Journals and Magazines

PROZINES AND POPULIST FILM MAGAZINES

With the wider availability of new technologies for production, modern fanzines have moved beyond the earlier mimeographed and photocopied publications. Shock Xpress , Flesh and Blood , and Necronomicon continued as edited books; Samhain edged closer to the style and content of prozines such as the British-published Starburst (begun in 1978), Fear (1988–1991), The Dark Side (begun in 1990), and Shivers (begun in 1992). Prozines, commercially produced publications with a fan focus, exist between fanzines and populist film magazines (those that offer a general cinema coverage). They often feature the work of paid journalists or regular writers and present news coverage, interviews, and images from current film productions supported by publicists. The prozine developed in the 1970s, beginning with the US-based Cinefantastique (begun in 1970), with its commitment to scrutinizing the technical and professional aspects of current fantasy film productions, and Starlog (begun in 1976), which led a batch of fan publications centered on the new wave of late 1970s science-fiction films. In August 1979 the horror prozine Fangoria emerged as a sister publication to Starlog and the short-lived Future Life (begun in 1978); it became synonymous with the new style of glossy magazines, containing graphic and color images from the horror new wave of the 1980s and celebrations of the ingenious work of the special effects artists.

The British prozines Starburst and Shivers are published by Visual Imagination, a company with a portfolio of fan and film afficionado magazines that includes Xposé , Ultimate DVD , Movie Idols , and Film Review . The latter began in 1950 as ABC Film Review and is now the United Kingdom's longest-running general film monthly. Initially sold in the lobbies of the ABC cinema chain, it carried reviews and features on current film releases as well as special items on in-vogue film stars. Such populist film magazines, essentially promotional publications for the film industry, exist in symbiotic relationship with studios, with these film monthlies giving celebrity exposure, film production updates, and generous coverage for new releases, all supported by special access to sets, production shots, and exclusive stories. Fans do actively contribute to the publications through competitions, readers' letters, pen pal ads, and "wanted" notices, but, compared to fanzines, the pages show greater regulation (with content controlled by both the publisher and the film industry).

Among the very first film magazines was the American publication Photoplay (1911–1980), which was to go through several name changes in its history and spawn a version designed specifically for the British market. Photoplay initially published fiction and novelizations of recent films, a content imitated in cinema's early years by publications such as Photo-Play Journal (1916–1921) and Photo-Play World (1917–1920). The first film star, Florence Lawrence, emerged in 1910, and with the increasing interest in film stars throughout the teens and 1920s, magazines came to be dominated by star portraits and profiles, celebrity news and gossip. Picturegoer (1913–1960) was the most successful film magazine of its time in the United Kingdom, often featuring special supplements targeting a particular film star. Its name changed several times over the decades, incorporating key words such as "theater," "film," or "picturegoers," reflecting a period of cinema history when film magazines were initially attempting to establish an identity against other popular cultural pursuits. The magazine merged with competing titles as the market adjusted to a field led by fewer magazines. The replacement of some film monthlies with film weeklies indicates the popularity of both cinemagoing and film magazines in the peak period of the late 1920s to the early 1950s. Film magazines' popularity can also be seen in the diversification of titles into those aimed at specific sections of the cinemagoing audience: for instance, the British publications Boy's Cinema (1919–1940), which incorporated Screen Stories & Fun & Fiction (1930–1935), and Girls' Cinema (1920–1932), which was incorporated into The Film Star Weekly (1932–1935).

In the 1950s movie ticket sales fell dramatically. Cinema attendance grew again in the mid-1980s, partly as a result of the wave of expensive studio blockbuster films. A new breed of populist film magazines coincided with this change in the film industry, with publications often dealing more with the spectacle of the films and the work of popular directors than with film stars. This is not to say, though, that stars ceased to be marketable factors for film magazines, as magazine covers remain highly dependent on star portraits for their consumer appeal. The new magazines include the US publication Premiere (begun in 1987) and the British film magazines Empire (begun in 1989) and Total Film (begun in 1996). With the postclassical film industry marked by high levels of synergy with other media forms, it is not surprising that these publications devote space not just to films but also to DVDs and relevant books, soundtracks, and Websites, as well as television and computer games. Such magazines are also showing greater confidence in the types of film reviews they print, with reviewers expressing more independent opinions and adopting a style that is a combination of the fanzine writer and the newspaper critic. In fact, these reviewers often write simultaneously for these different publications.