| Editor: | Fausto Fasulo |
| Frequency: | 11 issues a year |
| Category: | Film |
| Company: | Custom Publishing |
| Founded: | 1972 |
| Country: | France |
| Based: | Paris, France |
| Language: | French |
| Issn: | 0338-6791 |
Mad Movies is a French magazine created in 1972 by Jean-Pierre Putters, dedicated to fantastic and science-fiction cinema.[1]
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]
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 Impacts demise, some Mad Movies special issues devoted to the action genre have been branded as Collection Impact.[9]
The magazine published another bimonthly spinoff dedicated to Asian cinema, called Mad Asia, which ran between 2005 and 2007.[10]
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]
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]