Cinefantastique Online

Cats are not as popular as werewolves, zombies, and vampires, but they do make frequent appearances in sci-fi, fantasy, and horror films. In the Internet traditions of Friday Cat Blogging and Caturday, we take a look at our pick of the litter.

This is a misleadingly titled giallo thriller in the tradition of Dario Argento’s THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET, and CAT O’NINE TAILS. Director Antonio Bido also borrows several stylistic tropes from Argento, particularly from DEEP RED: harsh violence; point-of-view shots; a repetitive, insistent main theme performed with a pop music arrangement [...]

 
Cats are the perfect international horror movie stars. Like the genre itself, they make their impact with visuals, not dialogue, which is why horror travels well from country to country. A unique example of this is THE GRUDGE, an American remake of the 2003 Japanese production JU-ON: THE GRUDGE. Remaking a Japanese horror film had [...]

Fine technical craftsmanship and solid performances fight a losing battle with rampant stupidity in this entertaining Mexican horror film, which is alternately atmospheric and silly. The story follows a reporter named Ricardo (played by the film’s producer, Abel Salazar) who comes to a small town seeking an interview from Samuel (Enrique Rambal), a world-famous pianist who [...]

This semi-sequel of sorts to BATMAN RETURNS spins the popular Catwoman character off into her own film – the would-be beginning of a franchise that failed to materialize, thanks to dismal box office returns. An almost unmitigated disaster, this major studio production with a major star in the lead (the Oscar-winning Halle Berry) comes across [...]

The little, low-budget opus belatedly attempts to cash in on CAT PEOPLE, but it has little of the subtlety and none of the style of the 1942 Val Lewton production. In a strange way, CAT GIRL seems more old-fashioned than its model: the limited production values, melodramatic tone, and outdated attempts at spooky atmosphere suggest a [...]

With Universal likely to be the last oar-rower on the HD-DVD lifeboat, their choice of releases on the format becomes that much more interesting. Other than Warner Bros, who recently abandoned ship in favor of the greener pastures of Blu-ray exclusivity, Universal was the only studio keeping up a steady stream of catalog title releases. [...]

Hardly dull but not necessarily good.
This is a typically outrageous, action-packed flick from Hong Kong, in which characterization and coherence play second fiddle to throwing anything up on the screen that comes into the writer’s mind. With so much going on, the film is hardly ever dull, but that does not necessarily mean it [...]

One of the joys of Hong Kong Cinema is the sheer uninhibited exuberance of their fantasy films. ”Make-believe” seems to be the operative term when it comes to these over-the-top opera; unconstrained by credibility concerns, the filmmakers feel free to fly with every imaginative idea that floats through their creative minds. The results can be wildly [...]

Stuart Gordon’s MASTERS OF HORROR episode “The Black Cat” came out on DVD this week (I reviewed the film here), so it makes sense to make that the focus of this week’s episode of Friday Cat Blogging.

This is yet another adaptation of Poe’s story, more faithful than most, i which a man is driven by [...]