VHS Horror Movie Collecting and Wizard Video: How Much is Too Much?

Given my interests in horror and sci-fi, I've seen a wide variety of collectors who have built impressive inventories of prized horror and sci-fi artifacts. Collections have been built around pulp magazines, movie posters, model kits, and items specific to a particular franchise. There are even those who prefer to collect copies of horror and sci-fi movies in a non-digital format--namely, the analog medium of VHS. Yet as with every form of collecting, one question remains the same: How much is too much to pay for a particular collectible? In the area of VHS exploitation movies, collectors have asked that very same question when it comes to the recent "special edition" Wizard Video re-releases by Charles Band. Read on for some of my thoughts about this latest exercise in nostalgia marketing.

If you love low-budget exploitation cinema and don't know who Charles Band is, you should. Like Roger Corman and Lloyd Kaufman, Band made a name for himself by churning out tons of low-budget exploitation fare, either by his creating it himself or distributing it through one of his media companies. Wizard Video was Band's initial foray into the VHS market during the early 80s and while it distributed some of Band's own work, it mostly distributed low-budget titles from the U.S. and Europe. Wizard Video built its reputation on being the first to release notorious exploitation classics such Zombie and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as well as its usage of gruesome and erotic artwork on oversized VHS boxes.

Titles from Wizard Video's library have become prized collector's items in the years since the VHS format faded from the home entertainment scene. Thus, when Band claimed to have mint-condition copies of 36 Wizard Video titles in a warehouse a few months ago, the VHS collector market took notice. Since February, Band has been re-releasing these copies as special editions, with four titles being made available per each month. Each title is priced at $50 (not including shipping and handling), and each box is hand-numbered on the spine, autographed by Charles Band, and includes a duplicated VHS copy of the title inside of a clamshell holder.

Questions have arisen since Band's announcement, particularly as to whether these copies are authentic originals or just cheaply made imitations that Band is trying to pass off as the real thing for a quick profit. (Click here to see videos at the VHS Collector site that examine the Wizard Video re-releases in detail.) Of course, Band denies this accusation, in spite of his own history of questionable business practices. Yet VHS tape origins aside, a key question persists: For what you get from Band--an autographed and numbered big box with a VHS tape inside of it--are these titles really worth the prices that Band is charging?

Since I'm a child of the 80s, I have a certain affinity for the VHS format and the mom-and-pop rental shops that appeared around it. (Click here and here for my previous VHS retrospectives.) Like the late-night horror show hosts and the Crestwood House books that came before them, the lurid big VHS boxes that often collected dust on the shelves of video rental shops played a huge role in introducing young horror fans to all sorts of obscure and funky horror film titles. European exploitation icons such as Jesus "Jess" Franco, Lucio Fulci, Paul Naschy and Jean Rollins found their first American audiences thanks to distribution companies such as Wizard Video.

One of the most memorable aspects of the VHS craze was the artwork on the VHS box covers, particularly Wizard Video covers. Many were simply amazing, with higher production and entertainment value than the movies themselves. These covers featured some of the best pop horror art since the horror comic books from the 50s, 60s and 70s and they were on display in video stores across the country for movie fans of all ages to appreciate. There hasn't been anything quite like this to promote horror movies since most of the video stores folded, so I can understand why some horror fans who lived through the VHS era would want to preserve a piece of that time in their own homes.

On the other hand, I think that the price that Band is charging for his videos is too expensive, especially for tapes that aren't authentic originals. For $50, I would expect a special edition Wizard Video VHS package to include a production booklet about the movie itself, as well as a bio of the artist who painted the cover art that Wizard Video used to entice people to rent the movie in the first place. Since the artwork is what Wizard Video boxes are known for, the artists behind it should get their due. Without these extra features and the lingering doubts about their authenticity, Band's Wizard Video offer is asking for too much for so little. Even if you swear by the VHS format over DVD and Blu-ray, you'll get much more bonus material from a special edition DVD or Blu-ray than any of Band's special edition Wizard Video releases. For example, compare all of the extra features included in Criterion's DVD release of Equinox (read my Equinox post here) to the upcoming special edition Wizard Video release of Equinox, which was renamed as The Beast. If you love low-budget and cult classic horror, the Criterion release is clearly the better and cheaper choice.

Another dubious aspect of the special edition Wizard Video sale is Band's autograph on the boxes. Sure, Band has written, directed and produced many films over the course of his career, but many of the Wizard Video titles aren't his--he just distributed them. Thus, using his autograph to justify charging extra money for films that he did not make just feels sleazy (regardless of how tasteless and god-awful these films actually are). Sure, Band distributed a handful of Franco movies in the U.S. through Wizard Video but if I'm going to get an autographed copy of a Franco film, then I want Franco's autograph and not Band's.

I have very fond memories of the VHS era, and I still regret not renting more of the big box titles when I had the chance and purchasing them used from my local video store when it went bust. Yet what Charles Band is offering strikes me as a shameless attempt to cash in on VHS nostalgia, and I can think of much better ways to appreciate a bygone era of home entertainment than sending money to Band.

Kenner Star Wars Toys Strike Back: BaronSat's Lego Imperial Attack Base Playset

A few months ago, I published a post about BaronSat (a.k.a. Eric Druon), a devoted Lego hobbyist who made two Lego replicas of playsets from Kenner's short-lived Star Wars Micro Collection line. I just heard from BaronSat again, and he's made another impressive Lego replica from Kenner's Star Wars toy line: the Imperial Attack Base playset from Empire Strikes Back, which Kenner released for its 3 and 3/4 inch Star Wars action figures. Just as he did before, BaronSat took everything about the original playset and re-scaled it for Lego's Star Wars minifigs and the results are outstanding. Read on for more details and pictures of BaronSat's latest work.

The way I see it, the name "Imperial Attack Base" for this playset is one of the goofs made by Kenner during its run with the Star Wars toy license. (See also the blue Snaggletooth action figure and the 4-LOM/Zuckuss naming mix-up.) It's obvious that it was modeled after the trenches that the Rebel Alliance used to defend its Hoth base from the Imperials' assault in Empire Strikes Back. Yet between the playset's name and the images printed on the box, it looks like this Hoth base is for Darth Vader and his Snowtroopers, not the Rebels.

BaronSat is not lost on Kenner’s goof either. As he puts it on one of his Flickr pages, “(P)eople at Kenner, in the early 80's, saw a different movie (than Empire), so let me tell you the story: The peaceful Empire has set up an Imperial base on the sweet planet Hoth. They enjoy skiing, building snowmen and throwing snowballs at Wampas. But one awful day, the Rebel scum land on their planet and savagely attack the base. It follows a very fierce battle, known as the ‘Battle of Hoth’. Finally the Rebels are driven out of the planet and the Imperials resume their winter holidays.”

Despite the naming and publicity shot errors, the Imperial Attack Base was the most entertaining of Kenner's Hoth action figure playsets. It came with a snow bridge and command post that would collapse at the touch of a button, and its scale was complementary to the AT-AT, AT-ST and Snowspeeder vehicle toys. Kenner even molded little action figure-sized footprints into the playset's base to suggest that heavy foot traffic had moved through the snowy trenches. Curiously, the Hoth Rebel laser gun turret was not included in this playset; that would later be released as part of the awkward Turret and Probot playset.

Given his keen attention to detail, BaronSat included all of the features from the original Imperial Attack Base playset into his Lego replica. Lego made a few Hoth-themed Star Wars sets before but none of them recreated the Rebel's snow trenches, so it’s great to see BaronSat’s Lego version of a Kenner playset that did. The pictures below provide examples of everything the replica does, including a clever nod to the deleted Wampa attack scene from Empire Strikes Back. Sith happens, indeed.

Check out BarsonSat’s official site and Flickr pages for more examples of his work. You can also order custom Lego kits and custom kit instructions from him on his site.

Farewell Futurama, Take Three

In case you haven't heard, Comedy Central has announced that it's discontinuing Futurama after its next 13 episode run, which will begin in June and end at the beginning of September.

For those of you who have been keeping score, Futurama first ran on Fox for four seasons, from 1999 to 2003. It came back in 2007 with four movies on Comedy Central (four movies that were subsequently edited into 16 half-hour episodes, which makes me wonder why they were made as movies in the first place). Comedy Central then renewed the cartoon as a half-hour series with two 26 episode seasons, which have aired as 13 episode blocks during the summers of 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013. In total, Futurama will leave the air with a total of 140 episodes to its name.

According to what I've read, Comedy Central is cancelling the show due to falling ratings. Then again, Comedy Central has treated new episodes of Futurama as summer-exclusive content, so I can see how fan enthusiasm can diminish during such an unusual schedule. Watching a series from fall to spring and then waiting over the summer for the series to come back in the subsequent fall is a reasonable degree of anticipation; asking viewers to remember to watch a series that only runs new episodes during the summer is probably asking too much of modern attention-deficient audiences. Nevertheless, even though I love Futurama, its sparse run on Comedy Central makes the news of its latest cancellation easier to accept.

Like most fans, I was miffed when Fox cancelled Futurama after doing everything it could to torpedo the show's ratings; thus, the fact that this series came back at all is quite an accomplishment, one that is hard to top for such a cult-appeal show. As long as the final 13 episode block maintains decent level of quality, I honestly can't complain about its latest cancellation. Besides, Futurama produced a respectable amount of ancillary material (a comic books series, a video game, toys, and lots of other fun merchandise), and it won't be kept on the air long past the point where is shouldn't be (such as The Simpsons, South Park, King of the Hill, and Family Guy).

I'll miss Futurama. It was a show that poked fun at sci-fi and was very smart in its own right (it even has its own mathematical theorem), and it has scored dozens of award nominations and wins to prove just how great it is. The TV cartoon universe will be a much smaller place without it.

Mego Batman Returns

2013 is shaping up to be a fantastic year for fans of classic Batman media and merchandise. First, Mattel and NECA announced that they are producing action figures based on the live-action Batman TV series from the 60s; then, DC announced that it will publish Batman '66, an online comic based on the same TV series, starting this summer. Now, Figures Toy Company has announced that it will release a series of Batman figures based on Mego's 8-inch World's Greatest Super Heroes line from the 70s, starting this July.

I'm not sure what has prompted this renewed interest in older Batman stuff, but it looks like we're going to see plenty of it in the months to come. Not only will Figures Toy Company release replicas of Mego's Batman figures (which include Robin, Batgirl, Joker, Penguin, Riddler and Catwoman) but it also intends to make a wave of figures based on the 60s Batman TV show, complete with head sculpts based on the actors who played the characters (see the picture below for two examples).

Personally, I'm hoping that these toys will sell well enough to encourage Figures Toy Company to release replicas of Mego's entire World's Greatest Super Heroes line. Then again, anything that keeps Mego alive among the horror, sci-fi and comic book communities is good idea in my book.

Flying RC Model Hobbyists Take to the Skies with Terminator and S.H.I.E.L.D.

When it comes to being jealous of people who are more talented than me in the area of making horror and sci-fi replicas, I prefer to prioritize. I'm jealous of people who can assemble model kits so they appear nearly flawless; very jealous of people who can make professional-looking customized model kits and/or toys; and extremely jealous of people who can make customized model kits and/or toys that can move in some way, either along the ground, on/under the water, or through the air. In the last category, I recently found two talented hobbyists who were able to make vehicle replicas from the Terminator saga and last year's Avengers movie that could actually fly. Click below to read more about these amazing RC replicas and see video clips of each model in action.

The first hobbyist is from Russia, and he goes by the name of Native 118. He built two customized RC replicas that caught my eye: one based on the aerial HK design from Terminator and Terminator 2, and one based on the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier design from the Avengers movie. What's particularly impressive about the Helicarrier replica is that it floats on water and can launch itself into the air while in the water. Check out the videos below to see the models demonstrating what they can do.

Here’s a short video provided by Native 118 that provides an overview about how he assembled his HK model:

The other hobbyist is from Colorado and goes by the name kahloq. Inspired by Native 118's flying HK, he built a flying remote controlled aerial HK drone unit based on the design from Terminator 3. The main difference between the two flying Terminator models is that the Native 118 model has two fans on the outside with a third hidden in the nose, while kahloq's model has three fans on the outside according to the original T3 design. The video below provides some footage of this HK model in flight, as well as an overview of how kahloq built and tested his model.

Awesome 8-Bit Lunacy: Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla

It's the perfect title for a video game, four words that sum it up nicely: Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla.

This game is being developed by I-Mockery and Adult Swim Games, and it has been described as an “ultra-violent platformer about an escaped lab experiment looking for blood.” It sounds like a perfect fit for my depraved interests--I can't wait! If this game becomes popular enough, maybe we'll get lucky and see a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vs. Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla crossover.

Click here to check out other weird and wonderful video games that you can play for free at I-Mockery.

Must-See BBC TV: In the Flesh

With so many zombie-themed movies, TV shows and video games on the market these days, it's hard to find a zombie story that's genuinely unique. Most follow the apocalyptic bloodbath plot that was pioneered by George Romero in his zombie films. In contrast, the BBC has broadcast In the Flesh, a three-part miniseries that has roots in Romero's work but takes it into provocative new territory.

Created and written by Dominic Mitchell, In the Flesh is about a British teenager named Kieren (Luke Newberry) who is being treated for "Partially Deceased Syndrome", or PDS. PDS is the term given to the phenomenon that reanimated the dead in a zombie outbreak that happened four years earlier. In the time since then, a large number of zombies--or "rotters" as they are called in the miniseries--have been rehabilitated through medical treatments and are being integrated back into society. The series follows Kieren as he returns to his family in the rural village of Roarton and how he and the world around him are adjusting to existence of the partially dead among the living.

While there are some brief flashes of gore in In the Flesh, it is not your typical zombie story. It takes the imagery, concepts and symbolism associated with zombies and uses them to examine modern issues such as drug abuse, mental health, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and widely-publicized diseases such as cancer and AIDS. In the series' post-outbreak world, PDS sufferers receive daily injections of a medication called Neurotriptyline and therapy to help them move on with their (after)lives, while family members of PDS sufferers can attend support groups to discuss the difficulties of caring for loved ones who are neither completely alive nor dead. Government-published posters and literature about PDS make cameo appearances throughout the series, while some survivors of the zombie outbreak are appalled at having to accept PDS sufferers--including ones they knew and cared for before the outbreak--as equal members of their community. In a sense, In the Flesh is the equal but opposite of Bob Clark's Deathdream (1972).

The plot device of rehabilitating zombies has been played for laughs many times before, such as in Shaun of the Dead, Fido, Ugly Americans and Warm Bodies. Yet In the Flesh plays it mostly straight and it works, largely due to Mitchell populating his story with so many interesting ideas, vivid details and nuanced characters. Monsters have been used as metaphors for diseases and social problems many, many times before, but it's rare to see a story like In the Flesh that takes the perspective of people who have to care for loved ones who have become "monsters" and how the newly monster-ized cope with their not-quite-human status. (For another good example of this, see my essay on the original The Fly and its sequels.) Between the strength of the script and wonderful performances by the cast, this series succeeds as a horror drama, a rare accomplishment in horror television. My only complaint is that the series runs for just three hour-long episodes; Mitchell provides so many details and subplots within his story that I'd love to see where it goes next after the third episode comes to an end.

If you're looking for hordes of zombies having a blood-drenched, entrails-splattered feeding frenzy on the living, this miniseries is not for you. Yet if you're looking for a unique, rewarding and thoughtful story about the living dead, In the Flesh is something you need to see. With the topics such as mental health, PTSD and suicide making frequent appearances in current discussions over gun violence and veterans returning from extended tours in the Middle East, In the Flesh really is a zombie tale for our time.

For more details about In the Flesh, including an annotated shooting script for the "Understanding PDS" public service video, check out the official series page over at the BBC site.

The Walking Dead and the Challenges of Cross-Media Adaptations

When it comes to movies that are adaptations of novels, everyone knows the drill by now: the book is usually better than the movie. It's a fair criticism, since the printed page is a very different medium than the moving image. But what happens when a TV show attempts to adapt a serialized--and unfinished--comic book series? With AMC's The Walking Dead, we're watching such an attempt play out now on prime time.

I've read through the first 70 issues of the Walking Dead comic book, which was created and written by Robert Kirkman, so I have ample amounts of source information to draw from when comparing it to its televised counterpart. I enjoy the TV show's ample amounts of zombie gore, and I thought that it got off to a great start in its first six-episode season. But after watching the meandering second season and seeing the third season end so poorly last week, I'm beginning to wonder how much longer this show can go with its rapidly rotting legs in spite of its high ratings. Read on for my analysis of the show, and why adapting an ongoing comic book series into a different medium requires much more planning and foresight than adapting a single novel.

NOTE: This post makes many references to events in both versions of The Walking Dead. Thus, if you aren't familiar with either of them but want to read/see them later, you might want to skip this post to avoid spoilers.

When The Walking Dead first appeared in comic book stores back in 2003, I was impressed at how it took an idea that's been around since George Romero's Night of the Living Dead--a global zombie epidemic--and turned it into a serialized narrative. Essentially, The Walking Dead is Night of the Living Dead: The Series; why nobody through to do this before Kirkman still astonishes me. Unlike Living Dead's sequels, which jumped to different sets of characters at different locations during the epidemic, The Walking Dead stuck with a group of characters during society's collapse in the wake of the epidemic and how they try to bring stability back into their lives while stuck in a world overrun by reanimated, flesh-eating corpses. Because the story was told through the pages of a comic book, the narrative possibilities were limited only by the imagination and talent of the comic's writer and artist.

The TV version of Walking Dead started in 2010 and it has tried to recreate the comic in many aspects. Most of the central characters and story arcs that appear in the comic are also in the TV show, with varying degrees of accuracy. However, due to the complications that come with TV production (in this case, AMC cutting the show's production budget and then ordering a larger number of episodes per season, as well as a seasonal succession of showrunners), the TV Walking Dead runs at a much different pace than the comic, which has resulted in some peculiar and counter-intuitive creative choices.

I've read many complaints (many of which I think are spot-on) about the Walking Dead TV show in how it handles its female and non-white characters. Here are some of the complaints that I have:

* The farmhouse story arc that only lasted for six issues in the comic was stretched for the entirety of season two, which ran for thirteen episodes. To me, it felt like a five-episode arc that was padded into a thirteen-episode season.

* The prison vs. Woodbury story in the comic was very simple: Rick, Michonne and Glenn are held prisoner by the Governor in Woodsbury, they escape back to the prison, and then there's a fight between Rick's group and the Governor's personal army at the prison, which results in massive casualties. This same story arc was the basis of season three and it felt like many details and subplots were added to simply to meet the sixteen episode requirement for the season, not to push the show in an interesting new direction. In the TV show, not only did the Governor survive the final confrontation at the prison, he also survived several other instances throughout the season where he should have logically died.

In spite of the differences between the details and pacing of the story arcs between the comic book and the TV show, it seems that the show's producers want the TV characters to develop the same way as their comic book counterparts do and when they don’t, another character is swapped in to take his/her place. When Dale was killed in season two at the farmhouse because the actor who played him quit, Herschel takes his place in season three (complete with losing a leg due to a zombie bite in the prison, just like Dale) even though he was the one who died at the farmhouse in the comic. I've also noticed that when the narrative trajectories of the TV characters stray very far from their comic book counterparts (specifically Andrea and Carol) the TV show doesn't know what to do with them. In contrast, I can see why Daryl is the most popular character in the show: Because he appeared briefly in the comic early in its run, the TV writers had many more opportunities to develop Daryl without having to meet any narrative requirement from the comic or use him as a replacement for a prematurely dispatched character.

When adapting a novel into a movie, the filmmakers naturally have to choose what can be translated from the printed page to film, and what cannot be translated due to budgetary and/or running time restrictions. In the case of The Walking Dead, the demands of AMC and TV production in production in general prohibit the series from being a faithful adaptation of the comic, yet it nevertheless remains dedicated to keeping the same characters and stories from the comic even past the point of its own internal logic.

Looking back, it may have been better for AMC to produce a Walking Dead TV series as a spinoff to the comic book that takes place in the same universe. That would've given the show's creative team more freedom to develop characters, settings and story arcs that are much more complementary with the show's budget and production schedule. In fact, a spinoff might have even been better than The Walking Dead comic itself. Despite the freedoms that the print medium allows, the comic hasn't moved past the main theme of every George Romero zombie movie: no matter how grotesque and dangerous the reanimated dead are, the living can and will be much, much worse. It's a compelling theme, but at over 100 issues and counting you'd think that a zombie comic book would have something else to say by now.

The Governor (David Morrissey) and Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln):

Gunfight at the Zombie Corral?

This wouldn't be the first time that a TV network would impose difficult and counterproductive demands on a genre TV show. The original Battlestar Galactica was supposed to be a series of made-for-TV movies, but ABC demanded that it be made into a TV series instead--a series that was later cancelled because the declining ratings weren't enough to justify the series’ large production budget, a problem that probably wouldn't have happened if ABC hadn't rejected the original plan of TV movies. Likewise, the original 1983 miniseries V was made on a very small budget, but that didn't keep NBC from deciding to continue the V story as a weekly TV series the following year. It too was cancelled after one season, and for the same reasons as Galactica's cancellation.

The Walking Dead doesn't appear to have the same problems as Galactica or V because it keeps setting ratings records and has been renewed for a fourth season. Yet if it doesn't do something to set itself apart as a TV series with its own dramatic momentum apart from the source comic, this zombie show could wind up dropping dead in the ratings before it sees a fifth season.

Remembering Roger Ebert (1942 - 2013)

I’ve been very sick for the last week, so I’m way behind on a few things I want to cover on this blog. Yet it would be remiss for me not to put in a few words about the recent passing of legendary movie critic Roger Ebert. While this blog is not exclusively devoted to movie reviews, I see Ebert’s influence in my writing and my approach to horror and sci-fi pop culture, much of which is driven by cinema.

It’s been said that through his books, TV shows, and other efforts, Ebert brought the practice of movie criticism into a more personal, less formalized perspective. It is likewise impressive that he did this at a time when the production and distribution of movies have changed so drastically, from something that could only be experienced in the movie theater to something that can be accessed almost anywhere at any time and on demand. I discovered Ebert the same way many people did: during the mid-80s on his syndicated TV show At the Movies with fellow film critic Gene Siskel. The VHS rental industry was coming into its own at that time, and I noticed how even that show soon made some changes to make room for new releases on VHS. (It should also be said that last week saw the passing of Eurotrash master Jesus “Jess” Franco. Even though there are many more popular and accomplished film directors in Europe, Franco developed an American fan base through distribution into VHS rental shops across America. Click here for more thoughts about that.)

If Ebert did anything, he showed how the critical analysis of movies has the potential to enhance one’s enjoyment of movies--that actually thinking about what you watch makes you appreciate it more than if you did not. I’m certain that many people still don’t understand this concept, since many (including quite a few professional film critics) appear to equate criticism with open hostility and snide insults. Yet because of his approach to criticism, Ebert didn’t just review films; he championed them. He provided commentary tracks for DVD and Blu-ray releases of movies (including a track for one of my personal favorites, Dark City) and would draw attention to limited-released movies that would otherwise be forgotten.

While I’m not even close to the kind of film buff that Ebert was, I’d like to think that my blog adheres to the standard of film criticism that Ebert himself endorsed. If anything I’ve written here has encouraged readers to think a little more about the films they are watching or choose to see an obscure movie instead of a hyper-promoted blockbuster, then I think Ebert would be proud.