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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...

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...

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...

It's no secret that Lego bricks have become the go-to medium for many geeks who want to build detailed replicas of characters, vehicles and environments from their favorite fantasy and sci-fi franchises. However, few geeks use Lego to build replicas of franchise toys that were planned by toy companies but never made it past the prototype stage. On the other hand, there's BaronSat (a.k.a. Eric Duron), who designs Lego kits for franchises that are both licensed and not licensed by Lego. For Star Wars, he has already provided instructions for Lego-scale replicas of toys that were made by Kenner during the original trilogy, toys such as the Imperial Troop Transporter , the Imperial Attack Base , and the Death Star World sets from Kenner's short-lived Micro Collection line. His latest kit is based on the unreleased part of the Death Star World: the Emperor's Throne Room from Return of the Jedi . The story behind this toy is that after Kenner released its initial wave of Mi...

As I've said before on this blog, I consider myself to be very fortunate to have lived through the early years of video games. I remember a time when the distribution cycle of a video game title would begin in coin-op arcades and continue through ports to PCs and home consoles. Now, the Internet, PCs, home consoles and portable media devices rule most of the video game world, while the few surviving coin-op arcades feature titles that will (probably) never appear in any other medium. The same is true about how the video games appear: Most current games are so beautifully designed that they largely sell themselves through clips of game play footage. Yet when video games had nothing but blocky graphics and clunky sounds to offer, they needed a little extra help to convince people to play them. In honor of the artwork produced during early years of video game advertising, Dynamite Entertainment is publishing The Art of Atari by Robert V. Conte and Tim Lapetino. According to the boo...

It's amazing what you can find when you're just buzzing around the Internet. I'm currently working on a review of Curse of the Fly for a book called Unsung Horrors , which is being assembled by the same people who published 70s Monster Memories . I've been assembling my thoughts about the movie and looking around the web (no pun intended) to see if I can find any little-known factoids about the second sequel to the original The Fly . During my searches, I found a graphic arts company called Stormbrush, which is owned and operated by illustrator Calvin Chua, which has a design page titled "Project Fly Reboot" . Based on the information and pictures provided on the page, I'm guessing that this artwork is for a proposed remake/reboot of David Cronenberg's The Fly , which itself was a remake. The page includes some interesting designs, such as what the new telepod and teleportation process would be like, but the best part is the artwork for the new man-fl...

Ever since I learned of its existence, I've done everything that I can afford to do to partake in 3D entertainment. I've picked up anaglyph 3D books, comics and DVDs; I purchased the Virtual FX 3D converter for my cathode ray tube (CRT) TV set so I could watch field sequential 3D DVDs; and I bought two 3D-capable flat screen TVs (one with active glasses, the other passive) so I could watch 3D Blu-rays and access 3D rentals from on demand services such as 3DGO . With such an obsessive pattern of behavior in place, it was only a matter of time before I found a way to watch 3D content on my Kindle Fire. After weeks of searching, that's exactly what I did through the OWL Stereoscopic Viewer, a lightweight and affordable tool that turned my Kindle Fire into a portable 3D video player. Read on ... 3D video entertainment got a significant boost with the arrival of high-definition flat screen TVs, and attempts to expand 3D videos and interactive 3D software over to smart phones an...

Fantasy, horror and sci-fi fans are known for the many, many things they use to show their appreciation of the franchises they love: cosplay, fan films, collectible collections, websites, and so on. Yet it's a rare situation when fans take the initiative to research and document the behind-the-scene details of the more obscure and less glamorous aspects of their favorite films and TV shows. Such is the case of Jaws 2: The Making of The Hollywood Sequel , which was written by Louis R. Pisano and Michael A. Smith and published by BearManor Media. Read on for my complete review of this long overdue treat for Jaws franchise fans. It's no secret among Jaws fans that the production of Jaws 2 was a troubled one, that it went through two directors (first John Hancock, then Jeannot Szwarc), multiple screenwriters, cast changes and script rewrites before finally arriving on the silver screen in 1978. Pisano and Smith’s book lays out in detail exactly how tumultuous the production reall...

Anyone who is a horror fan knows that there's much, much more to it that just reading novels or watching films. A genuine fan life is filled with collectibles, comic books, fanzines, posters, and a selection of oddities with an appeal that would baffle outsiders. The publishers of We Belong Dead magazine understand fan life very well, and they have just published a book that is completely devoted to horror fandom from a particular decade: 70s Monster Memories . 70s Monster Memories is a full-color, soft-cover book with 400 pages worth of essays about various aspects of horror fan life during the '70s. The essays cover just about everything that was unique to that era, from Aurora model kits to poster magazines to noteworthy horror movies that were produced exclusively for broadcast television. Since this was the last decade before cable TV channels found their footing and VHS rentals became a blockbuster business, some essays cover super 8 films (the only way to watch horror ...

When horror icon Christopher Lee passed away last June, it felt like a particular era of horror cinema came to an end. Lee led an extremely impressive life, but his contributions to the horror genre--as well as pop culture in general--are truly legendary. In honor of his passing, UK horror magazine We Belong Dead has recently published a special 100 page, full-color issue as a tribute to Lee and the many memorable roles he brought to life on the silver screen. The issue covers Lee's prolific career, from his most popular films ( The Wicker Man , The Lord of the Rings series, his portrayal of Dracula in numerous films, etc.) to his more obscure work ( Night of the Big Heat , Taste of Fear , Nothing but the Night , etc.). The details provided in this issue about Lee's career are exhaustive in scope, both well-researched and well-written by a diverse selection of contributors. Among the personal fan reflections about Lee and in-depth analyses of the films and studios in which Le...

Jaws fans, rejoice! BearManor Media is taking orders for Jaws 2: The Making of The Hollywood Sequel by Louis R. Pisano and Michael A. Smith. Available in both hardcover and softcover editions, this book takes readers on an in-depth journey into the troubled production of the 1978 sequel to Steven Spielberg's hit movie. Jaws 2 was the first blockbuster sequel to the film that is credited with kicking off the summer blockbuster era, thus making it the sequel (as alluded to in the book's subtitle) that proved how lucrative blockbuster movie sequels can be. In fact, Jaws 2 remained the high-grossing sequel to a summer blockbuster until the sequel of another summer blockbuster film, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back , took the honor in 1980. There have been plenty of books written about Jaws , but the same amount of detailed information about any of its sequels is almost impossible to find. So far, the only materials that focused their attention on the first sequel were The Jaw...