FANZINE FEROX!

CINEMAGIC
Vol. 1 No. 4
May 1975
Cinemagic Publishing Company, Inc.
Publisher: Don Dohler
Editors: Don Dohler; Mark Estren
Cover: John Buechler as "The Thing In the Basement"
Pages: 32
Cover price: $1.50

Way back in the mid-70's I had aspirations to create and produce stop motion, animated films. A very talented friend and I experimented with various armatures, sculpts, molds and other tools of the trade. We ended up going our separate ways (both being seduced by the fantasy of making it in the music industry) before we could commit any of our masterpieces to film. I ended up pawning my Canon movie camera, and that was the end of that!

During that highly-charged and memorable period it was not too hard to find books and periodicals on the stop-motion film industry. Ray Harryhausen was at the top of his game and he had the Midas Touch when it came to lending his genius to any production. The fanzine FXRH appeared with insights on the literal nuts and bolts of his creative process.

There were a couple of bookshops in Hollywood that carried small press and fan mags that weren't handled by national newsstand distributors. I believe it was Larry Edmund's Cinema Bookshop where I picked up FXRH. I also found another nifty 'zine called CINEMAGIC.

Published by editors Don Dohler and Mark Estren, this is the fourth issue of the run and is the first issue after a hiatus from the first three issues (it's all explained in the Editorial). You may recognize the names: Dohler went on to act and direct a number of  low budget sci-fi/horror movies and created a character, Pro Junior, that appeared and Estren was the author of "A History of Underground Comics." Another person who appears in the issue is John Buechler, who ended up with a professional career in special effects with New World Pictures and Full Moon Entertainment. Dale "Cinefantastique" Winogura contributes an interview, as well.

This was indispensable reading at the time (and now, for that matter) for anyone interested in the fine art of stop-motion animation. Filled with tips and tricks, my first project was making the simple armature shown on page 22. It worked!

CINEMAGIC lasted another 7 great issues until it was bought by STARLOG in 1979. As for me, I never got past the building stage with stop-motion, but I did manage to land several jobs in cel animation a few years later, working for Ralph Bakshi, Hanna-Barbera and others. But that, as they say, is another story.