Film Threat
Film Threat homepage
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Type of site
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Film criticism |
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| Available in | English |
| Owner | Chris Gore |
| Editor | Chris Gore Mark Bell |
| Website | filmthreat |
| Alexa rank |
 258,469 (April 2014[update]) |
| Current status | Active |
Film Threat was an online publication and, earlier, a national magazine that focused primarily on independent film, although it also reviewed videos and DVDs of mainstream films as well as Hollywood movies in theaters. It first appeared as a photocopied zine in 1985, created by Wayne State University students Chris Gore and André Seewood. In 1997, Film Threat was converted to a solely online resource.
The first initial issues of Film Threat combined pseudo-political ranting by Seewood and cinematic material and parody of mainstream film by Gore. In Gore’s own words, "I thought, Wouldn’t it be great to start a punk rock-attitude movie magazine—and then, the people from this magazine would eventually go off and make films. Wouldn’t it be great?"
In issue 9, Film Threat became a printed magazine, and it was also around this time that Seewood left the project to pursue independent filmmaking and to write seriously about the cinema. This second life of Film Threat included such classic moments as Gore and “Square Dance Instructor” Paul Zimmerman getting kicked out of the 1988 Toronto Festival of Festivals, only to return the following year under fake names representing a fake publication, "Film Forum." In Issue 18 San Francisco State student David E. Williams wrote in, sparking a friendship with Gore that would lead to both of them relocating to Los Angeles in summer 1989 to work on the growing magazine.
During the early 1990s, Film Threat was transformed as Gore attempted to find a more mainstream release for the magazine, while its new offshoot Film Threat Video Guide, edited by Williams, continued to focus on the underground films and filmmakers that the magazine had featured in its early days. Film Threat would eventually find a new home with Larry Flynt Publications, relaunching in November, 1991 as Volume 2, Issue 1. "I darted to the newsstand to grab the first glossy edition of what promised to be the turning of the tide for 'Let’s-Blow-and-Stroke-the-Interviewee' type film journalism. And whose face did I see? Macaulay Culkin’s," stated filmmaker Kevin Smith of the first issue of Film Threat’s new edition.
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