Cinefantastique Online

You are browsing the archives of 2009 June.

Hollywood Reporter’s Risky Biz Blog informs us that the long-discussed remake of BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN is back in development. Neil Burger (THE ILLUSIONIST) is slated to direct, from a script he is co-writing with Dirk Wittenborn. Few details about the project’s direction are available except that it will differ significantly from previous script that have been developed.

This is a good example of Hollywood commercial calculation that actually pays off with a few entertainment dividends. It all seems very cold and calculated, the results of lots of careful number-crunching, and yet the film still turns out to be decently entertaining, thanks to lots of great special effects and a few good laughs.

A previously posted trailer for BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE was pulled for copyright reasons, but we recently recieved an authorized version, so here it is again. The trailer actually does a good job of enticing you into wanting to see the movie: the photography looks great, suggesting a lavish production; the action seems exciting; and [...]

RiffTrax – the Internet successor to the MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATRER 3000 television show – has just released its first batch of DVDs, featuring the familiarly irreverent commentary from Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy. Here is an excerpt from one of the ten discs available, featuring MISSILE TO THE MOON, a low budget 1958 [...]

Feast or famine? This week it’ a feast! After two weeks of almost no worthwhile horror, fantasy, and science fiction home video releases, we suddenly find ourselves deluged with more titles than we can count. This week’s big seller is a new GHOSTBUSTERS Blu-ray disc, which replicates most of the bonus features found on the [...]

This is one of the best comedy-horror spoofs ever made. Not only is it riotously funny; almost as important, the humor is never used as an excuse for feeble work. The special effects are as technically good as anything seen in a serious film; the plot is almost as tightly structured as genuine thriller; and [...]

MST3K alumni Kevin Murphy, Mike Nelson, and Bill Corbett, making fun of PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE as part of their new enterprise, Rifftrax.
Former fans of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 can rejoice in the fact that RiffTrax is making its DVD debut today. Although the DVD format may sound as if it violates the point of [...]

You have to give the RiffTrax crew credit for nerve if nothing else. Back when they were aboard the Satellite of Love, as part of the cult television cable hit MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000, Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett targeted the worst of the worst cinematic slime, the oozing putrescence from the lowest depths of [...]

Warner Brothers has announced that it will release a DVD box set containing four films featuring Boris Karloff (FRANKENSTEIN) and/or Bela Lugosi (DRACULA), the two greatest stars of classic horror films from the early sound era: THE WALKING DEAD, FRANKENSTEIN 1970, YOU’LL FIND OUT, and ZOMBIES ON BROADWAY.

In Part 2 of our interview with MOON-director Duncan Jones, we explore some issues that relate to the film’s plot twist, so if you are afraid of spoilers, do not read this until after seeing the film (which you really should do, by the way).

New films failed to unseat established winners at the nation’s box office this weekend. IMAGINE THAT, starring Eddie Murphy – the only cinefantastique to debut in wide release – opened in just over 3,000 theatres, where it earned a measly $5.7-million, landing in sixth place.
The weekend’s other genre debut, the low-budget MOON, opened in only [...]

Is it possible that this film is so old that there’s no longer any snarky fun to be had making fun of its title? It was certainly possible that in 1984 Paramount Pictures was growing awfully tired of being known as the “Slasher Studio” with titles like the FRIDAY THE 13TH  series, MY BLOODY VALENTINE, [...]

This excellent little science fiction film is a welcome throwback to an earlier era, when filmmakers used the canvas afforded by outer space and/or the future to explore ideas about the human condition. With allusions and references to everything from  2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY to SILENT RUNNING to SOLARIS, debut director Duncan Jones has crafted [...]