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The late Ishiro Honda has long been considered Japan’s premier fantasy film director, and certainly worthy of a book-length study, which is what author Peter H. Brothers’ Mushroom Clouds and Mushroom Men: The Fantastic Cinema of Ishiro Honda provides.

In this post about SAW 3-D, being touted as the finale installment in the Jigsaw saga, Lionsgate president Jason Constantine makes the following statement about the longevity of the SAW franchise:
“You can count on one hand the franchises that lasted seven years — and every year, no less,” says Jason Constantine, Lionsgate’s president of acquisitions [...]

What did 1960 have to offer in terms of horror, fantasy, and science fiction films? While England’s Hammer Films, who had revived the Gothic tradition with new incarnations of Dracula and Frankenstein, continued their successful streak, filmmakers in America and Italy sought to cash in on their success. Japan – long a supplier of giant monsters – showed that they could scale their terrors down to size. Horror was becoming international in scope.

The 1998 American version of Gojira
Get ready to scrub your brains free of the god-awful 1998 remake of GORJIRA by Roland Emmerich (2012, INDEPENDENCE DAY), because a deal has just been struck to get a new remake of the Japanese classic in production. According to Bloody Disgusting both Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures are teaming [...]

Considering the mythical nature of dragons, you would think they would be th superstars of cinefantastique; instead, they have too often been relegated to supporting status in sub-par films. Fortunately, there are a few good dragon movies out there, and even the dramatic disappointments can feature impressively realized reptiles of mass destruction.

Without unnecessary preamble, here is a list of the best Blu-ray discs from 2009, featuring horror, fantasy and science fiction titles. With so many great releases, it is hard to pick favorites, so the films are presented in alphabetical, rather than numeric, order.
An American Werewolf in London. Though director John Landis bristles at the term “horror comedy”, it’s [...]

As part of our weekend tribute to the late special effects director Sadamasa Arikawa, here is the U.S. theatrical trailer for DESTROY ALL MONSTERS – the memorable Toho production in which Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, and all of Earth’s other monsters team up for a non-stop destruction derby involving invading aliens trying to take over the [...]

If you want to draw eyeballs to an online magazine, you have to fill it with stuff that is new, new, new, but on of the defining aspects of Cinefantastique was its love for classics, expressed in frequent cover stories and retrospective articles. We like to keep that tradition alive at Cinefantastique Online, especially on [...]

DESTROY ALL MONSTERS is probably the last well-regarded entry in the original Godzilla series. By this time, all serious threat of the monsters had disappeared; recognizing this, director Ishiro Honda (who had helmed the original GODIZLLA in 1954 and many of the subsequent sequels) opted for a fast-paced action-adventure roller-coaster thrill ride that was seldom [...]

This film is from the goofy era when Godzilla was mutating from a radioactive menace into a lovable hero. The tone is definitely geared for younger viewers, and it’s impossible to take the proceedings seriously. And yet, SON OF GODZILLA is actually quite entertaining on its own juvenile level, filled with strong performances, exotic locations [...]

This is one of the silliest but also one of the more amusing Godzilla movies. The goofiness of the enterprise somehow becomes part of the entertainment value, resulting in a likable, fun-filled, fast-paced movie that is totally incredible but quite watchable.
The story begins (in the original Japanese cut) with a family worried about a missing [...]

EDITOR’S NOTE: In this archive question and answer session, culled from personal appearances made at a Godzlla film festival in 2000, the late special effects expert discusses his work on Toho’s biggest monster, from the frightening original to the comic “Son of” Sequel.
Sadamasa Arikawa served under the legendary special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya, the man [...]

Sci Fi Japan points us to Crackle, a new online “multi-platform next-generation video entertainment network” that is loaded with movies, television episodes, and original videos. Because Crackle is a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment Company, the have a load of titles from Columbia-TriStar, which owns the distribution rights to Toho’s giant monster movies. The current feature movie [...]