Titans Terrors and Toys

The way I see it, one of the great things about being a horror film buff is the joy of discovering older films that never caught on with larger audiences but still serve as impressive examples of horror cinema. My latest discovery is Let's Scare Jessica to Death , a 1971 creeper that was directed by John D. Hancock. I first noticed this film when I saw it on the shelf at our local video store back in the '80s, but I didn't pay much attention to it because I never heard of it before. Yet as the years went by, I noticed how this title kept popping up in many horror film reviews, books, articles and Web sites, so I finally got around to watching it the other week. Fun trivia fact: Let's Scare Jessica to Death is the film that landed Hancock the job of directing Jaws 2 , but he was fired from that sequel due to a disagreement he had with a Universal executive. Stephen King has also mentioned in interviews that this movie is one of his favorite horror films, and you can...

Regardless of what you might think about the original Battlestar Galactica TV series, one thing is for sure: This single season, late-70s space opera certainly has a much longer shelf life than anyone ever expected. Galactica first experienced two brief resurrections in the '90s through comic books published by Maximum Press and Realm Press, resurrections that also produced a few toys . In 2003, a Battlestar Galactica video game was released for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 consoles, which featured voice tracks recorded by original cast members Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict. Even now in 2013, after the run of the "re-imagined" version of Galactica , classic Galactica merchandise still appears in fan conventions, comic book shops and online catalogs. Dynamite Entertainment still publishes comic book series that are set in the classic Galactica universe, and Bif Bang Pow! is continuing to produce characters for its 8-inch Mego-styled line of classic Galactica act...

Ripoffs of the classic creature feature Jaws are a dime a dozen, especially if the ripoff in question also has a monster shark similar to the one in Jaws . Usually, these kinds of ripoffs try to distinguish themselves with by putting the monster sharks in an unlikely location (in a lake, in a supermarket, in a research lab, in a tornado, etc.) or giving the sharks some unique attribute or ability (swimming in the snow, swimming in the sand, etc.). Yet for fans of Jaws ripoffs who are looking for something a little different in their derivative entertainment, Active Entertainment has decided to ripoff the least of the Jaws movies, Jaws: The Revenge , with its latest film Ghost Shark . If anything, Ghost Shark proves that if you ripoff the lowest point of a popular franchise, you at least have a decent shot at making watchable (albeit not very memorable) entertainment. Read on for my complete review.

Due to personal and professional circumstances beyond my control, I haven't been able to blog as much as I would like to as of late. Nevertheless, someone just told me a bit of Terminator news that I absolutely had to share: Storm Toys is releasing a highly-detailed, limited edition 1/6th scale replica of the T-1 tank from Terminator 3 . Read on for more details and additional pictures of this stunning collectible from the Terminator universe. (Photos courtesy of Storm Toys.)