After a few miles of making our way up a winding gravel road through wooded hills just outside Blairstown, New Jersey, Fango comes to a large metal gate. Beyond it is a camping retreat that at first glance looks nothing out of the norm; however, look a little closer, and horror fans around the world would easily recognize it as Camp Crystal Lake, infamous stamping grounds of Jason Voorhees and his murderous mom.

Cillian Murphy has made a habit of collaborating with rising filmmaking talents in the horror/fantasy worlds. The Irish-born actor was the hero of Danny Boyle’s sleeper 28 DAYS LATER and reteamed with Boyle on SUNSHINE, played the villainous Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan’s BATMAN BEGINS and reprised the role in THE DARK KNIGHT and THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, doing INCEPTION with Nolan in between. Now he’s the lead in RED LIGHTS, Rodrigo Cortés’ follow-up to the much-lauded BURIED.

Due to poor test-screening reactions and fraught studio politics, Clive Barker’s seminal NIGHTBREED had an hour of footage cut from its length prior to its release by 20th Century Fox in 1990, and became a box-office failure. But passionate Barker fans never let its memory die.

There were more nominees than ever before in this year’s Chainsaw Awards race, and Fango readers’ choices for the best horror films and filmmakers of 2011 are listed below, as well as how all the runners-up placed.

She had already faced ghosts, Aliens and Predators by age 10, so spending time with SOME GUY WHO KILLS PEOPLE was no problem for Ariel Gade. In fact, her character Amy helps bring out the humanity in Ken, the troubled, murderous antihero played by Kevin Corrigan. The young actress discussed her roles in SOME GUY and her past genre fare with Fango.

In THE PACT (opening theatrically today and also on VOD from IFC Films), Casper Van Dien plays Bill Creek, a small-town police officer embroiled in a supernatural mystery. It’s the latest authority-figure role for the actor, who plays a similar part in the upcoming SHIVER and served as an executive producer on STARSHIP TROOPERS: INVASION, the latest sequel to the sci-fi epic in which he starred—and he discussed all three roles with Fango.

British comedy has often been tempered with a strain of melancholy, but sometimes also a little of the grotesque. In fact, the darker aspects of —often exaggerated to surreal extremes—are an essential part of the landscape of British humor, so it’s no accident that the blending of horror and comedy should have become such a British pre-occupation. Horror and comedy have always been “bed fellows,” but a successful union requires a rare understanding of the anatomies of each. For every riotous coupling, there’s a dozen feeble fumblings.