Just in time for Halloween, Fangoria is back.
“The fabled horror magazine that has thrilled and terrified readers since 1979 looked dead and buried last year,” writes Ron Charles in the Washington Post. “But now, just in time for Halloween, Fangoria has crawled out of its own grave in the form of a new quarterly journal with photos so high-gloss that the blood looks wet.
“The new issue, which hits stands this week, sports a cover photo of the indefatigable killer Michael Myers in David Gordon Green’s upcoming ‘Halloween’ (opening Oct. 19). Inside is a ghouls’ gathering of features that would satisfy any ‘Halloween’ maniac,” Charles continues.
From behind-the-scenes insights with Jamie Lee Curtis on the movie set, to makeup tips and horror feature news content, the magazine runs the gamut for gore fans and aficionados. And it’s not afraid to cut deep (pardon the pun).
“It’s striking how retrospective this new issue of Fangoria is, reflecting the genre’s tendency to keep cannibalizing its own canon,” Charles writes. “Director Don Coscarelli writes about the influences on his ‘Phantasm’ (1979). Another story unearths unused script treatments of ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ (1974). If the original Fangoria offered young readers a taste of something forbidden, this revived version offers older readers a taste of something nostalgic.”
Like its predecessor, the reborn Fangoria doesn’t “just revel in blood and guts,” explained EIC Phil Nobile Jr.
“It showcased the craft, the people who made these things, and so that cured me of that terror because I could see that it was these people’s jobs to scare me and to gross me out, to freak me out,” Nobile explains.
As Nobile explains, the horror culture is ripe for success, with more conventions happening than ever and a growing fan base.
“They’re becoming like these Disney Worlds,” he says. “It used to just be me and a bunch of guys in black T-shirts trying to find that DVD we couldn’t find. Now it’s a big family outing, and the kids get made up, and there’s little Freddys running around and little Jasons.”
And after all the blood has been wiped away, there’s always the print magazine, keep you gruesomely entertained until next time.
It sounds amazing, and I can’t wait to get my hands on this one.