Synergy Magazine

Scarlet: The Film Magazine

PO Box 2092

Cleona, PA 17042

USA

Scarlet Street was a fascinating cinema journal magazine published for some years by Richard Valley. It was a magazine to be treasured because it scratched below the surface of the world of cinema and explored the world of the sub-text. It was intelligent and erudite as well as witty and entertaining. After Richard’s passing, Scarlet the Film Magazine was born with Ken Shinnick as Publisher and Harry H Long of Van Helsing’s Journal fame as Managing Director. Issue 1 No 1 is a nicely produced magazine of a good eighty pages, it has colour covers and good quality printing.

It offers a range of what will, I presume, be regular sections covering news and reviews. The reviews section is extensive covering DVD and books. The books section is also interposed with an interesting interview with Gary Rhodes on Bela Lugosi. There is a superb section on music soundtracks offering all sorts of information about rare film themes many of us have never heard of, until now.

The articles are comprehensive and as would be expected open with a nice piece offering memories of Richard Valley. There are then some great, well researched articles on not only horror and classic film but on related genres such as literature. The piece on Edgar Allan Poe by Harry Long is extensive. There is also a very insightful study dissecting the themes and motifs of The Black Cat by Egar G Ulmar, a film that is not as appreciated as it should be for exploring taboo themes at a very stage in cinema history. This is followed by a fascinating study of how The Black Cat was marketed and “sold” to the public.

There is also a further good article on a small independent company Levy-Gardner-Laven which produced twelve films through to 1982 including such wonders as The Monster that challenged the world and The Vampire. Scarlet ends with a discussion of the prosthetics and make up used in Young Franenstein the musical and the legal quagmire related to the look of Frankenstein and how to get around it.

This is a superb first issue for the new “incarnation” of Scarlet, it is packed with informative content, well researched articles nicely illustrated with rare images and lots of insightful reviews and news. I believe it has a very good future in front of it.