When I was hired to create and launch Fear Zone, I conceived it as a monthly magazine that would be doled out in daily doses. That being the case, you now "hold in your hands" what amounts to the Zone's final issue.

Traffic for this site remains exceptionally high (and we've shown a 40% increase over the last 3 months) and I know editors at other sites who would kill for our numbers. But this is a commercial venture, and advertising revenue on the web has dried up during the recession, and there's no stimulus money for horror websites...

I'll continue to post new content from our remaining contributors, who have loyally supported FZ to the end, through November. In December, all of the ... (more…)

I know, I know - "Best of" lists can be silly, but I didn't want to wrap up Fear Zone (more on that another day) without drawing up a list of the 25 most influential figures in horror. I kept the list short - 100 or even 50 seemed too ambitious, and the more names you add to a list the less significant their accomplishments seem - and I restricted myself to writers, filmmakers, and special make-up artists (and one "other"). Had I made a longer list, I would certainly have included film composers and actors. I'd like to hear who you would have included as well - and what cuts you'd make to allow for them.

25. Dan Curtis

Dan Curtis was a producer and director who never met a spider web, ... (more…)

Back when I made SLIME CITY, I was a ravenous comic book fan. Everyone on set passed around comics during what I consider the real Golden Age of that medium: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, ELEKTRA: ASSASSIN; WATCHMEN; CEREBUS and Miller's DAREDEVIL all circulated among the slime cast and crew. I remember having a conversation with Robert Sabin regarding books that had changed creative hands. I felt that if a top writer or artist left a title, and that title's quality decreased, it was important to stop buying it to send a message to the powers that be; Robert felt that when you signed on to a book, you needed to support it through the inevitable creative dips. I've always felt this way; there'... (more…)

Eight years... (more…)

I'm a huge Sylvester Stallone fan. ROCKY is one of the great American movies, and PARADISE ALLEY, FIST, FIRST BLOOD and the underrated NIGHTHAWKS are all fine films. Throw in the best of his sequels - ROCKY III, RAMBO FIRST BLOOD PART II - and his offbeat gems, like THE LORDS OF FLATBUSH, and you've got a steroid-injected body of work that more than makes up for his dogs (admittedly, too many to list here).

Over the last two years, and after a decade of failed attempts, Sly accomplished the near impossible: he resurrected his two signature characters in ROCKY BALBOA and RAMBO - and they were both good! Real good. RAMBO especially raised the bar for Hollywood cinematic combat gore, with ... (more…)

It's hard to believe, but today marks Fear Zone's second anniversary: we launched in "beta zone" on September 2nd, 2007, and our first posting was for Tempe Video's KINGDOM OF THE VAMPIRE. Our first movie review was Cinema Knife Fight's take on ROB ZOMBIE'S HALLOWEEN, which means I'll always feel a connection to that execrable flick. Our first book review was THE LONG LAST CALL by John Skipp, and our first author interview was with Jeff Strand. We've had 54 contributors, and every one of them has added to the eclectic mix I sought to stir when I was hired to create, launch and edit this site.

Fear Zone has never been like the majority of horror themed sites out there. For one thing, we ... (more…)

"For the times they are a-changin'..."

--Bob Dylan

Look around you. I bet you can't see it. Bet you don't feel it. But it's there, not far on the horizon: a seismic shift in the way readers, TV viewers, moviegoers and even gamers receive (and participate in) their entertainment. The digital revolution isn't coming, it's already here - and it's changing everything. Horror will not be spared.

Delirium Books, birthplace of such limited edition classics as Brian Keene's THE RISING and Jeff Strand's THE SINISTER MR. CORPSE, recently announced that they are closing shop on their trade paperback line, which brought reasonably priced editions of their limited edition hardcovers to people who ... (more…)

This is not a diatribe against Stephenie Meyers's TWILIGHT Saga. I'm on record as believing that anything that gets young people to read, and anything that might steer them towards horror fiction, cannot be all bad. The teenage girls who swoon over Robert Pattinson are no more ridiculous than housewives who found DARK SHADOWS' Barnabas Collins irresistable, or goths who fantasized over Anne Rice's Lestat. Every generation expresses their vampire lust, and Meyers simply tapped into a younger vein than most other creators have.

No, I'm talking aboutt he film series. First Summit Entertainment replaced TWILIGHT director Catherine Hardwicke with Chris Weitz on THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON ... (more…)

I remember when ALIEN first came out. I visited my uncle in New York City, where he worked for 20th Century Fox, and we attended a showing at the Gotham Cinema, on Third Avenue near 59th Street. Although I'd already read the graphic novel adaptation, the movie scared the hell out of me. It was 1979, which was a very good year for horror.

While some fans prefer James Cameron's sequel, ALIENS, to Ridley Scott's original (based on an original screenplay by Dan O'Bannon), I've always preferred ALIEN, which I consider the perfect haunted house movie--and a perfect movie by any standard. ALIEN III was pretty shoddy and ALIEN: RESURRECTION was horrid, with each sequel getting farther and ... (more…)

Harlan Ellison recently filed a lawsuit against Paramount Productions over the STAR TREK franchise. I'm unfamiliar with the charges in the lawsuit, and am frankly uninterested; I take it as a sign of Ellison's good health that he still pursues legal actions against powerful corporations in the name of creators' rights. This is the man who previously won a lawsuit against ABC for "appropriating" elements of the short story "Brillo" (which he co-wrote with Ben Bova) for their short-lived cybernetic cop series FUTURE COP, starring Ernest Borgnine, and against James Cameron and Carolco Pictures for lifting various elements of his short stories, and an episode of THE OUTER LIMITS that he ... (more…)