Cinefantastique Online

Please click on the links below to view movie trailers, video interviews, and film clips of horror, fantasy, and science fiction on film and television.

LA NOCHE DE WALPURGIS (”The Night of Walpurgis,” 1971)  is the third film in which Spanish actor Paul Naschy portrayed Waldemar Daninsky, a nobleman cursed with lycanthropy. As in the previous year’s LOS MONSTROUS DEL TERROR (”The Monsters of Terror,” a.k.a. ASSIGNMENT TERROR), Daninsky is revived when the silver bullets that “killed” him in the [...]

20th Century Fox releases this production from Blue Sky Studios (ICE AGE, ROBOTS) on Friday May 24 (with previews starting Thursday evening). The 3-D computer-animated film tells the story of a teenage girl (Amanda Seyfried) who discovers that her father’s belief in a miniature race of forest people is true; shrinking down to their size, [...]

Cinefantastique Online’s first video review boldly goes on a STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS. The second Enterprise outing from director J.J. Abrams does what no STAR TREK film has done before: achieve greatness for the second time in a row. On the CFQ Review scale, STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS earns four out of five stars, making [...]

There are several fan-made montages of monsters from Ray Harryhausen films, but this is one of the best, thanks in no small part to its use of soundtrack music composed by Bernard Herrmann (who contributed to Harryhausen’s THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD and MYSTERIOUS ISLAND).

In this 1974 television interview (including film clips from ONE MILLION, B.C. and JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS), Ray Harryhausen demonstrates of the basics of the stop-motion special effects technique and explains how the special effects sequences were dreamed up for his movies.

See one of the greatest sequences ever crafted by stop-motion magician Ray Harryhausen: the skeleton battle from the climax of JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS.

Courtesy of Warner Brothers Online, check out this video interview with Ray Harryhausen, who discusses the changes he made to Medusa in order to make her work as a stop-motion character in CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981).

On April 23, 2006, Ray Harryhausen attended a screening of THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, California. The screening, courtesy of the American Cinematheque, was billed as “The Two Rays,” because Harryhausen’s friend Ray Bradbury was scheduled to attend. Harryhausen, of course, provided the stop-motion special effects that brought [...]

It was only yesterday that I was waxing enthusiastic about the restored conclusion of HORROR OF DRACULA, available on a Region 2 Blu-ray disc that incorporates previously missing footage rediscovered on an old Japanese print in an archival vault in Tokyo. Now, I am starting to have reservations, thanks to a YouTube post showing the [...]

At last, fright fans – here it: the restored ending of HORROR OF DRACULA! The sequence was eviscerated by the British film censor back in 1958, when the film came out, but the recent Region 2 Blu-ray disc has finally restored the missing footage. No word yet on when a Region 1 Blu-ray will come [...]

You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Movie monsters know that more than anybody. Much of the genre is built upon the suspenseful build-up to the first full revelation of exactly what it is that we the viewers have paid to see and shiver over. Often, that revelation takes the form [...]

This is a couple months old, but I just happened to see it and thought it was worth posting. General Electric teases the announcement of some “brilliant new machines” by showing a parade of familiar movie and TV robots – including Robby, Data. K.I.T.T., and B-9 (i.e., the robot from LOST IN SPACE). Whatever [...]

Walt Disney Pictures releases the third IRON MAN movie during the lucrative month of May (”summer” blockbusters don’t wait for summer anymore). Robert Downey Jr. returns as Tony Stark, the man in the iron suit, along iwth Dwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, Don Cheadle as James Rhodes/War Machine, and Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan. However, [...]