Titans Terrors and Toys

This December has seen the release of two movies that evoke the imagery and symbolism of ancient Egypt: the Biblical epic Exodus: Gods and Kings and the found footage horror film The Pyramid . Such releases are a very rare occurrence for U.S. movie theaters during this time of year, but it puts horror fans like me in a mummy state of mind—and just in time for the holiday season! In honor of this embalmed state of yuletide bliss, here’s a look back at some memorable mummy merchandise that have been released over the years, merchandise that may still be available so that you can put some cursed undead mirth under your Christmas tree for your special someone. Read on ....

I'm sure that most Alien franchise fans have this item by now, but I'll say it anyway: the Alien ornament from Hallmark is fantastic! Dozens upon dozens of Alien statues, model kits, busts and action figures have been released during the last few years, but this is the first collectible that has been made for your Christmas tree. The ornament's design is based on H.R. Giger's original "Big Chap" costume from Alien and the amount of detail on the ornament is extremely impressive for its scale--it even includes the semi-transparent dome that masks the creature's skull-like face. Furthermore, the creature is sculpted in a hunched position, making it look somewhat like a gargoyle perched on the edge of a cathedral. For as impressive as the ornament is, the Alien uber-fan side of me would have preferred to have the creature depicted in a slightly different way. In the director's cut of Alien , there's a brief glimpse of the Xenomorph hanging ...

Unless you decided to take a vacation under a rock over the weekend, you'll have heard by now that the first trailer for the next Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens (a.k.a. Star Wars: Episode Seven ) has arrived at both movie theaters and on the Internet. It's been met with great fanfare--within hours of its debut, the 'net was swamped with new updates, analyses, and complaints about this 88 second bit of film. There's even a stop-motion remake of this trailer that's been made purely with Lego toys. How fanboy-ish can you get? The new trailer is a teaser in the most literal sense. It doesn't give any hints about the film's plot; instead, it gives us fleeting glimpses of what this era of the Star Wars universe looks like. What I think most critics, commenters and curmudgeons have missed it how the trailer emphasizes familiar aspects of Star Wars, details that fans will instantly recognize such as vehicles (X-Wings, TIE Fighters and the Millennium Falc...

Gentle Giant's campaign to enlarge the action figures from yesteryear continues. This effort began a few years with releasing 12 inch replicas of Kenner's 3 and 3/4 action figures from the original Star Wars trilogy. Now that is has super-sized almost every Kenner Star Wars action figure by now, Gentle Giant has moved on to releasing jumbo versions of the action figures that Mattel released as part of its Marvel Secret Wars line during the mid-80s, starting with Spider-Man in his black symbiote costume. This was the first action figure to feature Spider-Man in something other than his usual red and blue webbed suit. The original Secret Wars Spider-Man figure by Mattel. I never purchased any of the Secret Wars figures but I've heard collectors complain about how poorly they were made, particularly how the paint on the figures has a tendency to flake and peel. From what I've read about the '80s toy wars, Mattel bought the rights to produce Marvel superhero f...

I just received word from NRH Collectables owner/sculptor Nigel R. Humphreys that the next item in his company’s line of Jaws dioramas is ready for order. Check this out: The previous diorama from NRH depicted the estuary scene , when Chief Brody's son Mike has a close encounter with a monster shark. This latest release, “All Banged Up!”, is inspired by another memorable moment when Brody and marine biologist Matt Hooper find the battered remains of a boat owned by Amity fisherman, Ben Gardner. As with its previous releases, NRH has gone out of its way to recreate this shocking Jaws scene. While the main piece with Gardner's severed head peeking out of the boat's hull is impressive unto itself, I'm amused by the inclusion of a shark's tooth and an underwater flashlight--the two items that Hooper drops when Gardner's disembodied noggin pops out to make a postmortem greeting. Click here to see more pictures of this exciting new diorama and to place ...

Visions of dystopias have been a common staple in science fiction films for decades, so much so that they have become their own subgenre. From the earliest examples such as Metropolis (1927) up until recent adaptations of popular young adult novels such as The Hunger Games , bleak and disturbing depictions of our collective future have made regular appearances on the silver screen, so much so that they're rarely regarded with surprise or offense. Yet there's one dystopian film that was met with extreme opposition and disdain upon its release, so much so that it remains obscure to this day: Punishment Park , a 1971 pseudo documentary that was written and directed by Peter Watkins. Read on for my review of this remarkable and frequently overlooked film.

I know that I'm a bit late to the party on this topic--over a week, in fact--but I thought I would chime in anyway. I stopped watching The Simpsons on a regular basis at around the tenth season 14 years ago (has it really been that long?), and Comedy Central cancelled Futurama last year. Nevertheless, if you have ever been a fan of one or both of these shows, the recent Simpsons episode titled "Simpsorama" which featured characters from Futurama represents a milestone of sorts that should be seen at least once. The crossover episode, which only ran for a meager 22 minutes, was nothing groundbreaking in terms of plot or character development; instead, it served as more of a statement of how Fox has (mis)treated the animated properties of creator Matt Groening , especially when compared to the hour-long Family Guy episode that involved a crossover with The Simpsons that aired a few weeks earlier. I don't know how or why both the Family Guy and Futurama...

A while back, I published a retrospective post about Zoids , Tomy's popular line of motorized toy robot kits. One of its lesser known spin-offs was Z-Knights. This other toy line matched the overall design aesthetic of the Zoids (e.g., intricate designs that allowed for motion, tiny pilot figures, rubber connector cap, etc.) but instead of robots shaped dinosaurs, insects and other animals, Z-Knights were robots with humanoid forms that would lumber along on two legs courtesy of wind-up or battery-powered motors. Two robots from the original Z-Knights toy line. Z-Knights disappeared from toy shelves about as quickly as they arrived, but they haven't been forgotten by Zoid fans. Thus, Kotobukiya just released upgraded versions of two of the Z-Knight kits--Type-K and Type-V--for both dedicated Zoid collectors and new robot hobbyists alike. Click below to see how Kotobukiya breathed new life into these amazing robot designs (photos courtesy of Hobby Search ).

To paraphrase one of the taglines for Jaws 3 , here's a deadly new attraction . . . that you can add to your Jaws collection, courtesy of Shark City Ozark (SCO). The new Jaws 3 shark is part of the SCO Ultimate Bruce Shark Collector's Set, which previously consisted of intricate, scale-accurate models of the mechanical sharks that were used in Jaws and Jaws 2 . Like the previous entries in this set, these sharks are thickly roto-cast out of pure undiluted white resin, making them almost solid with over a half-dozen layers of thickness. Such casting makes the sharks more stable to ship and a lighter weight to handle and display (which probably makes the SCO Ultimate Bruce Shark Collector's Set sharks much more durable than the actual mechanical sharks themselves). Click here to pre-order the Jaws 3 shark, and each shark will include a Certificate of Authenticity. Thankfully, SCO shared some pictures with me about their latest contribution to the Jaws fan communi...

Since Disney bought Lucasfilm back in 2012, tidbits about unfinished Lucasfilm projects--particularly video games--have been slowly coming to the surface. Earlier this week, a bitter bit of news arrived for those of us who are both Star Wars fans and avid Nintendo Wii owners: Somewhere out there, there's a complete first-person Star Wars video game that allows players to use Wii Motion Plus controls to pilot Star Wars vehicles (such as X-Wings and Speeder bikes) and engage in lightsaber duels, but this game will probably never see the light of day. Oh, the pain, the pain .... Wii had a good selection of Star Wars games, such as the Force Unleashed titles and the Lego Star Wars series, but a first-person Motion Plus game set in the Star Wars universe would have been the absolute best. Read on for more details about this chapter of Star Wars video gaming that will never be.

As it has done with the Predator license , NECA has been producing an impressive selection of merchandise under the Planet of the Apes license. So far, it has released intricate, multi-jointed figures based on both the original Apes movie series and the reboot that started in 2011 with Rise of the Planet of the Apes . Now, NECA is returning to another area of the Apes franchise that hasn't been seen since the '70s: figures based on the classic Mego 8-inch action figure design. Mego produced a line of Planet of the Apes toys during the mid-'70s, with figures based on characters from both the movies and the live-action TV series that aired in 1974. Some of Mego's original Planet of the Apes action figures. NECA's line of Mego-styles Apes figures will begin with two characters from the original 1968 Planet of the Apes movie: a gorilla soldier and George Taylor, the astronaut character who was played by Charlton Heston. Both figures will come with cloth...

After a long wait, Creative Assembly's Alien: Isolation finally hit the store shelves a few days ago and the response by both critics and gamers alike has been extremely positive. From what I've gathered by reading the reviews, this game does a superb job at re-creating the look and feel of the Alien universe as it was originally envisioned by Ridley Scott, but how much you'll enjoy Isolation depends upon how much you can tolerate being stalked and killed by a towering Xenomorph over and over and over again. As with most other quality games based on established franchises, the visual designs in Isolation expand upon its source material in exciting and engrossing ways. Concept artist and illustrator Brad Wright recently posted a few pictures of the game's concept art on Deviantart.com , so I snagged a few to focus the game's primary space vehicles: the Aneisdora, the space vessel that transports a Xenomorph to the space station Sevastopol; and the Torrens,...

I've been very busy lately, but not too busy to catch the premiere episode of the new Star Wars: Rebels animated series. If what I saw was any indication, we're looking at the start of a new era for the blockbuster space opera franchise. I tuned into Rebels primarily because I am a die-hard Star Wars fan. I love all six of the movies, I love the Clone Wars animated series, and I have loved many of the toys, video games, comic books and novels that the franchise has produced over the years. Long after other sci-fi franchises have either come to a complete stop or have been content to recycle the same plots over and over again (e.g., Robotech, Star Trek, Terminator, etc.), Star Wars has kept me engaged by expanding and exploring a sweeping, multi-generational saga from a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Star Wars: Rebels looks to be a fantastic addition to the saga, and the first that doesn't involve anyone with the last name of "Skywalker...

All Halloween decorations are cool, but some are way cooler than others. My wife and I found this at a home goods store the other week and at a reasonable price of only $12, we knew we had to have it. Such a magnificently morbid arrangement of skulls, a rib cage and spines--complete with a shiny black finish--looks like something directly out of a European "bone church" , so that naturally makes it an ideal way to display candles this Halloween season. Click below for more pictures.

I haven't kept up with the hobby of Transformers toy collecting, but I have heard recently that many unlicensed third party toy companies outside of Hasbro have been producing and selling their own transforming robot toys. According to Wikipedia , a third party Transformer toys "can be completely original designs, new molds based on existing characters, add-on sets for existing Transformers toys. ... Growth of the third party Transformer industry is largely due to rejuvenated interest in Transformers following release of the Classic line in 2006 and the 2007 Transformers film release. It was targeted at filling the gaps Hasbro's toys demanded by the collectors." One of the toy companies that has hopped on to the third party Transformers bandwagon is DX9 Toys, and its line of third party Transformers line expanded last summer to include a figure from another transforming toy robot line from Japan: Machine Robo . Thus, Machine Robo fans finally got a deluxe figur...

For those of you who are not familiar with action figure collecting, Revoltech is a line of intricate figures produced by the Japanese company Kaiyodo . What sets Revoltech figures apart from others are their unique "Revolver Joints", points of articulation that allow of a wide range of motion and stability. Most Revoltech figures are based on characters from Japanese movie, anime series and video games, although some are based on DC and Marvel superheroes and characters from non-Japanese movies such as Alien , Jason and the Argonauts , and Predator . This year, Kaiyodo will launch its first line of Revoltech figures based on the Star Wars franchise, starting with Darth Vader. Click below for more details and pictures of this super-poseable figure.

Whenever a movie becomes a hit, it's guaranteed to spawn at least a handful of blatant rip-offs. However, there are rare cases when a lesser-known film appears that has clearly been influenced by a more popular movie (or movies) but takes the themes of its more well-known counterpart in a familiar but different direction, thus adding something new to the viewer's experience. For example, director Francesco Barilli was clearly inspired by Roman Polanski's work--especially Repulsion (1965) and Rosemary's Baby (1968)--when he made The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974), yet Barilli's interpretation of the themes within Polanski's films is unique enough that Perfume feels more like a variation on Polanski's work and not an empty imitation. With that in mind, here's my post about Pupi Avati's Zeder (1983), a horror movie that's clearly influenced by Lucio Fulci's "Gates of Hell" trilogy: City of the Living Dead (1980), The Be...

I've always loved insects and arachnids and I've always loved robots; thus, my life-long infatuation with robots that move like insects and arachnids was inevitable. Unfortunately, battery-powered toys have almost always came up short on meeting my obsessive need: Either they lumbered along using inflexible legs or they had wheels on the bottom with legs on the sides that wiggled whenever the toy moved in an extremely poor imitation of arthropod locomotion. But times have changed, and with that comes a significant leap (crawl?) forward with Robugtix's T8X Robot Spider. Robugtix has been working on spider-like robots for some time now, and the T8X Spider is one of the latest outcomes of its efforts. T8X has plenty of features, with 26 servo motors that control its movement and Wi-Fi capabilities that allow it to be controlled wirelessly from anywhere; however, what really makes this spider robot stand out is its Bigfoot Robotics Engine. According to the Robugtix T8X w...

As horror and thriller subgenres go, home invasion movies probably have the most difficult time telling unique and memorable tales--after all, what other subgenre has a title that gives away its plots? With such a built-in drawback, writers and directors of home invasion movies have to provide something more original, more intense and/or more shocking than average home invasion fare. Thankfully, You're Next , a 2013 thriller directed by Adam Wingard, meets the challenge with Grand Guignol -esque gusto. You're Next tells the story of four adult children (and their significant others) who visit their parents' remote estate for a weekend family reunion. As they sit down for their first meal, they are viciously attacked by a group of assailants wearing animal masks and brandishing a selection of deadly weapons. However, as the surviving family members frantically plan to protect themselves against the sudden onslaught, the line between attacker and victim becomes blurre...

Just when you think you know everything about a hideously disfigured, Jedi-killing cyborg Sith Lord, something new arrives to cause a disturbance in the Force. I saw a meme the other day that mentioned how some psychologists are using Vader and his pre-Sith identity, Anakin Skywalker, to explain certain psychiatric disorders to their students. With my curiosity piqued, I did some searching on the 'net and it turns out that the meme was right. According to a 2010 article from livescience.com , psychiatrist Eric Bui and researcher Rachel Rodgers have been using Anakin/Vader to teach their students about borderline personality disorder (BPD). As the article explains, "(Anakin) Skywalker hit six out of the nine borderline personality disorder criteria as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM-IV). He only needed to meet five criteria to qualify as suffering from the disorder. ... The researchers also suggested that the succes...

I love it when monsters appear in video games, but there aren't nearly enough games out there where players can actually be the monster. Thankfully, Ragtag Studio hopes to address this unmet need through a Kickstarter campaign for Ray's the Dead , a morbidly humorous zombie game. Ray's the Dead puts players in the lumbering footsteps of Ray LaMorte, a zombie who has just risen from the grave. He doesn't remember how he died or what the glowing device is that has been attached to his head. Throughout the game, players control both zombie Ray in the present and living Ray in flashbacks to solve the mystery behind Ray's resurrection. Players can also use the device that's stuck to Ray's head to turn enemies into controllable zombie minions. From what I've seen and read about Ray's the Dead so far, it looks extremely promising. The Kickstarter campaign has already reached its initial goal for producing the game for PC, Mac, Linux and Playstati...

I haven't seen many movies in the theater this summer but of the two I did see, I'm glad that they were both Marvel movies made by Marvel itself: Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy . (On the other hand, I haven't seen Spider-Man 2 and X-Men: Days of Future Past , this summer's Marvel movies that were not made by Marvel.) I don't know how Marvel does it, but it makes the production of entertaining, interconnected superhero movies look so easy. In contrast to the tense, somber Captain America movie that kicked off the 2014 blockbuster season, Guardians of the Galaxy is a wild, humorous romp into parts of the Marvel universe that aren't located on Earth or Thor's home world of Asgard. As such, Guardians is more of a pulp sci-fi space opera that's told with a wink and a smirk--due in no small part to director James Gunn, whose filmography includes oddball genre flicks like Slither and Super --but superhero fans won...

Diamond Select Toys has just announced that it is taking pre-orders for the next installment in its Marvel Retro series of limited edition 8-inch Mego figure sets: Captain America. The first set for Spider-Man was announced a few months ago, and upcoming sets are rumored to include Iron Man and Wolverine. Like the Spider-Man set, the Captain America set will be a limited edition that features a precise recreation of the original 1973 Mego Captain America action figure along with additional head and hand sculpts, costumes, and accessories. Unlike the Spider-Man set, none of the head sculpts, costumes or accessories will include nods to the '70s era live-action TV version of this superhero. Then again, the '70s weren't very kind to Cap, since that particular incarnation (played by Reb Brown) looked to merge him with attributes from motorcycle stunt superstar Evel Knievel , presumably for merchandising reasons. Even HYRDA wouldn't be that cruel. Captain Ameri...

Lately, I've been getting a kick out of The Strain TV series. I haven't read the novels, but I enjoy how Strain 's creators Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan have reimagined vampires into hosts of wormy, body-mutating parasites while being true to the key details that make vampires what they are (e.g., blood-sucking, fear of sunlight, preference for sleeping in coffins, etc.). It's also cool that The Strain depicts vampires as a disease-like epidemic; in fact, long before George Romero started the first zombie plague in his 1968 movie Night of the Living Dead , Richard Matheson depicted a vampire plague in his 1954 novel I Am Legend . If you're impressed as I am with what The Strain has done with vampires, then you might want to take a look at another unique depiction of the notorious night creepers: Lifeforce , the 1985 sci-fi thriller that was directed by Tobe Hooper. Read on for my review of this odd, spectacle-driven vampire tale.

In the vast realm of geekdom, it is not uncommon for avid fans to take matters into their own hands whenever the market fails to meet their merchandising needs. If an insufficient amount of collectible items are produced for a particular franchise, fans will take it upon themselves to fill the gap through homemade resin model kits, customized action figures, detailed costumes and so on. Some fans will even do this for video game consoles that were discontinued ages ago, which bring us to the topic of this post: AtariAge, purveyor of homebrew video games for the classic Atari consoles from the '70s, '80s and '90s. The first issue of Atari's Atari Age magazine (1982 - 1984),  the source of AtariAge's name. To call AtariAge an exercise in nostalgia is an understatement--it aims to completely recapture the Atari gaming experience for its homebrew games by selling the in system-specific cartridges in boxes that are modeled after the Atari video game boxes, inclu...

Boy, times have changed for home video game consoles over the years. Way back in the early ‘80s, my friends and I judged the quality of a console by how closely it could recapture the video game arcade experience in the comfort of our homes. We wanted to play arcade hits like Donkey Kong and Pac Man in front of our TV sets without spending mountains of quarters, so we wanted to get as close to the original games' graphics and game play as possible. Generations since that bygone era have looked elsewhere to evaluate the quality of home video gaming, because arcades have largely disappeared from the pop culture landscape. Thus, it came as a surprise to an old-timer like me that Wii U’s release of Tank! Tank! Tank! , an extremely faithful port of Namco's multiplayer arcade game from 2009 , was received by many current generation gamers with a combination of bewilderment, boredom and disappointment. From what I read in other reviews, many gamers had no idea that Tank! Ta...

As with previous years, this summer's San Diego Comic Con (SDCC) previewed the release of many new TV series, movies and toy lines connected to familiar, well-worn franchises. Star Wars was one of those franchises at SDCC, with an upcoming movie trilogy in the works, an animated TV series named Rebels that's premiering this fall, and a wide selection of merchandise to keep the fans engaged and excited. The merchandise came in a wide selection of sizes, and one of the most intriguing and fun set of items appeared in a very small size: Hasbro’s new Star Wars Command toy line. Star Wars Command takes characters and vehicles from the six movies and Rebels and gives them the plastic toy soldier treatment so that kids can re-create some of the saga’s epic battles. (No word yet on whether future Command released will include characters and vehicles from the Clone Wars animated series.) Command sets will feature multiple miniature figures and vehicles from one of four faction...