For more than three decades, diehard fans of celluloid horror and dark fantasy have turned to Fangoria Magazine for their industry info. What started out in ’79 as a glorified love letter to Conan-style fantasy has weathered the digital media boom — and the emergence of innumerable similar Internet sites — to become a venerable yet still relevant presence on the horror-film scene.

Since its first Weekend of Horrors convention in 1985, the Fangoria brand has expanded beyond its flagship publication into multiple areas of the lifestyle it celebrates, including film financing and distribution. The company’s latest foray into the movie business itself pairs it with production and distribution house Lightning Media, and puts the future of eight features at the mouse-clicking fingertips of the fans themselves.

Beginning on June 21, Fangoria FrightFest launched as a web platform promoting eight disparate horror/thriller flicks, including buttons for voting on and rating the films’ trailers. While all of the movies will be made available in DVD and video-on-demand formats in late September, fans have until July 19 to vote on their favorite, with the most popular feature receiving a limited theatrical release. A companion behind-the-scenes featurette, 8 Fangoria Frights, is also screening from the Movies on Demand pages of cable providers nationwide. (Bay area Bright House subscribers can find it at Free Movies on Demand, channel FMOD 348.)

As for the films themselves, they are surprisingly varied style-wise and, in this genre fan’s humble opinion, overall much higher in quality than might be expected by the beleaguered horror aficionado used to sifting through DVD after DVD of low-budget dreck. Here’s the rundown:

This article appears in Jul 1-7, 2010.