Cinefantastique Online

Interviews with experts and filmmakers responsible for your favorite horror, fantasy, and science fiction films

Practically omnipresent and infinitely versatile, Malcolm McDowell has played, among others, a rebellious private school student, a futuristic sociopath, a degenerate emperor, Michael Myer’s nemesis, and the killer of Captain Kirk. He has worked with directors that have included Stanley Kubrick, Paul Schrader and Rob Zombie. He’s pretty much done it all, including a brief [...]

As MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000′S TV’s Frank, comedian and writer Frank Conniff became possibly the most cuddly mad scientist in history. From his debut television appearance that started with the show’s second season — for which he scripted and also pre-screened the “cheesy movies” that would torture host Joel Hodgson and crew — Conniff went [...]

Welcome to the banality of evil, Ben Wheatley-style: In his horror comedy SIGHTSEERS, a couple (Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, who also scripted) decides to take a caravan trip across the British Isles. But, really, who could enjoy such marvels as an antique tramway or the pencil museum when such distractions as litterers, rowdy Wiccans, [...]

Editor’s Note: One recurring theme to emerge in the wake of Ray Harryhausen’s death yesterday was the tremendous influence his work continues to exert over today’s filmmakers, over three decades since his last film, CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981). With that in mind, we are publishing this 2006 article, which uses the occasion of Harryhausen’s [...]

Shooting a workplace comedy set in Hell may be challenging, tedious work, but at least you get to traumatize the hotel staff. That’s only one of the lessons to be gleaned from the cast of YOUR PRETTY FACE IS GOING TO HELL, a new Adult Swim comedy that takes the white-collar satire of OFFICE SPACE [...]

Every now and then, we pause in awe of the people we’ve had the opportunity to spend time with. Doug Trumbull, John Kricfalusi, and Paul Verhoeven in earlier years, Armin Shimerman and Frank Oz more recently — now it’s Martin Landau’s turn, and we couldn’t be happier.
In an extended and wide-ranging interview, we got a [...]

Musician, moviemaker, iconoclastic fan, Rob Zombie has built a formidable rep for himself by taking the horror genre and turning it to his own, unique vision. Now, after such wild rides as THE DEVIL’S REJECTS and HALLOWEEN, he ventures into new territory, telling a more nuanced tale of a New England DJ facing a hellish [...]

ANTIVIRAL is set in an alternate-but-not-too-alternate universe where fame is everything, and the grand bulk of the economy seems built around markets in steaks cloned and viruses farmed from celebrities. The film marks the directing debut of Brandon Cronenberg — son of David Cronenberg — and while its biologic creepiness demonstrates a clear blood-line (we [...]

There’s something about a Don Coscarelli film, something that says, “We’re gonna mess with your brain, now.” But if power-drill-equipped flying orbs, interplanetary gateways stashed away in funeral homes, or Elvis battling soul-sucking mummies didn’t freak you out in such films as PHANTASM and BUBBA HO-TEP, maybe the director’s latest, JOHN DIES AT THE END, [...]

Okay, yet another reason not to move to Southern California. In DETOUR, an ambitious businessman gets trapped in his car when it’s knocked off the road and buried in a mudslide. Actor Neil Hopkins carries most of the weight of this existential nightmare, playing a man confronting a modern-day Premature Burial, trapped in a vehicle [...]

It’s amazing some researchers haven’t figured out a way of determining personalities based on what aspect of Frank Oz’s career one is impressed with. Of course there’s Yoda — Frank voiced the beloved, and powerful, Jedi master, operated the puppet for most of the STAR WARS films, and for many helped form the heart and [...]

Quick, when I throw out the name Keith David, what’s your first thought? Him casting a suspicious glance towards Kurt Russell in THE THING? The fistfight with Rowdy Roddy Piper in THEY LIVE? Maybe it’s the noble and ferocious Goliath from GARGOYLES or the nefarious Dr. Facilier from THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG? Face it, [...]

It’s not easy playing the ingénue in the psycho-sexual farrago that is Clive Barker’s HELLRAISER — one has to maintain one’s humanity while being pursued by your demonic, hell-bent-for-incest uncle (masquerading as your father!) and courted by the sadomasochistic nightmares that are the Cenobites. Ashley Laurence pulled it off, and established herself as a supreme [...]