Titans Terrors and Toys

This week, Lego tossed its minifig hat into the video game/toy combo ring with the preview trailer for Lego Dimensions , which is scheduled for release for both the PC and the major game consoles in September. Following on the heels of Skylander , Disney Infinity and Nintendo's line of amiibo figures, Dimensions promises to let players mix-and-match characters and kits from both Lego-exclusive lines (Ninjago) and licensed Lego lines (Lord of the Rings, Back to the Future, Wizard of Oz, DC superheros). Depending on how well the initial launch package sells, Lego plans to release an ongoing series of Dimension kits and expansion packs so that players will keep customizing and building upon (no pun intended) their Lego-ized gaming experience. I've largely avoided the toy tie-in video game trend up to this point, but Lego Dimensions shows much more promise than its competitors. For starters, Lego has landed the Jurassic World license, so I'm sure that an army of ...

The other week, I finally watched The Video Dead , a low-budget, straight-to-video zombie flick from 1987 about a possessed TV set that belches out walking corpses from its screen. This film isn't a classic by any means (more about that later), but I felt that I had to watch it at least once for what it represented--specifically, the impact that England's "Video Nasty" list had on VHS horror movie releases here in the United States. In some ways, the Video Nasty list was to VHS horror movies as the Senate Subcommittee Hearings on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954 were to horror comic books, even though the results were completely different. Read on ....