Cinefantastique Online

News, reviews & interviews about non-fiction books that cover horror, fantasy, and science fiction movies; also, horror, fantasy, and science fiction novels and fiction that have been adapted into films.

Just in time for the pre-Halloween gift-giving crush comes this breezily entertaining yet critically informative tome on the evolution, production, and aftermath of 1968’s seminal horror film, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

Joe Kane, a.k.a. The Phantom of the Movies, has been covering the exploitation and B-movie scene for thirty-plus years. As editor of the tabloid [...]

August 22, 2010 represented fantasy author Ray Bradbury’s 90th birthday. In celebration of that event, this week’s Post-Mortem podcast examines his career, including the many film and television adaptations of his work: FARENHEIT 451, THE BEAST FROM 20000 FATHOMS, THE ILLUSTRATED MAN, THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, etc. Plus, correspondent Lawrence French [...]

James Cameron gave an an interview to the MTV Movie Blog, in which he discusses future plans for the mega-successful AVATAR franchise. No deals have been signed, and no definite plans have been set, but Cameron is developing ideas: in a nutshell, he wants to complete a novelization of AVATAR before making another film. In [...]

The late Ishiro Honda has long been considered Japan’s premier fantasy film director, and certainly worthy of a book-length study, which is what author Peter H. Brothers’ Mushroom Clouds and Mushroom Men: The Fantastic Cinema of Ishiro Honda provides.

Over at Deadline New York, Mike Fleming suggests that Guillermo Del Toro’s next directorial effort with be his long-in-gestation adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s novel At the Mountains of Madness, with – get this – James Cameron producing. If true, the news is certainly a welcome surprise; only last month, Del Toro was saying that the [...]

Mike Fleming of Deadline New York reports that, despite initial denials, Peter Jackson will in fact direct the two films based on THE HOBBIT, J.R.R. Tolkien’s predecessor to THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Every since Guillermo Del Toro left the director’s chair, speculation among the fan community – and Hollywood in general – has been [...]

You asked for it, and here it is! The fourth and final installment of the popular Twilight saga: Breaking Dawn, directed by Bill Condon, is set to hit theaters November 18, 2011, according to the Sci-Fi Movie Page. But before the wildly successful franchise’s final film reaches the big screen, there are still some hurdles [...]

According to a post at Sci-Fi Movie Page,  yet another novel by the accomplished Phillip K. Dick is set for a big-screen adaptation. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said follows such classic Dick adaptations as Blade Runner (1982) and Total Recall (1990) to the silver screen. Policeman tells the dystopian tale of a TV superstar [...]

David Klass’s 2006 teen novel Firestorm will be getting a film treatment in 2011 with a little help from producer Basil Iwanyk (Clash of the Titans), according to Sci-Fi Movie Page. The book, first in a set known as the “Caretaker Trilogy,” tells the story of a teenaged boy and his super-powered companions who learn [...]

The convoluted plot of Dinosaur Park is kicked of by a prank played by a ten-year-old Kerryl Ryson of the dinosaur planet Stohlson’s Redemption.
Egged on by his seven-year-old bride to be, he causes a dinosaur to upchuck on a visiting offworlder, the Immaculate Ultim of Aberdown. This isn’t taken as a youthful indiscretion; a soldier [...]

Hollywood Reporter informs us that the revived Hammer Films is teaming up with Dark Horse comics to create a line based on the studios horror movies. The first entry will be based on LET ME IN, the remake of the Swedish vampire film LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. Later comics will be based the studio’s [...]

The talented fantasy writer Charles Beaumont died tragically young at the age of 38 in 1967. He is now the subject of a fascinating new documentary film titled “Charles Beaumont: The Short Life of Twilight Zone’s Magic Man.” The doc features interviews with numerous people who worked with Beaumonth, including author Richard Matheson, who shares some stories with CFQ about his good friend and sometime collaborator.

One of the most important works in the history of cinefantastique is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. Although not as widely read as it deserves to be, the novel has had a huge impact that lives on to this day, thanks to the many science fiction film and television adaptations, beginning with the 1925 [...]