Mad Movies

Editor	Fausto Fasulo
Categories	Film
Frequency	11 issues a year
Founded	1972
Company	Custom Publishing
Country	France
Based in	Paris, France
Language	French
Website	mad-movies.com
ISSN	0338-6791

Mad Movies is a French magazine created in 1972 by Jean-Pierre Putters, dedicated to fantastic and science-fiction cinema. ^[1]

History

Mad Movies started as a fanzine and put out 21 issues between 1972 and 1981. ^[1]

In 1979, Putters opened Movies 2000, a film bookstore that became a hotspot for Paris' horror fandom and fanzine trading community. ^[2]

From number 22 (February 1982), Mad Movies became a quarterly newsstand publication. ^[1] That first widely distributed issue featured a cover story about Italian director Lucio Fulci, which coined the term "Poet of the Macabre" ( French: Poête du macabre), an Edgar Allan Poe-inspired nickname that has become one of the director's signatures. ^{[3] [4]}

The magazine became bimonthly in 1984. ^[5] Between 1986 and 2001, it was published alternately with a spinoff called Impact. ^[5] In 2001, following the sale of both magazines by Putters, new ownership merged Impact into Mad Movies, the latter thus becoming a monthly title. ^[5]

Spinoffs

Impact

Impact was a bimonthly spinoff of Mad Movies, with a focus on action films and the more action-oriented fantastic films. Its first run lasted from January 1986 to January 2001. ^[6]

The title was reintroduced in January 2009, ^[6] first as a booklet bundled monthly with Mad Movies, ^[7] then as a standalone bimonthly akin to its original incarnation. ^[8] It was discontinued again after the October 2011 issue. ^[8] Following Impact's demise, some Mad Movies special issues devoted to the action genre have been branded as Collection Impact. ^[9]

Mad Asia

The magazine published another bimonthly spinoff dedicated to Asian cinema, called Mad Asia, which ran between 2005 and 2007. ^[10]

Metaluna

Following his departure from Mad Movies, Jean-Pierre Putters co-founded Metaluna. The Metaluna brand, which took its name from a fictional planet in This Island Earth, encompassed a short-lived magazine dedicated to b-movies, ^[11] a film production house active between 2007 and 2017, ^[12] as well as a store (which replaced Movies 2000). ^[2]
Among Metaluna's productions was Among The Living ^[13] from directors Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, the latter a former Mad Movies writer. ^[14] As of 2021, the store still exists under different ownership. ^[15]

Involvement with film festivals

In the 1980s, Mad Movies organized an 8mm film festival, held at various Parisian theaters. ^[16]
Between 2003 and 2013, the magazine sponsored a special Mad Movies prize at the Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival. At its inception, it was part of the festival's Asian cinema competition. Later worldwide films became eligible. ^[17]
Mad Movies has been a founding partner of the Paris International Fantastic Film Festival (PIFFF), established in 2011. ^[18]

See also

• L'Écran fantastique

References