Tom Weaver is one of the greatest assets horror fandom has. In the past twenty-one years, he's released nineteen books on fantastic and frightening films, many collections of interviews he's done with actors, directors, writers, producers, effects men, and composers who have contributed to our favorite genres.

There's a new genre magazine on the block -- Scarlet the Film Magazine -- but classic cinema buffs might recognize something old in these pages. Scarlet is the spiritual successor of Scarlet Street, the now-defunct horror/mystery mag edited by the late Richard Valley. Scarlet publisher Kevin G. Shinnick was kind enough to talk with Classic-Horror about how this new periodical came about and the difficulties of putting out a print magazine in the age of the Internet.

The horror-comedy Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer just wrapped up a three-city limited release in preparation for the DVD from Anchor Bay which hits shelves October 7th, 2008. The film, directed by Jon Knautz from a screenplay he co-wrote with John Ainsley, stars Trevor Matthews (who also has story and producer credits on the flick) as a plumber who must battle horrific beasties unwittingly unleashed by Professor Crowley (Robert Englund) upon a junior college.

After fifteen years in the makeup effects industry, Rob Hall made the move to the director's chair in 2004 with Lightning Bug, a coming-of-age drama loosely based on his own teen years. Now, for his second go-round at the helm of a feature film, Hall (who also heads up the effects studio Almost Human) dives into the realm of all-out horror with Laid to Rest, a slasher movie starring his wife, Bobbi Sue Luther, as well as Lena Headey and Thomas Dekker of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and genre stalwart Richard Lynch.

Just as he did in 2007, Robert Englund sojourned to San Diego Comic-Con this year to talk about his latest projects, including Zombie Strippers and Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer. Zombie Strippers, a humorous and irreverent callback to 1970s exploitation cinema, will be released on DVD by Sony on October 28th. Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, a horror-comedy about a plumber who fights monsters, will be out in a limited theatrical release starting this month.

As Lee Adama on the Sci-Fi Channel's Battlestar Galactica, Jamie Bamber faces the Cylons, a group of cybernetic beings who are the worst case scenario of man's continued development of increasingly complex technologies. Now, in Joel Soisson's Pulse 2: Afterlife (a sequel to the 2005 Kairo remake, Pulse), he is up against another result of technological expansion -- ghosts that are literally in the machines. We had a chance to talk to Bamber about his role in Pulse 2 while we were at San Diego Comic-Con this year.

It's not often you find yourself excited about the prospect of an Attack of the Killer Tomatoes remake. But that's where I am now, after spending some time at San Diego Comic-Con talking to remake writers Kent Nichols (who will also direct) and Doug Sarine. You may have seen their work before -- they're the duo responsible for the wildly popular and hilarious web series Ask a Ninja, where a masked master of the martial arts answers viewer questions with as much violence and quick-cutting as possible.

In November of 2007, Dimension Films released The Mist, a film adaptation of Stephen King’s novella of the same title written and directed by Academy Award nominated director, Frank Darabont. With a limited budget, a darker ending, and a talented cast, The Mist is a moody, thoughtful modern horror film without an annoying Pollyanna ending.

Diary of the Dead, George A. Romero's latest zombie opus, opens in limited release on Friday, February 15th. We managed to catch up with one of the film's stars, Shawn Roberts. No stranger to the Dead series, Roberts previously appeared as the doomed Mike in the first section of Land of the Dead. Now he's back, this time playing a member of a team of filmmakers in the middle of making a zombie movie when the dead really do start rising. The crew hits the road, trying to document the outbreak even as they run for their lives.

If you miss "Mystery Science Theater 3000", the daring cable program that followed Mike Nelson and his two robot compatriots (voiced by Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett) as they cracked wise at bad movies, never fear. Nelson, Murphy, and Corbett have banded together for a new project with the same basic idea: making fun of the dredges of cinema. This new venture is called The Film Crew, a direct-to-DVD series featuring the trio as a bunch of bozos tasked with making sure every film has its own commentary track.