The Dark Side January 1993

I'm exhausted, having been embroiled in a family crisis for the past couple of days, so I just can't find the energy to come up with a proper post.  I have, however, been rummaging around in those boxes in the spare room and came across a stack of The Dark Side magazines from the early nineties. Incredibly, this publication is still going, now on its third publisher and having endured an eighteen month hiatus between 2009 and 2011, although I haven't bought or read it in years.  It fell victim to a change in my circumstances in the late nineties that meant I had to cut back my spending - magazine subscriptions were amongst the first casualties.  The thing I liked about The Dark Side was that, even though horror and fantasy films were its main focus, it also covered print media - and not just books, but also fanzines.

While it wasn't as hardcore as Shock Express in terms of its coverage of exploitation films, The Dark Side did help introduce me to many aspects of the genre, with articles on various Italian directors, 'video nasties' and the like.  It was also far easier to obtain than Shock Express, which you certainly couldn't find on the shelves of your local WH Smiths.  As you can see, this issue is from fairly early in the magazine's early run - January 1993 - although it had already switched publishers for the first time, with Stray Cat Publications taking over after the dissolution of Robert Maxwell's publishing empire, which had originally put the magazine out.  At this point it was a very slickly produced magazine, with full colour covers and printed on glossy paper.  So there you go - another brief filler post, but one about a publication that, for a few years in the nineties, played a seminal role in my cinematic education.