Funko and Super 7 Go Retro with New ReAction Action Figures

The power of nostalgia strikes again! Back in 2012, toy companies Funko and Super 7 teamed up to finish what Kenner started back in the '70s by producing a line of 3 and 3/4-inch action figures based on the movie Alien. This partnership marked the beginning of the ReAction line of action figures, one that later expanded to include similar-sized action figures based on the Six Million Dollar Man TV series.

I'm guessing that these ReAction figures must have been a success, because that would explain the recent announcement by Funko and Super 7 to produce even more ReAction figures based on characters from Back to the Future, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Escape From New York, Firefly, Goonies, Nightmare Before Christmas, Predator, Pulp Fiction, The Terminator and other popular films and TV shows from the '80s and '90s. These figures are currently available for pre-order over at Entertainment Earth.

I find it amusing that even after the arrival of highly detailed yet reasonably priced action figures from companies such as McFarlane Toys and NECA, fans and collectors are still willing to spend money on even less detailed action figures that have a design aesthetic similar to Kenner's during the late '70s and early '80s. On the other hand, I have no room to judge--after all, the expanding ReAction line will also include figures based on classic Universal Studios monsters, figures that I'm assuming will appear similar to the 3 and 3/4-inch Universal Studio monster figures that Remco released during the early '80s.

Remco's Universal Monster action figures.

Even though I never collected any of Remco's Universal Monster figures, I eyed them with great curiosity and fascination back in the day when I was just discovering classic monster movies. Remco's line had Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, the Wolfman, the Mummy, the Phantom of the Opera and the Creature from the Black Lagoon; the ReAction line will have the same set of characters along with the Invisible Man. Thus, while I prefer to collect figures that have greater detail, such as Diamond Select's line of classic monster figures, there's a part of me that wants to spend a chunk of change on ReAction figures so that I can have classic Universal Monsters rub elbows with more contemporary horror icons such as the Alien, Predator, a T-800 endoskeleton, and slashers such as Micheal Meyers and Freddy Krueger.

Check out the ReAction Figures and More blog for updates about additions to the ReAction line of figures.

Epic Fail: A Review of Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: The Nightmare Warriors

Franchise crossovers are tricky things. They can be a blast when characters from different narrative universes meet in a single setting and share an adventure, or beat the crap out of each other, or beat the crap out of each other and then share an adventure. This stuff isn't high art; it's more of a treat for franchise fans than anything else, which is good news if you're a franchise fan.

However, even fan-friendly stuff like crossovers still have to obey a few rules to be enjoyable stories and not just meandering, clueless cash-ins of popular franchise brand names. For starters, it helps to provide some kind of balance between the franchises that appear in the story, so that both sides have some kind of direct involvement in the story. There's a big difference between a crossover and a guest appearance: Fans of a particular franchise in a crossover will feel cheated if their side doesn't get enough time in the spotlight, and it won't help the crossover narrative achieve a sense of tonal and plot consistency if certain elements just seem forced into the story with little sense of explanation or continuity.

To ensure that narrative balance is achieved, the franchises within the crossover should share some kind of thematic commonality. Dark Horse's original Aliens vs. Predator comic book miniseries worked well because both franchises dealt with killer extraterrestrials, so it didn't require much narrative acrobatics to explain what these two monsters were doing together in the same story. (In contrast, one of the more frustrating aspects of the Alien vs. Predator movie was the "ancient astronaut" subplot that took up so much time but didn't add much to the story, except to provide a convoluted excuse as to why the movie takes place in the arctic.) The same applies to Robocop vs. Terminator: Both franchises revolve around technology that has run amok, so it doesn't take much effort to put them together in the same setting. On the other hand, when two franchises that have nothing in common are forced together into the same story, the results can be ugly. Case in point: The DC Universe/Looney Tunes comic book crossover, two franchises that share no commonality other than that Warner Brothers owns both of them.

This brings me to the focus of this post, my review of Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: The Nightmare Warriors. Nightmare Warriors is billed as third part of the Freddy vs. Jason "trilogy", with the first two parts being the Freddy vs. Jason movie and the Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash comic book miniseries. Read on for my review of Nightmare Warriors, which includes a brief look back at its two predecessors.

When Freddy vs. Jason came out back in 2003, I thought it was a hoot. I enjoyed seeing Robert Englund playing Freddy Krueger one last time, and Ronny Yu's direction featured the right blend of gory horror and violent lunacy. The subplot involving the Westin Hills psychiatric facility and Hypnocil not only made ample use of ideas introduced in previous Nightmare on Elm Street movies, but it also provided an effectively morbid counterweight to the alliance/conflict between Freddy and Jason. Yet the most remarkable thing about this crossover was how long it took to happen at all and when it finally did happen, it was worth the wait. The studios first considered this crossover back in 1987, and it resulted in 18 unused scripts before Freddy vs. Jason was actually made (see the extras on the DVD for more details). Click here for some additional thoughts on Freddy vs. Jason.

The success of Freddy vs. Jason prompted the studios to consider a sequel (naturally), and one of the sequel ideas that quickly bubbled to the surface was to add the character of Ashley "Ash" Williams from the Evil Dead movies to the mix. A treatment for Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash was drafted, but never produced. So while a sequel to Freddy vs. Jason remains unmade, Wildstorm and Dynamite Entertainment later contacted Jeff Katz, the author of the Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash treatment, to work with James Kuhoric to rework the treatment into a six-issue comic book miniseries.

I picked up the trade paperback collection of Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash after it was published in September 2007. It's not as good as Freddy vs. Jason, the artwork by Jason Craig is very uneven, and I doubt that it would've worked as a movie. Nevertheless, Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash has its share of noteworthy moments for avid fans. It incorporates enough elements from each of the three franchises so that it feels like a complete, coherent story. Perhaps the most intriguing idea in this crossover story was the suggestion that Jason Vorhees' mother used the Necronomicon to bring Jason back from the dead (a plot thread that was hinted at in the ninth Friday the 13th movie), which is how Freddy learns about the cursed book. It's also fun to see Ash's car again, his seemingly indestructible 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale--it's the same car that makes cameo appearances in many of Sam Raimi's other films outside of the Evil Dead series.

Katz, Kuhoric and Craig came back in 2009 to do Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: The Nightmare Warriors. Nightmare Warriors was originally slated to be a twelve issue miniseries, but it was cut down to six issues. Katz and Kuhoric aimed to tell a much more ambitious story in this sequel, setting it up to serve as a definitive ending to the stories of several surviving characters from the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street movies. Unfortunately, while Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash is an amusing romp, Nightmare Warriors is an ambitious disappointment.

Katz and Kuhoric obviously didn't trim their original idea for a sequel when the miniseries' number of issues was cut from twelve to six. Nightmare Warriors tries to fit too many characters and plot threads into a narrative space that's too small to accommodate them and as a result, it becomes little more than a collage of franchise parts that never really fit together into a whole story. Reading it felt like reading Katz and Kuhoric's Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street fanboy wish list, not a gleefully gruesome story that horror fans crave. The characters feel interchangeable and its two intersecting plot arcs--the assembly of a support group for Freddy and Jason survivors and the government's interest in the Necronomicon--read like shallow, uninspired excuses to bring the characters together instead of actual plot arcs. As before, Craig's quality of artwork continues to vary from page to page, thus further dulling the story's overall visual impact.

Such narrative overcrowding of Nightmare Warriors leads it to its biggest flaw, at least as crossovers go: a lack of balance between the participating franchises. There are so many characters and ideas from the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises that the Evil Dead components of the story--namely Ash, the Necronomicon, and the Deadites--feel like they've been pushed aside and only serve the story in the most perfunctory sense. If anything, such an imbalance calls attention to the fact that the Evil Dead franchise isn't a slasher franchise, thus making Ash's placement in the story that much more awkward. Katz and Kuhoric's plot point that slasher attack survivors have an inner strength that makes them much more capable of beating supernatural villains would've worked perfectly within the Hack/Slash comic book series (say, Freddy vs. Jason vs. Hack/Slash) than with a crossover that involves Evil Dead.

Had Katz and Kuhoric kept their ambitions in check and paid closer attention to what makes crossovers succeed, Nightmare Warriors could have been a great miniseries. Since Nightmare Warriors was intended to be a concluding chapter in a trilogy, it should have been a story that expands directly from Freddy vs. Jason and Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash instead of returning to two of the original franchises to continue their stories. For example, since she brought Jason back from the dead by using the Necronomicon, Pamela Vorhees could have returned in the third part of the trilogy as some kind of Deadite witch (think of something along the lines of the cellar ghoul from Evil Dead 2) who has a seething grudge against both Freddy and Ash for what they did to her boy in the previous two chapters--imagine the kind of awesome bloodbath that would have been!

In summary, I can't recommend Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: The Nightmare Warriors, even to die-hard fans of Freddy, Jason and Ash. Horror buffs are better off satiating their crossover cravings elsewhere.

Nightmare on Elm Street (2010): A Nightmare Remade

I watched the Nightmare on Elm Street remake a few days ago (sorry--I've been busy in my non-blog life, so this was the earliest I could get my review online). I wanted to see it before the new Iron Man movie uses its repulsor rays to blast it off of my geek to-do list. While I'll try to avoid any major spoilers in this review, those who wish to watch the new Nightmare with fresh eyes should probably steer clear of this review. My opinion in a nutshell is that the film as it stands now is just OK, and nothing more than that. For those wishing to be spoiled, read on after the break.

I'll get the good parts of the movie out of the way first. Overall, the film was well cast (particularly Jackie Earle Haley as the new version of Freddy Krueger) and each actor puts in a good performance based on what the script gives him/her to do. The new post-burn Freddy makeup is particularly impressive, because it is more accurate in terms of what severe burns do to human flesh and it makes Freddy look much less human than his predecessor. With his pointed noes and ears and broken smile, the original Freddy was somewhat reminiscent of a gargoyle or a demon. In contrast, with his diminished brow, nose, chin and lips, the new Freddy almost looks like one of those gray-skinned aliens that the UFO abduction crowd keeps talking about. The remake goes to great lengths to emphasize the helplessness and desperation of Freddy's victims, how the lack of sleep is slowly, inevitably wearing them down--to the point of waking hallucinations--and that there's nothing they can do about it. I always felt that this sense of desperation was lacking in the original Nightmare movies, so I'm glad to see it done in the remake.

Unfortunately, these strengths cannot overcome the remake's many weaknesses. The heroine Nancy Holbrook (replacing Nancy Thompson in the original) really doesn't get much of a chance to assert herself as the main character, even though that's who she ends up becoming just by default towards the end. She's a gothy wallflower throughout most of the film so she's easy to overlook, and the filmmakers' inital approach to Freddy's teenage targets has more of an ensemble feel to it, thus watering down that audience's chance to invest emotionally in a central character. (In fact, the remake changes the back story of Freddy and the town of Springwood just enough that the significance of Elm Street itself is greatly reduced; thus, this film's title could've dropped the words Elm Street and it wouldn't have made a difference.) While there is an effective attack sequence which takes place in a pharmacy, where Freddy attacks a teenager who is fluctuating between a sleep-deprivation-induced hallucination and reality, most of the other attacks lack the suspense and personality that distinguished the original Nightmare.

The film's greatest drawback is its attempt to provide a more detailed explanation of Freddy's motives and his relationship to his victims. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but the filmmakers' lack of willingness to follow these changes through to their logical dramatic conclusion, which would have made this Nightmare considerably different than the original, hobbles the remake's attempt to succeed as a horror film.

Watching this remake reminded me of The Invasion, the 2007 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The Invasion changed the Body Snatcher story by switching the alien pods--giant plants which generate emotionless clones to replace people--with microscopic alien spores which infect people and take over their minds. Changing this narrative detail should have made The Invasion a leaner, meaner version of the Body Snatchers story; after all, without the aliens having to lug around bluky pods in order to facilitate their invasion of Earth, their attack on humanity should have been relentless, nerve-jangling nightmare. Yet The Invasion was determined to maintain dramatic beats similar to the previous Body Snatcher films (I suppose so it would qualify as a "remake") even though they didn't fit the changes to the narrative, thus resulting in a film that fails to generate any real suspense, surprises, or terror.

The same problem applies to the new Nightmare. In the original film, Freddy was a serial killer of children who somehow beat the criminal charges filed against him but was killed by a lynch mob of angry parents. He later gets his revenge by using nightmares to kill the children of the parents who killed him. In the remake, the pre-lynch mobbed Freddy is not a child killer but a child molester, and the teenagers he is killing were kids he molested many years earlier. This back story isn't revealed until just after the halfway point of the film, which then raises the question (at least for me) of why Freddy is killing his victims at all when he wasn't a killer before he was mobbed. Such a revelation also renders Freddy's iconic razor-fingered glove and the "Freddy's coming for you" chant rhyme meaningless within the context of the movie. Towards the end of the film Freddy himself says, "Your memories of me keep me alive", which further emphasizes the narrative contradiction of Freddy killing the only people who would remember him in the most nightmarish way.

One of the characters mentions the idea that people can fall into a coma if they are deprived of sleep for a long period of time; if that's the case, then it would have made more sense for Freddy to drive his victims into comas where he can then torment them in nightmares that will never end. Yet because this is a remake of a slasher film, Freddy has to kill his victims in ways similar to the original Freddy instead of following means and methods that would've better fit his new motives. Then again, the remake itself would have probably raised oodles of controversy of they completely changed Freddy from nightmare killer to nightmare sex criminal--the scene where Freddy tells Nancy how she was his "favorite" was nauseating enough--so one can only wonder why this change was even put in the script in the first place.

If the filmmakers behind the Nightmare remake had more freedom in exploring their interpretation of the original story, the remake might have been a more interesting and evocative horror film. Unfortunately, its desire to be both something new and something nostalgic at the same time without resolving the unavoidable contradictions make this film fizzle, with little more than its name to generate interest.

Write of the Living Dead

It's official: I'm now a published author. Centipede Press has published a large book of essays about Night of the Living Dead as part of their "Studies in the Horror Film" series of books and my essay, "Cannibalizing Consumers", is in it. You can read more about the book here.

"Cannibalizing Consumers" was originally part of a series of essays that was included in a 40th anniversary retrospective of Night of the Living Dead on the PopMatters site back in 2008, and it was picked up to be part of the book. If you are so inclined, you can read my original essay here. I'm giddy that my first shot at recognition in an academic publication happens to revolve around the genre-defining film that introduced the world to unstoppable, epidemic, undead cannibalism. Then again, this is isn't just an article publication for me: 1) It's an article published in a series of books about studying horror films, 2) it's an article largely devoted to Night of the Living Dead, and 3) it's an article where I was also able to spend some time discussing Invasion of the Body Snatchers. That's triple nerd score for me!

In case you're interested in reading more of my written works, which are nerd-devotion-thinly-disguised-as-academic-thinking, check out these articles:

• A Look at Iconic Versus: The Post-9/11 Significance of the Freddy vs. Jason and Alien vs. Predator Movies
• Pictures of Insect Men: A Retrospective Analysis of the “Mimic” Trilogy
• Man, Machine, Memory and Movies: A Critical Look at “Dark City”