic [...]

HERO is one of the best films of its kind and one of the most beautiful films ever made. A martial arts Fant-Asia costume epic, the film’s storyline edges closer to legend than history, and its displays of impossible fighting skill (swordsmen running on water, bouncing off treetops, floating through the air) pushes it into [...]

At the New York Comic Con, Guillermo Del Toro announced that he is planning to direct SATURN AND THE END OF DAYS, which he called his “final little movie about childhood and horror.” Like THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE and PAN’S LABYRINTH, the film will feature a child protagonist dealing with adult horrors.
“It’s about a kid named [...]