Cinefantastique Online

You are browsing the archives of 2008 October.

Thanks to his role as Ash in the EVIL DEAD films, actor Bruce Campbell has earned a place in horror movie history as the as an undefeatable monster-killing uber-warrior, capable of dispatching hordes of Deadites with nothing more than a sawed-off shotgun and a chainsaw attached to the stump of his arm. The aura of [...]

ORSON WELLES: The UFO’s …We were going to mention that the unidentified flying objects only appeared after my radio broadcast.
Ladies and Gentlemen suppose I come out and admit to you now, that my old Martian hoax on the radio was, well, not exactly a hoax. That there were secret sponsors of that broadcast, who [...]

I always thought that PUSHING DAISIES was overrated and far too pleased with itself; nevertheless, it is still a bit of a surprise to see the show snubbing a presidential candidate in its latest advertisement. As Talking Points Memo points out here, ABC hemmed and hawed too long and wound up missing its chance to [...]

With Halloween less than a week away, we thought we would toss up some more classic horror for your perusal. Unfortunately, for five years now, Halloween has become synomyous in the horror movie world with the release of a new SAW film – even though it is hard to imagine a horror franchise that has [...]

Night of the Living Dead (1968)
The Zombie Auteur Explains HIs Approach to Creating Believable Horror.
George Romero shot to cult stardom in 1968 when he directed NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, from a screenplay he co-wrote with John Russo. The film’s reputation is perhaps based mostly on its documentary style (black-and-white photograph, hand-held camera work), but [...]

THE DEVIL’S BRIDE (1968, known as The Devil Rides Out in its native England) is one of the last fine examples of the classic Hammer Horror style. Before closing up shop in the mid-1979s, the studio’s subsequent output would include some good, and even a few great, films, but the familiar motifs had been mostly [...]

Lon Chaney, Jr.’s Wolf Man may be cinema’s most famous lycanthrope, but there can be little doubt that this 1960 film from Hammer Productions is the best werewolf movie ever made. It features all of the studio’s classic virtues: beautiful sets, effective music, colorful photography, solid scripting, memorable performances, and a muscular directorial approach that [...]

One stick and you're stuck: a contagion spreads in SPLINTER
Here’s SPLINTER’s back-to-basics approach to freaking out an audience: Get a bunch of people — in this case, a vacationing couple (Jill Wagner and Paulo Costanzo) and a hardened criminal and his main squeeze (Shea Whigham and Rachel Kerbs) — trapped inside a gas station, and [...]

These days, there is little doubt that Clint Eastwood is among the very best of Hollywood’s directors. But way back in 1971, that was not exactly the case, when Eastwood was making his first film at Universal – a tense little thriller, PLAY MISTY FOR ME. At the time, Mr. Eastwood was considered by many [...]

What started with a small core of avid viewers equipped with the first home VCRs continues now on the web through the work of fan-subbers. A brief look at the birth and evolution of anime fandom in the United States.
This was originally created for the Independent Film Channel to promote the broadcast debut of the [...]

On the one hand, you have the Russian director; on the other, you have Japanese animators who, out of necessity and by either accident or design, find themselves resorting to his theories to create a unique genre of film. A brief look into how a cinematic pioneer helped form what’s come to be known as [...]

[ February 13, 2009; ] NOTE: This trailer is widescreen, so you will have to click through to see it in its proper aspect ratio. My Space posted the trailer for the new FRIDAY THE 13TH. Amusingly, they flag it with the description “Returning to the story that started it all,” even though the the remake is heavily influenced by the [...]

Charles Burns Explores Nocturnal Dread in FEAR(S) OF THE DARK
Put down that Junior Entomologist kit, son, you don’t know what you’re fucking with. In celebrated comics artist Charles Burns’ contribution to the exquisitely unsettling, animated horror antho, FEAR(S) OF THE DARK, a young boy’s discovery of an unusual, bug-like creature will ultimately lead to a [...]