CINEFANTASTIQUE

   US film magazine, specializing in sf, fantasy and horror CINEMA, and occasionally tv; published and ed Frederick S. Clarke from Illinois. Fall 1970-current. It had reached Vol 26, no 4, by June 1995. Slick BEDSHEET format, well illustrated in both colour and b/w.

   The production schedule has varied from 4 to 6 numbers a year, currently bimonthly. This is by far the most useful US fantastic-cinema magazine, being less juvenile in orientation and (apparently) less dependent on the studios for pictorial material, and thus more independent in its judgments, than magazines like STARLOG. Critical standards range from merely eccentric to excellent. Coverage is good on films with wide theatrical release, but patchy on films that go straight to video release and on tv programmes, with good coverage of tv STAR TREK programmes, rather weak coverage of most other tv shows. Features range from interviews through articles on production problems and on how special effects are worked to occasional retrospectives (usually good) on famous genre movies of the past. Reviews became briefer and weaker in the 1990s, with many films and tv shows omitted altogether (and many credits misspelled or simply not given), so that C's usefulness as a comprehensive magazine of record was becoming dubious.

   PN