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A few moments reflection on the horror movie experience reveals how important music is: PSYCHO, JAWS, HALLOWEEN. Unfortunately, while the images of horror have been the focus of much critical and academic discussion, little attention has been paid to the music. Addressing this deficit, Neil Lerner has edited the book Music in the Horror Film: Listening to Fear.

What did 1960 have to offer in terms of horror, fantasy, and science fiction films? While England’s Hammer Films, who had revived the Gothic tradition with new incarnations of Dracula and Frankenstein, continued their successful streak, filmmakers in America and Italy sought to cash in on their success. Japan – long a supplier of giant monsters – showed that they could scale their terrors down to size. Horror was becoming international in scope.

Barbara Steele in BLACK SUNDAY, one of the great horror films of 1960.

PSYCHO recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, but it is not the only classic horror, fantasy, or science fiction film released 50 years ago. 1960 also gave us BRIDES OF DRACULA, CITY OF THE DEAD, EYES WITHOUT A FACE, JOGOKU, and many others worth remembering.

This week features a bold new experiment in podcasting, the likes of which have seldom if ever been seen in our lifetimes! At the end of this week’s Cinefantastique Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction Podcast 1:20, we let the recorder run on just to see what happened. The result is the Cinefantastique Post-Mortem Podcast, a [...]

ith no new horror, fantasy, and science fiction films opening nationwide this week, the Cinefantastique Podcast turns its eye on the 50th anniversary of a trio of terror from the year 1960: Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO, Michael Powell’s PEEPING TOM, and Roger Corman’s HOUSE OF USHER. Relax and sit back in your time machine as Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski offer their retrospective analysis of these classic films.

Thanks to the enduring popularity and critical respect afforded to Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (1960), the character of Norman Bates has emerged as one of the premier icons of the horror genre. Norman is memorable because he appears, at first, to be shy and sympathetic – a lonely boy-man under his mother’s thumb. Even when he [...]

The man who adapted Robert Block’s novel discusses his contribution to Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film.
As told to Steve Biodrowski
Joseph Stefano has a long list of credits of various shapes and sizes (including his work as a songwriter), but he will always be fondly remembered by genre fans for two outstanding projects: he produced and wrote [...]

This low-budget black-and-white shocker is one of the great achievements in the horror genre, although it eschews the monsters and supernatural trappings usually associated with the genre at that time, in favor of a psychologically based approach to terror. As producer Howard Hawks had done with THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, producer-director Alfred Hitchcock took [...]

We all know a boy’s best friend is his mother, but mom and apple pie do not always equate with wholesome goodness when it comes to cinefantastique. In movies, the old cliche about the female of the species being as deadly as the male usually refers to a luscious femme fatale, but there are also [...]

Last month, we ran a list of the American Film Institute’s nominees for the best Fantasy and Science-Fiction Films of all time. Many readers were angry over the exclusion of horror from the genres under consideration; some were unhappy about certain titles that made or did not make it onto the A.F.I.’s lists; a few were [...]