The cover of Cinefantastique magazine featuring an image of Asia Argento, a bunch of blood and a razor blade with a job to do. The image is based on her father’s 1996 film ‘The Stendhal Syndrome.’ Illustration by David Voigt.
Originally the long-running film magazine Cinefantastique was just a little fanzine that was compiled with the help of a mimeograph machine in 1967. A few years later it became a highly regarded proper magazine known for its use of lustrous photos and exhaustive critical analysis of films by a team of writers that included the founder of Video Watchdog Tim Lucas along with future Stephen King collaborator, writer, and director Mick Garris. The vision of Cinefantastique publisher and editor Frederick S. Clarke was to ensure that the magazine was a category killer when it came to its approach in the treatment of cinema, taking the art of scrutinizing a film to a new level by providing expansive articles that expertly dissected every aspect of a movie instead of churning out fluff pieces like their competitors.
Another aspect that set Cinefantastique apart was the indulgent use of color photography in its layouts and covers. In addition to the use eye-popping photos, the magazine often featured creative illustrations on the cover done by various artists such as Roger Stine, sci-fi illustrator Barclay Shaw, John Carl Schoenherr (who created the iconic cover illustration for the dust jacket art of Dune), and Andrew Probert who is best known for his colorful contributions to the 1985 film Back to the Future and 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Some of the magazine’s more memorable illustrations were done by Stine and his cover for Cinefantastique that featured a surreal image of Sissy Spacek dripping in blood in 1977 (Volume six, Number one) won the artist critical acclaim. Cinefantastique still maintains an online presence as well as offering access to their extensive back-catalog of interviews and retrospectives. Physical copies of the magazine are also pretty easy to come by. Some of the images that follow are slightly NSFW.
Cover by Roger Stine, 1982.
1981.
The infamous “Carrie” cover by Roger Stine, 1977.
More after the jump…