FrightFest Film Festival - The Alan Jones Blog - 27th March 07 - The UK'S premiere fantasy and horror film festival

27th March 2007

I can scarcely believe it but I’ve been writing on horror, science fiction and fantasy for thirty years. Twenty-seven of those years with the British publication Starburst, for which I’m still writing all the current reviews and twenty-three with the seminal American magazine Cinefantastique. The fact the latter is now defunct as of six months ago still greatly saddens me. Editor Frederick S. Clarke allowed me to make all my mistakes on his influential journal and his suicide in 2000 was a massive personal loss. I thank god that the day before he died I told him how important he was to my entire life, that I owed him practically eveything. I don’t know what made me do it. I never told him in person visiting his base of operations in Chicago. But I did during that last phone call. Kismet I suppose. It’s the reason I dedicate most of my books to him. For no one must forget how important he was to the critical understanding of the genre.

Although taken over by publisher/producer Mark Altman, his new direction failed to halt CFQ’s decline and it transformed into the unlikely Geek. I still think if Altman had kept to the admittedly anachronistic format the readers clearly liked, it would still be around. The silver lining for me was that I could move over to Fangoria, which I couldn’t before because of conflict of interests. I always wanted to write for Fango and am pleased I finally got the opportunity.

So it’s coming up to the thirtieth anniversary edition of Starburst (November 2007) and I’ve written a few retro articles concerning my weird start in the business (with Star Wars) and an overview of my critical career. Did I get the key movies we all know and love right first time? For the most part I did. I also contacted my favourite directors and stars to contribute a few words of celebration if the magazine had been important to them at any stage in their life. Frankly I’ve been staggered by the response. Neil Marshall made a special effort to contact me while filming Doomsday in Cape Town. Eli Roth sent me the most fabulously funny couple of lines while at the Grindhouse junket. Everyone I asked did the best they could and I was amazed and gratified that they took the time to do so. Well, I do still get the ‘I used to read you when I was at school’ comments which actually does make me feel as old as God’s dog as once-respected author Chris Fowler so elegantly put it in his FrightFest programme memoir last year. My reply to him is worth repeating in case you didn’t hear it. Better than being Methuselah’s pussy!

Anyway, it certainly has been an eventful three decades through which I’ve seen the most enormous changes. From The Hitcher (1985) to The Hitcher (2007)! But not to the way I view the films. I’m still the biggest fan at heart and if anything has kept me in the job I love I think it’s probably that factor.

Until the next time.