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In today's world of monster toy collectibles, it seems like nothing is too obscure for the action figure treatment. Distinctive Dummies (DD for short) has been releasing 8-inch Mego-style action figures for years now, focusing on characters from horror films between the silent era and the 1980s. I've never bought any of DD's products but from what I've seen, they do a limited run of a set of figures before moving on to do another limited run of a new set of figures, and so on. The latest film freak DD has added to its collectibles roster is the titular character from The Incredible Melting Man , a z-grade creature feature from 1977. This figure is part of DD's new "Science Gone Wrong!" set, which will also include figures based on characters from The Manster (1959), Monster on the Campus (1958) and The Wasp Woman (1959). The only thing that anyone can honestly recommend about the Melting Man movie are the makeup effects that were done be Rick Baker, an

To paraphrase an old adage, some toys never die ... they just get re-released with new coloring, sculpts and packaging. Case in point: Kenner's classic 18-inch Alien figure from 1979. Even though it didn't sell well when it was originally released as part of Kenner's poorly planned Alien toy line, it has gone on to have an impressive after-shelf-life. It became a prized item among toy collectors, and some companies in recent years have re-released the original sculpt with various degrees of changes ( larger sizes , all silver coloring , all gold coloring , etc.). Now, Super 7 plans to re-release this figure yet again, but this time with sculpt changes to match the Xenomorph's appearance from the first sequel Aliens . From what I've been able to gather from the prototype pics that I found around the 'net, Super 7's new Xenmorph figure will be ready for this month's San Diego Comic Con (SDCC) . The figure will come with exclusive SDCC prototype packaging

In this third and last post of my unofficial "Jaws in June" series, I'll be reviewing Amity 6 to Base: A Jaws Ride History (a.k.a. The Sharks are Not Working) by Mick Jones. This is the only book to date that's completely devoted to the theme park side of the Jaws franchise--namely, the Jaws Ride in the Universal Studios Theme Park in Orlando, Florida that recently closed in 2012. Read on for my complete review. Jones organizes his book in a way that gives readers a contextual perspective of the Florida Jaws Ride. He opens with a brief history of Universal providing backlot tours to visitors as far back as 1915, followed by the arrival of Jaws-themed stop on the official Universal Studios Tour in 1975. He then chronicles the troubled opening of the Universal Studios Theme Park in Florida in 1990, along with an overview of the original version of that park's Jaws Ride and its propensity for malfunctions. The rest of the book focuses on the second version of the Fl

It took 33 years, but it finally has happened. Thanks to high-definition video technology, Jaws 3 can at last be seen in the way it was originally meant to be seen, courtesy of Universal's recent release of the sequel on Blu-ray. Click below to read my full review. I've lost track of how many times I've seen Jaws and Jaws 2 , but I've only seen Jaws 3 twice in 2D. Every other time I've seen it after that was in a different 3D format--anaglyph, field sequential, and in the theater --to figure out which one was the best. Based on what I've seen before, the 3D version included in the new Jaws 3 Blu-ray is the best of the bunch. There's very little shadowing and most of the pop-out effects work beautifully; it even looks sharper, more colorful and less grainy than the 2D version that's on the same disc. Unfortunately, the notorious shark-through-the-window shot from the film's climax still doesn't look right, and I doubt it ever will until someon

This week marks Universal's release of the three Jaws sequels ( Jaws 2 , Jaws 3D and Jaws: The Revenge ) on Blu-ray, meaning that die-hard sharksploitation fans can finally have a complete set of mechanical shark flicks--not CGI shark flicks--in high definition. Yet with most things Jaws-related, Universal is still late to its own party because Shark City Ozark started accepting pre-orders last March for latest and last entry in its "Ultimate Bruce" series : a 25-inch long maquette of the mechanical shark used in Revenge . As with the previous releases in this series, SCO's replica of the Revenge shark captures just about every detail of the fake fish used for the fourth and last Jaws movie. For those of you who know the history of this particular movie prop, the SCO maquette also includes details of when it wound up on display at the Universal Studios theme park in Orlando, Florida, complete with an unstitched belly and rusting blue steel display stand. Best of al

Last month, I posted an article about how I was able to convert my Kindle Fire into a portable viewer of 3D video content. At that point, I could watch side-by-side (SBS) 3D content from YouTube but I had yet to figure out how I could convert my collection of 3D Blu-rays into SBS 3D files that I could play back on the Fire. What I found out was that while such a goal is possible, it was trickier to accomplish than I thought it would be. Read on ... For those of you who want to stop reading now, the software system to get to convert 3D Blu-ray discs into SBS 3D files is DVDFab 9 . This is the ONLY software that I found that can actually do this. I should know, because I had to sift through dozens of software systems that claimed to do the same thing but couldn't do it at all. As anyone who understands 3D entertainment knows, a stereoscopic image has to have one image for the left eye and another image for the right eye in order for the viewer's brain to think that it is see