Cinefantastique Online

Cinefantastique's Los Angeles Correspondent from 1987 to 1993 and West Coast Editor from 1993 to 1999. Currently the webmaster of Cinefantastique Online, I also run a website called Hollywood Gothique that covers Halloween Horror and Sci-Fi Cinema Events in the Los Angeles area.

Destroy All Monsters (1968)
Just in time for Christmas, the Cinefantastique Laserblast crew – that would be Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski – offer up their recommendations for  DVDs and Blu-ray discs that would make perfect stocking stuffers for the horror, fantasy, and science fiction fan in your life. Suggestions range from the 1932 [...]

The Christmas season is upon us, and as we have had occasion to mention, that means ghosts and spirits. And what greater Christmas ghost story is there than Charles Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL? That is the subject of this week’s Cinefantastique Round Table Podcast: Dan Persons, guest John W. Morehead (of Theofantastique.com), and Steve Biodrowski [...]

This week’s special edition of the Cinefantastique Laserblast podcast forgoes the usual rundown of recent horror, fantasy, and science fiction releases on home video, instead offering a 50th anniversary tribute to a beloved genre classic. Back in 1961, producer Charles H. Schneer and special effects supervisor Ray Harryhausen brought Jules Verne’s novel MYSTERIOUS ISLAND to [...]

Silent movie magician George Melies uses an Egyptian setting for this short subject in which a skeleton, covered with a sheet, comes to life and dances, then transforms into a living woman and back into a skeleton. Typical of Melies, the presentation is stagy (befitting a former stage magician), and the profusion of special effects [...]

This 1896 black-and-white silent horror film from George Melies (the special effects pioneer behind 1902’s A TRIP TO THE MOON) probably yields little gooseflesh for today’s viewers. However, it plays like an overture for the next forty years of horror movie imagery; its brief running time encapsulates such soon-to-be-familiar cinema imagery as old dark castles; [...]

This is one of many amusing silent short subjects from George Melies, the early cinema magician who pioneered the use of special effects to create imaginative and whimsical fantasy on screen. Typical of Melies, there is little story; THE MAN WITH THE RUBBER HEAD is more of an extended sight gag, in which the special [...]

This 1905 effort from George Melies may not be as famous as A TRIP TO THE MOON (1902), but LA DIABLE NOIR (or THE BLACK IMP) is a perfect distillation of the the silent movie magicians craft and art. The movie tells the simple story of a customer in a hotel room bedeviled by the [...]

George Melies’s 1902 A TRIP TO THE MOON is a pioneering work in the history of horror, fantasy, and science fiction cinema. Although Melies directing technique is dated (proscenium arch compositions, with no intercutting of different angles within scenes), his whimsical sense of magic and fantasy continue to amuse decades later. Story elements are borrowed [...]

Following up on the previous CFQ Spotlight Podcast devoted to Martin Scorcese’s HUGO, the Cinefantastique crew of Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski – joined by special guest Andrea Lipinski – blast off into the fabulous fantasy world of George Melies. The special effects pioneer and cinema magician of the early silent era was the first to realize the potential of movies imbued with a Sense of Wonder, using the camera not to capture reality but to create dreams writ large on the silver screen.

STAR WARS is back again – this time on home video – and a look at the 1977 original reminds Cinefantastique Podcasters Lawrence French, Dan Persons, and Steve Biodrowski that, despite having been retitled A NEW HOPE, the first film still works best as a stand-alone original, not as part four in an on-going franchise [...]

This week’s Round Table focuses on  ”James Bond 23″ (a.k.a., the 23rd 007 film, titled SKYFALL, which began production this week) and on HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART 2, which makes it home video debut on Tuesday, November 8. As always, Cinefantastique Podcasters Lawrence French, Dan Persons, and Steve Biodrowski offer their [...]

Join this week’s Cinefantastique Black Hole Ultra-Lounge Podcast. Steve Biodrowski and Lawrence French discuss news from the world of horror, fantasy, and science fiction cinema: Matt Reeves selection to direct THE TWILIGHT ZONE movie; the death of David Hess (LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT); and the debut of Season Two of THE WALKING DEAD. Also [...]

It’s a remake! No, it’s a prequel! It’s THE THING, the latest film derived from John W. Campbell’s short story “Who Goes There?” – which previously inspired the 1951 Howard Hawks production THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD and director John Carpenter’s 1982 remake THE THING. With regular Cinefantastique Spotlight Podcast host Dan Person missing in [...]