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Giving thanks for my new The Shadow action figures

Posted in movies, pop culture, toys with tags movies, pop culture, The Shadow, toys on November 27, 2013 by Paxton

Brian over at CoolandCollected.com is a good friend of this site and the Nerd Lunch podcast. He is also a garage sale/flea market/Craigslist guru. He finds awesome pop culture items and toys tucked away in some nooks and crannies where only the brave care to tread.

Brian posted several articles recently (here, here and here) showing a nice haul of toys he had procured and is looking to “trim the fat”. I love looking at these articles and seeing some of the treasures he has unearthed. For instance, I wasn’t even AWARE they made figures for The Last Action Hero and Demolition Man. WHAT?! That’s coconuts. Check them out:

Bananas. Anyway, a little further down, I noticed something that caught my eye. Brian had found some of Kenner’s The Shadow figures from the 1994 movie. I love that movie and I really loved those figures. I still own my Lightning Draw Shadow figure from that line that I bought back in ’94 when they were on clearance in KayBee Toys.

Kenner’s entire The Shadow figure line was amazing. Eight regular figures, a deluxe electronic figure and FOUR vehicles. The line was gorgeous, it really was. It’s too bad the movie didn’t hit like they wanted because I would have loved to have seen both a Shadow Sanctum and a Hotel Monolith playset. Oh yeah, AND A SEQUEL. But that’s a rant for another time.

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Nerd Lunch Episode 108: The Trial of M Night Shamalayan + Nerd Lunch at the After Movie Diner

Posted in Back to the Future, movies, podcast, pop culture with tags Back to the Future, movies, Nerd Lunch Podcast, podcast, pop culture on November 19, 2013 by Paxton

Episode 108 of the Nerd Lunch podcast is now live. Jeeg and I couldn’t make it but Aaron Nix, Michael May and Andrew Bloom show up to put M Night Shamalayan on trial for crimes against moviegoers.

Via keviemetal.tumblr.com

Bloom is the judge, CT is the prosecution, Aaron Nix is the defense and Michael May is the expert witness. Listen to everyone put M Night on trial. Hear Bloom fall asleep during the podcast. Hear CT passionately speak out against M Night’s movies. Hear Aaron Nix speak lovingly and at great length about this director whom he clearly has a giant man crush on. It’s a great episode, and honestly, I think the best of the three trials we’ve done. Give it a shot.

Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner.

Also, in case you missed it, CT and I were invited to join Jon Cross over at his podcast at The After Movie Diner. Jeeg couldn’t make it due to some rift in the time-space continuum, but CT and I roll up in our modified DMC-12 to discuss the entire Back to the Future trilogy.

It’s not exhaustive by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a solid hour and a half of three movie geeks talking about their remembrances of one of their favorite movie trilogies of all time.

Check out episode 101 of the After Movie Diner Podcast featuring CT and yours truly here.

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Nerd Lunch Episode 107: Movie Prequels

Posted in movies, podcast, pop culture with tags movies, Nerd Lunch Podcast, podcast, pop culture, sequels on November 18, 2013 by Paxton

I don’t think I mentioned this last week, but I hosted episode 107 of the Nerd Lunch Podcast which went live LAST Tuesday. I’m still in vacation mode after my month long AWESOME-tober-fest this year.

We were joined by Shawn Robare from Branded in the 80s and we all discussed the idea of movie prequels.

We discuss our thoughts on prequels, which prequels we think worked and which didn’t we even pitch ideas for movie prequels we’d like to see someday. Nerd to Dos include Witches of Eastwick, Funko figures, Bond movies and M Night Shamalayan.

Tomorrow’s new episode won’t feature me or Jeeg at all. We both had to drop out for various reasons, so CT is going it alone with several guest stars. It should be an interesting one.

Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2013: Four vintage Fangoria magazine ads

Posted in advertising, Fangoria, Halloween, holiday, magazine, movies, music with tags advertising, AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2013, Fangoria, Halloween, holiday, magazines, monsters, music, vintage, zombies on October 30, 2013 by Paxton

Fangoria had a lot of great merch that you could purchase directly through the magazine. We saw the masks/costumes collections yesterday. Now let’s take a look at some of the other awesome items you could buy through the pages of Fangoria.

One of the first places I’d usually go, and the place I usually lingered on after I’d read the magazine, is the two page back issue order form. Checking out previous issues and what movies were covered was amazing. I love that they included many of the covers as well. You can see in the lower right I filled out the order form back in the day. I was optimistically hoping my parents would let me send away for some of the issues. I checked off issues #50 and #55 in the form. Issue 50 was the issue featured in the picture on the right with Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). I always lusted after that issue and never got it. The other issue, #55, I’m less sure why I wanted. The cover pic is above the description with the Invaders from Mars remake on the cover and some first looks at Psycho III.

This ad showed up in Fangoria for many years. One of my favorites. I never wanted to own any of these shirts, I just liked the idea that they existed. I would never have been able to wear one of these shirts to school, so what was the point? Plus the shirts were $25 which was A LOT, even then. But the ad was very eye catching and fun. I like the guy in the luchador mask. WTF?!

Fangoria sold everything to make money within its pages. Here are some horror movie soundtracks for sale. Some of these I would imagine are pretty rare now. Some of these might possibly have been made custom. That Troll soundtrack couldn’t have sold too well. The Return of the Living Dead soundtrack is pretty great. But check out that list of eclectic movie soundtracks on the right. Teen Wolf? Warhol’s Dracula? The first Evil Dead? Transylvania 6-5000?! Wow.

The Gore Store was always a great stop in the magazine to see what cool books and props were being offered. This particular Gore Store is from 1987. Some cool film books about Night of the Living Dead and Stephen King. Also this page was a chance to order the annual Bloody Best of Fangoria issues. In this one you could order all the current 5 volumes of Bloody Best right there for $18 plus shipping. A little over $3 each. Not bad.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2013: 7 Vintage horror movie on VHS ads

Posted in Fangoria, Genres, Halloween, holiday, horror, magazine, movies, nostalgia, pop culture with tags advertising, AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2013, Fangoria, Halloween, holiday, magazines, monsters, movies, vintage, zombies on October 28, 2013 by Paxton

In the late 80s-early 90s I was a big horror fan. I watched all the slasher movies and I bought and read Fangoria magazine every month. For a while, it was my favorite magazine. I even still have a bunch of my original issues.

Surprisingly, Fangoria didn’t have a LOT of ads, but every issue there was at least 1 big ad for some movie that was either about to come out in theaters, or getting ready to hit VHS and Laserdisc. They are glorious full page color ads. And I loved them. Here are a few of those ads I still have. You can click the images to see them BIGGER on Flickr.

Since my theme this year is zombies, I’ll start with a zombie movie. This ad is for Zombie Nightmare from 1987. It stars Adam West (yes, THAT Adam West) and Tia Carrere. A youth is killed by a group of rampant teenagers. A voodoo priestess resurrects the youth to enact revenge on his killers so he can rest in peace.

Here’s another 1987 ad for the first sequel to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The bottom of the ad includes mail away offers for 3D posters, 6 ft cardboard standees and t-shirts. I love that they “suggest” you use a chainsaw to cut out the order form.

And here to finish off the 1987 hat trick is an ad for David Cronenberg’s The Fly. I love this image. I don’t think they needed the image of the Brundlefly in the upper left, I wish they would have left that out.