Titans Terrors and Toys

A Diaclone Multi-Force 14 Robot toy from 1984.   Before this holiday season comes to an end, I thought that I would wrap up 2011 with a dose of holiday-themed geek nostalgia before we spring-launch into 2012. It's a flashback to another holiday season, when a particular trend that would impact all robot geeks for decades to come dominated toy store aisles across the country. This trend was the import and repackaging of Japanese robot toys, of which there were many . Read on for my eyewitness account of this amazing time, when Japanese robots of all shapes and sizes ruled Christmas wish lists.

Christmas is my second favorite holiday after Halloween. Where Halloween allows you to indulge in all things morbid and spooky, Christmas allows you to wallow in all things colorful, cheerful, and gaudy. Yet with Halloween being my first love, I feel the need to temper my Yuletide warmth with a few ghoulish chills--and what better way to do that than through music? Here are five musical suggestions I have to keep the horror in even the happiest of holidays, complete with YouTube videos for each. Read on....

If you're still looking for a Christmas gift for that special nerdy someone, consider this: The Cult of LEGO , by John Baichtal and Joe Meno. According to the book's description, "LEGO is much more than just a toy—it's a way of life. The Cult of LEGO takes you on a thrilling illustrated tour of the LEGO community and its creations. ... In this full-color coffee table book, you'll find page after page of photos showcasing the fantastically creative and complex models built by the LEGO community. You'll marvel at a life-size stegosaurus, a microscale Yankee Stadium, a 22-foot long World War II battleship, a MINDSTORMS-powered monster chess set, and a remote-controlled Jawa Sandcrawler (with moving conveyor belt!). Visit the conventions where LEGO fans gather to socialize and show off their work. And discover the serious side of LEGO, used in therapy, prototyping, and teambuilding." I've never had any LEGO sets myself, but I'm a big fan of the...

It has been said that all good things must come to an end. With that in mind, I bring you my review of Lou and Yana's JawsFest 3: The Invasion of JawsFest '10  two-disc DVD set. This is the final entry in the trilogy of JawsFest fan films produced by Lou and Dianna "Yana" Pisano. What started out as a fan love letter to Jaws in the first JawsFest DVD has grown to the size of a three-part romance novel with the release of JawsFest 3 . (Click here to read my review of the first two JawsFest DVDs.) While it's sad to see this particular chapter of Jaws fandom draw to a close, the Pisanos saved the best for last. Read on for my complete review of this two-disc set.

For those of you who have an die-hard Predator fan on your Christmas gift list and have ample amounts of cash to spend, you're in luck. Sideshow Collectibles is currently taking orders for the Alien vs. Predator Samurai Predator figure from Hot Toys. This is what the title creature would've looked like if Akira Kurosawa had directed a Predator movie. This figure was designed and painted by Takayuki Takeya and sculpted by Yuji Oniki, and it features a newly sculpted head and body, detailed accessories, weaponry, and a diorama base with a partially decapitated Alien corpse. Looking at a figure that's as detailed as this one makes it hard to believe that there was a time when the only Predator figures on the market were those made by Kenner back in the mid-90s. Of the many never-before-seen Predator collectibles that have been released in recent years (including the organic-looking Ceremonial Predator Mask and the sleek Stalker Predator Mask ), the Samurai Predat...

One of the best things about the horror genre is its ability to approach certain subject matter in ways that no other genre would. Because of its richness of symbolism and metaphor, horror can explore the irrational and insecure psychological landscapes that lurk underneath topics and events that appear rational, civil and mundane on their surfaces. Along such lines is Isolation , a 2005 horror movie from Ireland that was written and directed by Billy O'Brien. By borrowing some of visual and thematic cues from Alien and The Thing , Isolation explores the nervous uncertainties behind the application of genetic engineering to livestock farming. The end result is uneven, but it's provocative and stylish enough to recommend to anyone who is looking for a new kind of contemporary body horror. Read on for my complete review, which contains some minor spoilers.

I know that this is dates back to last Halloween, but I just found it and I feel an overwhelming to put it on here because it's so wildly morbid. (Besides, red is a Yuletide color, right?) It turned out that at her last Halloween party, Heidi Klum had her body painted to resemble "a dead body with the first layer of skin ripped off" (Klum's own words). Excuse me, Ms. Klum? I think you misplaced your epidermis. In order to make sure that her party guests noticed her unique costume, her entrance was equally priceless: She was wheeled in to the event on an autopsy table by two people who were also dressed as blood-spattered doctors. Did I mention that Klum was wearing high-heeled platform pumps with this costume? I suppose that even the horribly mangled still have to look chic at social events. I have no idea how I missed this. Maybe I was too preoccupied with Klum's other Halloween costume , a full-body, Planet of the Apes worthy ape suit that she wo...

A few days ago, Universal made an announcement that’s very bad news for Jaws fans. As of January 2, 2012, the Jaws attraction at Universal Studios Theme Park in Florida will be shut down permanently . For those of you fans out there who have never been on the Jaws ride and can’t make it there before its closing, you can check out the high definition video of the ride on YouTube (click here ) that will give you a good idea of everything the ride offers. You can also stop by the “STOP The Closing of Jaws The Ride at USF” page on Facebook for ideas on what you can do to try to convince Universal to change its decision. Yet even with the ride closing, never fear--thanks to Mike Schultz and his team at Shark City Ozark, you’ll have a chance to come face-to-face with the legendary monster shark right in the (dis)comfort of your own home. Back in 2010, Schultz sculpted a 37" long "Bruce Nose-to-Tail (NTT)" maquette, a scale-accurate replica of the full-body shark used in t...

It looks like we've come a long way from the days when kids were told that they'd shoot their eyes out if they got Red Ryder BB guns for Christmas. "In this country, you gotta make the toys first. When you make the toys,  you then get the guns.  When you get the guns, then you get the power." From Seattle PI : "An Arizona gun club is offering a chance for children and their families to pose for photos with Santa while holding pistols and military-style rifles. ... Ron Kennedy, general manager of the Scottsdale Gun Club, said the business got the idea for the photo op last year when a club member happened to come in dressed as Santa and other members wanted their picture taken while they were holding their guns. ... Kennedy, whose club offers guns for sale and rental and has a 32-lane indoor shooting range, said the event wasn't aimed at children, but the club supports the right of parents to include their children in the photos and believes that's a ...

Reviving dormant franchises for new audiences can be a tricky thing, particularly when it comes to franchises that are based on animated characters. As in any franchise revival, there's always the tension between appealing to new fans while maintaining the interest of the original fans; very rarely do these rival tensions balance evenly. When it comes to animated characters, the common approaches to revival appear to be either dumbing down the characters to appeal to kids (for the sake of merchandising), or putting the characters in the "real world" alongside known actors (for the sake of celebrity name recognition value), or both. These strategies rarely work, but they've succeeded just enough for Hollywood to keep them in their franchise revival playbook. On the other hand, there are the title characters of the new movie The Muppets . They aren't cartoon characters but they are closely associated with kid-friendly entertainment, and they've had a long hi...

A friend of mine just let me know about a movie project that sounds like a unique exercise in the genre of horror: The Narrative of Victor Karloch , by Spirit Cabinet. According to the Spirit Cabinet site , " Victor Karloch is a Victorian ghost story puppet film and live stage performance (at selected theaters) produced by Heather Henson's Handmade Puppet Dreams Films and The Jim Henson Foundation. ... The film incorporates 30" tall bunraku-style rod puppets, shadow puppetry, traditional in-camera effects, and digital atmospheric effects to present a gothic tale narrated by Victor Karloch, an alchemist, ghost hunter, and scholar who has devoted his life to the exploration of the supernatural." Victor Karloch was written by Kevin McTurk, a special effects artist whose previous projects include Batman Returns , Jurassic Park , and King Kong , and it will feature the vocal talents of Christopher Lloyd, Chris Parnell, Lance Henriksen, and Doug Jones. Judging from...

Last weekend, Cartoon Network aired the series finale of Batman: Brave and the Bold . The final episode, titled "Mitefall!", was written by noted DC vet Paul Dini. In "Mitefall!", inter-dimensional fanboy Batmite has grown tired of Brave and the Bold and decides to sabotage the show so that it will be cancelled and replaced by a darker, more dramatic Batman series. In a curious twist, this is the only episode of Brave and the Bold that isn't so much of a tribute to the Silver Age of DC Comics as it is a satirical jab at how TV shows--both live-action and animated alike-- "jump the shark" . Each of Batmite's strategies to undermine Brave and the Bold are textbook examples of shark jumping, such as the addition of cute yet superfluous characters, needlessly changing central locations, and casting Ted McGinley. Yet for as unusual as this episode is, it still makes for a fitting finale to one of the smartest Batman shows to air on TV. Adding to ...

For as much as I love them, slasher films just aren't what they used to be. Naturally, it's hard to recapture the golden era of the slasher film when this horror subgenre was relatively new (at least here in the U.S., anyway), an era that started during the late 70s and began to wane during the mid-80s. Yet for a straightforward plot structure that revolves around a masked and/or disfigured psychopath with a perchance for killing sprees, it seems that the time where slashers can reach the iconic status previously achieved by the likes of Michael Meyers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger is largely over. This is not to say that horror filmmakers have given up their efforts to create memorable movie murderers. Case in point: ChromeSkull, the resident killer in the Laid to Rest movies. When he first appeared in 2009, not much was revealed about this bald, hulking masked killer other than his real name (Jesse Cromeans), his passion for killing lots and lots of people with his ...

Last weekend, Cartoon Network aired the one-hour premiere of Green Lantern: The Animated Series , the new CGI cartoon that's devoted to DC's top space cop. This series stands out for two reasons: It's the first DC cartoon series that's completely CGI, and it's the first DC TV series in a long time that doesn't directly involve Superman, Batman, or one of their supporting characters (such as Robin). Even though the box office performance of the live-action Green Lantern movie from last summer didn't live up to Time-Warner's expectations, it's nice to see that they're still willing to invest time and money into Green Lantern, with the hopes that they'll do the same for other DC characters. For a first episode, the premiere of Green Lantern was fun to watch. It involved Hal Jordan and his ally Kilowog traveling to a remote area of space where Green Lanterns are being killed off by an unknown assailant. From what I could determine from th...

During the Halloween season the other week, the Monster Brains blog did a series of posts devoted to the comic book cover art from the various horror titles published by Eerie Publications during the 60s and 70s. These anthology titles included Witches' Tales , Tales of Voodoo , Weird , Terror Tales , Tales From The Tomb and Horror Tales . The covers of these comics are fantastic examples of pulp horror art, both grisly and lurid (and somewhat sleazy) in equal measure. I'm convinced that the artists who produced the colorful VHS cover art for low budget horror movies during the 80s were heavily influenced by these comics. Yet what surprised me when viewing the cover posted by Monster Brains was how much Eerie Publications reused the same art across their various titles. Not all of the covers are repeats, but just enough are that it's hard not to notice. I suppose there are only so many ways that a comic book artist can show people being bitten, stabbed, dismembered...

When I first heard that DreamWorks was planning a movie spin-off to their Shrek franchise that featured Puss in Boots as the main character, I was somewhat skeptical. After all, Shrek was scraping the bottom of the barrel of fairy tale satire by the end of its four-movie run, so I couldn't imagine that there'd be much left for a stand-alone Puss in Boots movie. Thankfully, I was proven wrong: Puss in Boots is a fun, goofy adventure that's fit for audiences of all ages. Puss in Boots follows the adventures of its titular character (voiced by Antonio Banderas) as he partners with mastermind Humpty "Alexander" Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis) and feline thief extraordinaire Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) for a big score: the fabled golden egg-laying goose from a particular giant-dwelling castle in the clouds. Puss in Boots isn't as cheeky as the Shrek movies, and that ultimately works in its favor. Instead of saturating the script with pop culture references and...

Last December, I posted a review of two JawsFest DVDs produced by Lou and Dianna "Yana" Pisano (you can see the review here ). These fan-made DVDs are feature-length love letters to the Jaws franchise, and they provide Jaws fans with footage of the original JawsFest event that was held in 2005 and tours of various locations throughout Martha's Vineyard where scenes from three of the Jaws movies were shot. Now, almost a year later, the Pisanos have completed the third and final chapter of the their Jaws fan appreciation trilogy, JawsFest 3: The Invasion of JawsFest '10 , and they held a premiere showing of it last weekend in Chicopee, Massachusetts. From what I've heard, the event was a big success in spite of the unexpected snow storm that slammed the east coast during the last weekend of October. JawsFest 3 is a two-disc DVD set, with over three hours of Jaws fan-friendly footage. One of the bonus features is a documentary produced and directed by Justi...

When it comes to collecting toys, models and miniatures, it's not easy being a Terminator fan. Unlike the larger and more popular sci-fi franchises such as Star Wars and Star Trek, the number of scale replicas for particular robots and vehicles from the Terminator franchise are limited in variety, are often hard to find, and can be very expensive. Here's a list of Terminator robots and vehicles that should be made available in some form (a die-cast miniature, a highly-detailed toy, etc.) for those who enjoy collecting killer machines from the future.

My, how times have changed. In the 1997 movie Mimic , scientists genetically engineer a breed of insect that's intended to reduce the population of cockroaches in New York City that are spreading a lethal virus. Fast-forward to 2011, and such a premise is no longer science fiction. According to last Sunday's edition of The New York Times : "Researchers on Sunday reported initial signs of success from the first release into the environment of mosquitoes engineered to pass a lethal gene to their offspring, killing them before they reach adulthood. The results, and other work elsewhere, could herald an age in which genetically modified insects will be used to help control agricultural pests and insect-borne diseases like dengue fever and malaria. ... Authorities in the Florida Keys, which in 2009 experienced its first cases of dengue fever in decades, hope to conduct an open-air test of the modified mosquitoes as early as December, pending approval from the Agriculture De...

Stop me if you heard this one: A group of people become stranded on a desert island . . . where they encounter a horde of monsters that viciously kill them one at a time! Oh, you have heard of that? Well, what if the island monsters were the product of MAD SCIENCE! BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! So you've heard of that one too. OK, Mr. Smarty Pants--what if the mad science was NAZI mad science and the monsters were MICROSCOPIC FLESH EATERS!!! That's the premise of The Flesh Eaters , a creature feature that was originally released back in 1964 and the only movie ever directed by Jack Curtis. The movie's plot follows a charter airplane pilot, an alcoholic actress and her comely assistant, a marine biologist and a shipwrecked beatnik as they struggle to find their way off of an uninhabited island that's surrounded by the titular flesh eaters, whose presence render the ocean water around the island acidic. For as grim and gory as this premise sounds, don't be fooled-- Th...

If you're a fan of The Fly movies, check this out: The cover story of the latest Rue Morgue issue is a retrospective devoted to the five Fly films. The retrospective's features include an interview with David Cronenberg, where he briefly mentions the "oblique" sequel script he has written to his 1986 version of The Fly , as well as a look back at the original Fly trilogy and its respective man-fly monstrosities. A noteworthy highlight in this issue is the interview with Chris Walas and Eric Stolz about The Fly II , which provides some fascinating insight into the production of this troubled sequel. Judging from Walas' comments about the original story that he had in mind, The Fly II could have been a much more worthy continuation of Cronenberg's movie had the studio heads just let him do what he wanted instead of forcing him to restructure his story to target a particularly desirable-yet-misunderstood audience demographic. Not to be left out of this...

Now that I have your attention, I just thought that I'd let you know that the fine folks over at the Fierce and Nerdy site have asked me to contribute a few thoughts about the best holiday of the year, Halloween. In my post, I write about how much I enjoy Halloween and why, how horror film fans can best celebrate the holiday, and suggestions of what you can do if you're stuck in a community that treats Halloween like Satan's annual membership drive. You can read the post here .

Last August, I saw on the Tears of Envy blog a link to a post in The Guardian 's Film Blog called "Where's the thrill in today's cookie-cutter monster movies?" by Phelim O'Neill. In the post, O'Neill bemoans the lack of creativity in recent movie monster designs. As his post states, "The big movies this year have been full of monsters, aliens, robots – all sorts of creatures and creations. On the surface, there's never been a better time for lovers of monster movies. But when you look closer at the beasties themselves, you see how similar they are to one another; how they look like they were clumsily Frankensteined together from existing ogres. In truth, there's never been a worse time for movie monsters." Personally, I think that O'Neill has it all wrong--not so much about movie monster designs, but about monster movies in general. The overwhelming majority of creature features are usually cheap rip-offs of superior films, both...

In last week's episode of Criminal Minds , "Painless", survivors of a devastating high school killing spree are being murdered by a similar killer on the eve of the spree's 10th anniversary. While the episode was probably written with real-life high school tragedies such as the Columbine massacre in mind, it was very similar in its style to slasher films where the killer is motivated to seek revenge against those who he/she believes to be responsible for some past trauma. Thus, this Criminal Minds outing reminded me of classic slasher flicks such as Prom Night and Happy Birthday to Me . It also reminded me of Epitafios , a 12 episode mini-series from Argentina that was produced by HBO Latin America in 2004. Epitafios follows ex-detective Renzo Márquez (Julio Chávez) as he investigates a series of gruesome murders that are somehow linked to four students who died during a high school hostage situation five years earlier. The series' title is a nod to the kil...

Being a horror movie fan requires a bit of effort to get the full benefits that this genre of cinema has to offer. There are the horror classics that everyone knows about (fan or not), classics that are usually easy to find for rental or purchase. Then there are the horror films that are heavily promoted by the big studios regardless of their actual quality; these too are easy to find and most people have heard of them. Yet there's another category of horror films, films that few people know about but are well worth seeking out because they provide shocks and shivers in ways that most mainstream and classic horror films don't. Such is the case of The Poughkeepsie Tapes , a found footage mockumentary film that was directed by John Erick Dowdle and written by Dowdle and his brother Drew Dowdle. I heard about Poughkeepsie Tapes back in 2007 when it was playing the indie film festival circuit. I didn't do much to look for it because on the basis of the brief plot summary t...

Check this out, and it's just in time for the second season premiere of AMC's The Walking Dead : According to the Omaha World-Herald , the Westlake Ace Hardware chain of stores in Nebraska have rolled out "Zombie Preparedness Centers". This Halloween season ad campaign involves posters, buttons, and store employees who offer advice on which tools, cleaners and locks are most effective at fighting off hordes of the ravenous undead. Click here to read the whole story. Also check out the official Westlake Ace Hardware Zombie Preparedness Center site . This site offers zombie defense and zombie proofing tips for humans, as well as bodily repairs and home and lifestyle tips for zombies. (Ace's site is "equal zombor-tunity", so it doesn't discriminate between the living and the reanimated.) This reminds me of the Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse blog post that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) published last May, which later included an inte...

As a Wii owner from the days of its first release, I'm very familiar with the handful of titles that Nintendo has produced over the years to introduce gamers to what the Wii's motion-based controllers can do. First, Wii Play and Wii Sports were released to show the unique game play opportunities presented by the Wiimote. Then, Wii Fit was released to demonstrate the capabilities of the Wii Balance Board. When Nintendo modified the Wiimote with the Wii MotionPlus accessory, it was bundled with the Wii Sports Resort game so that gamers could see how the new accessory enhanced Wii game play through greater accuracy. Each of these titles are great to play, but they were obviously designed and marketed as software to demonstrate Wii's hardware capabilities. Wii Play Motion is a sequel to Wii Play , one of Wii's aforementioned demo titles. From what I've heard, Wii Play Motion is intended to demonstrate the Wii Remote Plus, which is bundled with the game. Th...

Last Halloween season, I published a post about the work of Georgette Gaynor, a self-taught monster maker who uses her creepy creations to benefit local charity events in southern Virginia. She's still at it and this time, her life-sized superfreaks are going to the theater! Gaynor's monsters will be available for bidding and purchase at The New Colony Theater in Portsmouth, VA during the following events: * The Monster Walks, which will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. on October 15, 28 and 29. Admission for the walks is $2 per person, and everyone is welcome. * The Zombie Party, which will be held from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Admission for the party is $25 per person and $40 per couple, and RSVPs must be made by October 7. Click here to see a copy of the invitation. The Zombie Party is aimed at adults (the dress code is "zombie chic") and it includes a performance by the award-winning Viginia Youth Symphony Orchestra (VYSO) , which will perform music from Phantom of th...

I don't know who'd have a scalpel big enough to look inside of these guys, but here are two full-color anatomical paintings of Godzilla and Hedorah (a.k.a. The Smog Monster). I found these over at the Monster Brains blog , although the original artist has yet to be identified. I'm guessing that King Ghidorah probably stepped on him before he could sign his work. Update, 10/7/11 : I just found some additional anatomical drawings of kaiju over at the Pink Tentacle site. This set includes another drawing of Godzilla, as well as pictures of Anguirus, Gamera, and Mothra larva.