Cinefantastique Online

What’s you’re pleasure: Horror, Fantasy, or Science Fiction? Find them all here, plus the occasional oddball entry.

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. [...]

Crossing Generations and Genres in COMIC-CON EPISODE IV: A FAN'S HOPE.
For some, it is Valhalla; for others, it is a seething, roiling, chaotic pit of humanity. For many, I suspect, it’s a phenomenon just slightly more indecipherable than Naked Lunch. It is San Diego Comic-Con, and documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, with the help of Stan [...]

Remake based on Pilip K. Dick story gets long trailer.

FUUUUNNNNNGUUUUSSSS!!!: Sam Worthington's gonna need to bathe in a vatful of Purell after this moment from WRATH OF THE TITANS.
In the curious ecology that is Hollywood, a film that’s best known as a poster child for what not to do when converting 2D to 3D and for a declarative that become something of a pop-culture [...]

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 [...]

Shanyn Leigh and Willem Dafoe Embrace Their Fates in 4:44 LAST DAY ON EARTH.
The newest episode of my short radio series THE INDIE ON DEMAND MOVIE REVIEW takes a look at 4:44 LAST DAY ON EARTH, in which Willem Dafoe and Shanyn Leigh are cast as a New York couple awaiting the end of the [...]

Farscape’s Ben Browder makes appearance.

The Last Battle?: Jennifer Lawrence struggles for survival in THE HUNGER GAMES.
Hunger will compel people to some extreme acts: lie; kill; volunteer your child to appear on TODDLERS & TIARAS. Who knew it could also lead to one of the best movies of the year? The highly anticipated THE HUNGER GAMES takes the first book [...]

Soap-opera actress will play the Doctor’s new companion.

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.