Famous Monsters of Filmland is an American genre-specific film magazine, started in 1958 by publisher James Warren and editor Forrest J Ackerman.

Famous Monsters of Filmland was originally conceived as a one-shot publication by Warren and Ackerman, published in the wake of the widespread success of the Shock Theater package of old horror movies syndicated to American television in 1957.

In the pages of FM, Forrest J Ackerman promoted the memory of Lon Chaney Sr., whose silent works were mostly beyond the accessibility of fans for most of the magazine's life, but were a great influence on his own childhood.

(A similar gathering was held in 1995 in Los Angeles, with such guests as Maila Nurmi, Ray Harryhausen, John Landis, Joe Dante, Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, Curt Siodmak, Adam West, John Agar, Les Tremayne, Angus Scrimm, William Schallert, and Al Lewis.

[citation needed] Ferry, poised to restart publication of FM on a quarterly basis, offered Ackerman the position of editor-in-chief for a fee of $2,500 per issue, which he accepted.

As of mid-2007, Ferry had been allowed to continue to publish issues of FM due to lack of efforts on the part of bankruptcy trustees and Ackerman's lawyers to force the sale of the trademark or personal assets attached to his income.

In late 2007, Philip Kim, an entrepreneur and a private equity investor, purchased the rights to the logo and title, entering into an agreement with Ackerman to use his trademarks to retain the magazine's original look and feel.

Publisher Movieland Classics, LLC announced concurrently that the magazine would be entering into a bi-monthly publication schedule to meet the significant increase in requests from readers beginning with Issue 253.

[22] In April 1981, the punk band The Misfits began using the magazine's distinctive logo font on most albums, T-shirts, and other associated promotional materials.

In his 2000 non-fiction book On Writing, Stephen King describes his own history with Ackerman's work and calls Famous Monsters of Filmland a life-changing publication, adding: "Ask anyone who has been associated with the fantasy–horror–science fiction genres in the last thirty years about this magazine, and you’ll get a laugh, a flash of the eyes, and a stream of bright memories—I practically guarantee it.

"[23] Famous Monsters was mentioned by Billy Bob Thornton in an infamous 2009 interview with host Jian Ghomeshi on the CBC Radio One program Q. Thornton; upset by Ghomeshi's mentioning his career in the film industry during the interview with The Boxmasters, he became non-responsive before relating a long story of how he read and entered a contest sponsored by FM when he was a boy.

The film has been shown at several venues (including a special screening at Loscon 39 in Los Angeles), and been critically well received in magazines such as Fangoria, Scary Monsters, and VideoScope.

David Sanjek in Literature/Film Quarterly (1990) found that the magazine indulged in "wearisome punning" and that for all its good humor it was devoted to what James B. Twitchell described as "artificial horror".