'FANGORIA' magazine cover analysis

As the title suggests this horror magazine is devoted to fans who are obsessed with gore. ‘FANGORIA’ mostly advertises 18 certificate films within the genre of horror, slasher, splatter and exploitation films. It’s been in regular publication since 1979. ‘FANGORIA’ also has an online site that features daily updates about the world of horror, allowing the ‘FANGORIA’ brand to remain relevant to those who do not typically read print magazines. As you can see, ‘FANGORIA’’s colour palate itself screams horror. The title uses the bold colour of red not only to stand out from the dingy black background but to connote blood, danger and of course, gore. The whiteness around the titles font helps it to stand away from the other images and text on the front cover, but also symbolises innocence and ‘good’ against the ‘’evil’ of the rest of the text itself but the whole background also as the colour black connotes death and misery. The films that ‘FANGORIA’ tend to advertise for seem to always be horrors that base themselves around gory body horror effects. This is because the target audience highly approve of body horror and so attracts the correct audience. To emphasis the target audience further the main image on the front page is normally heavily made up with body horror makeup to look frightening, spooky and bloody. The model used for this issues front cover of ‘FANGORIA’ is staring directly at the camera. Not only does this engage with the audience in the way that it breaks the ‘fourth wall’ and makes the audience feel more involved it also portrays the typical horror convention that the ‘bad, evil’ character can see us which increases the element of excitement and fear. The films advertised, ‘The Descent’, ‘Blade’ and ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, all have one thing in common other that the genre, they are all very famous for their extensive latex effects. ‘FANGORIA’ plays very close attention to special effect auteurs such as Tom Savini, Dick Smith, and Rick Baker. The background of the cover lines is green, which draws attention to the ‘gooey’ genre. The colour green is a slight paradox for a horror based magazine because the colour itself connotes life and freedom, whereas horror is mostly about deaths and entrapment. The colour also reminds the audience of a lot of things that happen during horrors, for example, goo, vomit and pus.