Cinefantastique Online

Here is where you will find all posts related to the Horror genre: movies, television, music, books, and home video

The Fangs are Almost as Big as the Lapels: An undead Johnny Depp braves the ravages of the 70's in DARK SHADOWS.
Two hundred years is a long time to revive a vampire, but then again, forty years is long time to revive the first horror soap opera (not counting an earlier, feature adaptation and a [...]

Cinefantastique’s homevideo podcast looks at this week’s horror, fantasy and science fiction titles on Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD, including a quartet of classic and cult items: GREMLINS, GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH, GANJA & HESS, and the 1959 version of JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, starring James Mason.
The GREMLINS films, directed by [...]

International ‘Launch Trailer’ for ALIEN ‘ Prequel’.

Tom Jones' Fans Just Throw Their Underwear on the Stage: An admirer takes his love of Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack, right) too far in THE RAVEN.
If truth is stranger than fiction, then can a serial killer inspired by the eminently strange writings of Edgar Allan Poe be said to be even stranger still? In [...]

Cherish what you’ve got, ‘cuz it’s likely others sure as hell do. In REPLICAS, an upscale family (Selma Blair, Josh Close — who also wrote the screenplay — and Quinn Lord) take a trip to their vacation home in order to recover from a recent tragedy, and receive a visit from a set of excessively [...]

Adhering to Form: Fran Kranz preps for survival in THE CABIN IN THE WOODS.
Joss Whedon has just been the busy, busy little bee lately, hasn’t he? He was one of the producers of the Morgan Spurlock documentary COMIC-CON EPISODE IV: A FAN’S HOPE last week; he’s the director of eagerly awaited THE AVENGERS, coming up [...]

Do Do That Career Advancement That You Do So Well: Janet Blair prevails upon supernatural forces to help Peter Wyngarde in BURN, WITCH, BURN.
Tricky situation this week: Two genre releases, but one, while good, is getting a very limited release to start; the other, while making it to more venues, doesn’t quite merit the attention. [...]

Fear Has a New Name, and It's BIRDEMIC: SHOCK AND TERROR.
It’s the rare film that comes along and totally redefines the medium, but such a film is BIRDEMIC: SHOCK AND TERROR. From its striking visual style to its Oscar-worthy performances to its dazzling special effects to its powerful, environmental subtext, this tale of a small, [...]

I Spy With My Little Eye… Regrets of the Past: Jason Patric tries to exorcise his sins in KEYHOLE.
This gangster is haunted, literally. KEYHOLE begins with an inversion — a group of criminals have to fight their way past a police barricade into a house — and only gets stranger from there. Turns out their [...]

This trailer from TALES OF TERROR provides an interesting glimpse into how movies were sold to audiences back in 1962. Curiously, the omnibus film’s three episodes are presented in reverse order from their actual appearance in the film. Also noteworthy: the tongue-in-cheek middle episode is acknowledged as being “sardonically humorous” – a tactic that distributor American International Pictures would avoid when releasing the comical THE RAVEN a year later, presenting it as a straight horror thriller.

As part of Cinefantastique’s 50th anniversary tribute to TALES OF TERROR (1962), we recently posted a podcast discussing producer-director Roger Corman’s three-part omnibus of horror inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe. As scintillating as the podcast conversation might be, it cannot capture the aesthetic achievements of the film, which features impressive production design [...]

Ridley Scott’s ALIEN “not-quite-prequel” goes International in new Trailer.

With no new horror, fantasy, or science fiction films opening this weekend, Cinefantastique stalwarts Lawrence French and Steve Biodrowski keep their Sense of Wonder alive by turning the clock back five decades for a retrospective celebration of TALES OF TERROR (1962), producer-director Roger Corman’s fourth film inspired by the work of Edgar Allan Poe. With [...]