Four Fun Robot Toys from Mego’s Micronauts Line

In this last installment of my year-end series about cool robot toys from Japan, I've decided to look back at one of the classics: Takara’s Microman line, which was released in the U.S. in the late '70s by Mego under the name Micronauts. Micronauts was a contemporary of another line of imported Japanese robot toys, Mattel’s Shogun Warriors, and both lines even had comic book series published by Marvel. While Shogun Warriors featured Super Robots from several anime series that had pilots and combination configurations, that toy line didn’t have any pilot figures or robot figures with combination capabilities; in contrast, Micronauts provided the first examples of mech and combiner robot toys to kids in the U.S. Read on for a look at four of Micronauts’ groundbreaking toys.

Before getting into the list of noteworthy Micronauts toys, it should be noted that Takara’s Microman line was a spin-off of another innovative robot toy line, Henshin Cyborg. Henshin Cyborg figures were modeled after Hasbro’s line of 12-inch G.I. Joe action figures from the '60s and '70s, but they differed from Hasbro’s figures in two significant ways: They were made with transparent plastic so kids could see the figures’ mechanical insides, and they had magnetic joints that allowed for greater flexibility and disassembly/reassembly.

A Henshin Cyborg figure.

The Microman toy line was a miniaturized version of the Henshin Cyborg line, and the modularity of the Henshin Cyborg figures carried over to the modularity of the Microman/Micronauts vehicles, robots and playsets. Even though the Micronauts line ended during the early ’80s, Takara continued the Microman line in Japan for many more years. Some of the later Microman toys would also become part of Hasbro’s Transformers toy line. While Takara’s Microman line features plenty of great robot toys, I am only including on this list the toys that were released in U.S. under the Micronauts line.


Biotron

Biotron is an early example of a combiner mech toy. It can be “piloted” by a smaller 3 ¾-inch Micronaut figure, and it can be disassembled into a tank and a rocket sled. It also required two C batteries, which allowed Biotron to roll in tank mode and walk in robot mode.

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Microtron

Microtron is like Biotron in that it is also battery-power and can be re-arranged from a robot configuration to a vehicle configuration. Microtron’s head opens to form as seat for a Mirconaut pilot in both robot and vehicle configurations.

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Giant Acroyear

Giant Acroyear was an amazing combiner robot toy: It consisted of two humanoid robots, a missile-launching rocket plane and a missile-launching land vehicle that combined into a single large robot. Years before kids heard of Voltron, they had the Micronauts’ Giant Acroyear.

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Hornetroid

Hornetroid was one of the later releases in the Micronauts line. It was designed by Mego and not Takara, so it had no Microman counterpart. Even though it looks like a vehicle toy, Hornetroid is basically a giant flying robot that looks like an insect, complete with flapping transparent wings, six retractable legs, and figure-gripping pinchers.


For more information about the Micronauts and Microman toy lines, check out Innerspace Online and the Microman Forever site.

Imperial Items I'd Like to See in the Star Wars: Rebels Animated Series

This year's New York Comic Con (NYCC) came and went last weekend, and it had the usual geeky fanfare: panel discussions, celebrity appearances, cosplay, and previews of upcoming films, TV shows, and merchandise. From this particular NYCC event, the one event that really stood out from the others was the preview presentation of the upcoming Star Wars: Rebels, a CGI animated series that will debut in the fall of 2014 on Disney XD. The presentation was given by Lucasfilm’s Pablo Hidalgo, and it gave many tantalizing glimpses into the series that will show fans what the Star Wars universe was like during the rapid growth of the Empire after the Clone Wars and the early days of the Rebel Alliance.

Of the many details that were revealed during the presentation, one in particular caught my attention: the inclusion of vintage Star Wars toys as part of the series' vehicles and weapons. In particular, the Imperial Troop Transport, a vehicle toy that was released by Kenner as part of their toy line in the late 70s, will be used by the Imperial characters in Rebels.

The original Imperial Troop Transporter toy by Kenner ... 

... and the Imperial Troop Transporter that will be seen in Star Wars: Rebels.

With that in mind--and the fact that toy companies love to reissue old toys to save on production costs--Rebels could bring back many previous toy designs into official Star Wars canon. Read on to see some additional Imperial vehicles and Stromtroopers that could be returned to the spotlight through Rebels.

Mini-Rigs

Shortly after the release of Empire Strikes Back in 1980, Kenner began releasing smaller vehicle toys for its action figures called "Mini-Rigs". None of these vehicles appear in any of the Star Wars movies, but their smaller size and cheaper price made them ideal products for Kenner to squeeze a few more dollars out of the Star Wars license.

Of course, some Mini-Rig designs were better than others. The two that I would like to see in Rebels are the CAP-2 Captivator, which looks like a vehicle than can be used for both space combat and repairs, and the INT-4 Interceptor, a scout craft with retractable wings that looks like a legless AT-ST and was designed to fit inside of Kenner's AT-AT toy.

The INT-4 Interceptor.

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The Imperial Outpost Playset

Kenner's line of Star Wars toys began to wind down during the mid-80s, but it wasn't ready to let go of such profitable series just yet. It put together a binder of conceptual ideas to keep the toy line running through 1985 and 1986, although none of the toys suggested in the binder made it to production. One of the toy ideas is conceptual artwork for an Imperial Outpost Playset. It looks like a modified version of the Imperial shield generator base in Return of the Jedi, and I think it would be great if this idea could be dusted off for use in Rebels.

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The TIE Defender

Galoob was one of the toy companies that picked up the Star Wars license during the 90s, and it is largely remembered for producing miniatures of many Star Wars vehicles as part of its Micro Machines line. Most of the Micro Machines vehicles were from the first three Star Wars movies, although a handful were from Star Wars novels and video games. A replica of the TIE Defender, which first appeared in the Star Wars: TIE Fighter video game, was released in the Micro Machines Action Fleet line, a line of vehicle toys that were bigger than the regular Micro Machines toys and came with tiny figures that could fit inside the vehicle. Even though the Extended Universe stories place the first appearance of the TIE Defender just before the events in Return of the Jedi, it would be nice to see this or some other alternate design appear alongside standard TIE Fighters in the Rebels series.

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Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and its sequel were two video games that took place in the same era as Rebels. While it hasn't been confirmed as of yet if Force Unleashed is still part of Star Wars canon and if any of its characters and events will be involved in Rebels, it would be a shame to let the alternate Stormtrooper and Imperial Guard designs created for the games go to waste--especially since these designs have already been released as action figures and could be re-released with Rebels packaging. The designs include an EVO Trooper, Jump Trooper, Incinerator Trooper, and Shadow Guard.

My Five Favorite Open World Environments in Video Games

Video games have come a long, long way from when they first appeared for the general public back in the 70s. Not only have they become more complex in terms of graphics and game play, but they also transitioned from a 2D to 3D format with varying degrees of depth. I enjoy many of the classic 2D games from the 80s and games from the 90s onward that have 3D graphics, but I'm particularly fascinated with games that provide open worlds (a.k.a. "sandboxes") that allow players to explore large and unique locations as part of and/or in between game missions. Even if a game is mediocre or doesn't hold my interest, I'm content to be a virtual tourist if it provides me with an engrossing open environment to visit.

Here's a list of five open worlds that kept me entertained for hours with their expansive scope, unique features, and varied opportunities for interaction. These aren't the immersive virtual realities that the sci-fi genre keeps promising us, but they're great examples of what digital entertainment can provide to gamers when game developers are given the support to create incredible worlds of their own. Read on for my list of noteworthy virtual environments.

5. Location: Gotham City
Game: Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes (2012)

Traveller's Tales' Lego Batman 2 is the first Lego game that features an open world that players can explore as part of the game's missions. (From what I've heard, Lego City Undercover for the Wii U features an even larger open world, but I haven't played it yet.) Even though it is the first of its kind, this version of Gotham City is an amazing thing to behold

The Lego-ized Gotham City is spread across three islands with connecting bridges and waterways. Players can explore the city by driving through the streets in a motor vehicle; speeding through the waterways in a boat; flying over the skyline in either an aerial vehicle or as a flight-capable character; or entering a subway station to go to another island. Even after I finished playing the game's missions and defeated the various DC super villains who invaded Gotham to wreak havoc, I was still impressed with just looking at the city from various perspectives and visiting its many sites. (Click here to read my complete Lego Batman 2 review.)

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4. Location: Springfield
Game: The Simpsons: Hit and Run (2003)

I haven't watched The Simpsons on a regular basis for well over a decade, but I was a die-hard fan for its initial seasons during the 90s. (True story: In college, I wrote a term paper about The Simpsons that earned me a free trip to an academic conference in New Orleans.) Thus, it only felt natural to pick up a copy of The Simpsons: Hit and Run, a game which allows players to freely roam the Simpsons' home town of Springfield.

Hit and Run is mostly a racing game, and each level is self-contained in a way that a race track is self-contained; in other words, players can drive anywhere within a level while they are in it, but they can never drive outside of the level and into a new location. Regardless, each level is designed after a particular Springfield neighborhood (the suburbs, the town square, the business district, and the harbor area) and each neighborhood features popular locations from the TV show (Kwik-E-Mart, Moe's Tavern, Springfield City Hall, Springfield Elementary School, etc.). The arrangement of Springfield into three-dimensional environments--a pretty sweet accomplishment for a 2D cartoon--was a treat for Simpsons fans, even for those who don't enjoy racing games (like me, for instance). Never before or since has a game made the experience of driving a pink Plymouth sedan to the local convenience store and back feel so rewarding.

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3. Location: Miami
Game: Scarface: The World is Yours (2006)

I'm not a fan of gangster-based entertainment but when I heard that the cast and crew from the 1983 Scarface movie were involved in the creation of the official video game--including Al Pacino's selection of a sound-alike voice actor to assume the role Tony Montana--I knew I had to play Scarface: The World is Yours at least once. I'm glad I did, because the Scarface game put together a fantastic recreation of an early-80s Miami.

An open environment is essential to the largely non-linear structure of Scarface. Since the game tasks players with rebuilding Montana's drug empire, the Miami that was created for the game had to allow players to do things that a notorious drug lord would do to make money and build influence (e.g., sell cocaine, buy real estate, launder money, bribe cops, massacre rival gangs, etc.). Nevertheless, speeding around the computer-generated Miami of Scarface, either in a car or a motorboat, proves a lot of fun by itself. There are many locations to visit, the weather patterns change, and the sun rises and sets as you play through the game. It's a virtual gangster's paradise.

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2. Location: Bullworth Township
Game: Bully: Scholarship Edition (2008)

Bully: Scholarship Edition has plenty going for it--a witty script, a large cast of characters, and engaging game play--but it wouldn't be half as interesting without the interactive environment of Bullworth, the township in which the game takes place. As players progress through the game, different neighborhoods within Bullworth are unlocked and each has its own features, personality, and missions. Players can move through the town in various ways (by foot, bicycle, skateboard or bus), and the setting alternates between day and night according to the game's own system of time.

As with Scarface: The World is Yours, an open world environment serves the non-linear game play style of Bully. Yet because players assume the perspective of an adolescent while playing the game, the gradual exploration of Bullworth and its neighborhoods will remind older gamers of what it was like to be a kid and to visit new places for the first time as a part of growing up. Sure, Bully allows players to indulge in all sorts of hilarious juvenile hijinks, but the opportunity to ride a bike through the streets of a small town at dusk brought back a lot of childhood memories for yours truly. (Click here to read my complete Bully: Scholarship Edition review.)

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1. Location: Kawawii Island
Game: Go Vacation! (2011)

The way I see it, Namco Bandai's Go Vacation! is Wii's other premier resort game, with the original being Wii Sports Resort. Wii Sports Resort was designed to demonstrate the enhanced capabilities of the Wii's MotionPlus feature and it did so against the backdrop of a tropical resort called "Wuhu Island". For as impressive as its MotionPlus sports games were, Wii Sports Resort didn't allow players to freely meander around Wuhu Island on their own. Even when Wuhu Island appeared again in Wii Fit Plus, players could only see different areas of the island by playing a fitness game (e.g., jogging, biking, etc.) that used the island as a background setting.

In contrast, Kawawii Island in Go Vacation! features four different resorts on a single island: a beach resort, a ski resort, a mountain resort, and a city resort. Each resort has its own selection of sports games of varying levels of quality; however, the real stars of the game are the resorts themselves. Each resort is well designed and allows players to freely move through them to find hidden secrets, explore different attractions, and enjoy the scenery. As with any real resort, each Kawawii Island resort even has a visitor center--complete with Muzak playing over the center's loudspeakers--where you can "talk" to staff about extra resort features. As virtual tourism efforts go, you can't do much better than Go Vacation!.

A Look Back at Four Fantastic Giant Robot Games for the SNES

As a long-time fan of giant robot stuff like the Robotech anime series and the Zoids toy line, I'm frequently drawn like a bee to honey to giant robot video games. By "giant robot video games", I'm not talking about any of the Transformers games (where sentient robots fight other sentient robots) or games such as the Super Robot Wars series (where the robots are just pieces that players move around on the board as part of a strategy game). No, I'm talking about games that allow you to control robots that are piloted by people, something along the lines of a Japanese "real robot" anime series. For games of this variety, some of the best were made for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) back in the 1990s. Click below for a list of four SNES games that allowed players to assume control of a big 'bot and lay waste to various digital landscapes and pummel the bejesus out of other robots.

Title: Cybernator
Release Date: 1993
Publisher: Konami

Even though the American title of this game sounds like some kind of low-budget, straight-to-video Terminator rip-off, Cybernator is actually a game that closely adheres to the logic of real robot anime series such as Mobile Suit Gundam and Armored Trooper Votoms. The original Japanese title is Assault Suits Valken and it is the second in a series of Assault Suits games that were released on a number of different game consoles, from the Sega Genesis and the SNES to the PlayStation 2, although only two of the games were released in the US.

An Assault Suits Valken model kit.

Cybernator is a combination of a 2D platformer and a "shoot 'em up" game. Players assume control of a "Federation Assault Suit", a humanoid robot that is armed with various weapons and has jets that allow for limited flight capabilities. The missions in the game take place in both space and land environments, and the mission objectives vary from level to level. Even though most of the enemy's forces consist of robots like yours, you will also encounter tiny human soldiers that shoot at you--soldiers that you can vaporize with your robot's weapons.

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Title: Mazinger Z
Release Date: 1993
Publisher: Bandai

As the title explicitly indicates, Mazinger Z is a video game tie-in to the popular Mazinger Z anime series. This is also the only title on this list that falls into the "super robot" genre of anime, and the only title on this list that was exclusively released in Japan. The game is very faithful to the anime series, with cut scenes featuring the anime's characters and levels populated by enemy robots pulled from many of the anime's episodes.

Mazinger Z is a side-scrolling "beat 'em up" game, much like other licensed tie-in video games from that era. What makes Mazinger Z worthy of inclusion on this list is that it gives players access to many of the titular robot's weapons, including its signature "Rocket Punches". If you're a child of the 70s who waxes nostalgic for the Shogun Warriors toy line, Mazinger Z is the video game for you. Also be sure to check out the Mazinger Z arcade game, which offers a hefty additional helping of super robot mayhem.

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Title: MechWarrior 3050
Release Date: 1995
Publisher: Activision

MechWarrior 3050 is based on BattleTech, a popular sci-fi role-playing game that revolves around giant robot wars. Two licensed BattleTech games were made for SNES: MechWarrior in 1993 and later MechWarrior 3050. The first MechWarrior game approached giant robot combat from a first-person perspective, but the technological limitations of the SNES, no matter how innovative they were at the time, made the game feel like a tank simulator with a few extra features. It also didn't help that the depiction of giant robot combat in BattleTech games is very clunky and ponderous, as opposed to the sleek, fast-paced action seen in most giant robot animes--never mind the fact that a few of BattleTech's robot designs are pulled directly from various anime series.

MechWarrior 3050 switched the game play into an isometric, third person format, and it's much better off for it. Sure, the robots are still rigid and clunky, but they're easier to control and you can watch them blast enemy bases and robots to smithereens. Bliss!

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Title: Metal Warriors
Release Date: 1995
Publisher: Konami

Metal Warriors is very similar to Cybernator in terms of game play, but there are a few significant differences that make Metal Warriors the better game. During the many of the missions, players have to leave their robot armor to access control panels that open key doors or deactivate security measures. (When outside of their robots, the pilots somewhat resemble the tiny pilot figures that came with the Zoids robot kits and the early pre-Transformers Diaclone toys.) Metal Warriors also includes up to six different kinds of robots--each with their own strengths and weaknesses--for players to control, some of which players can switch to during the course of a mission. Leaving the controls of your robot also opens the opportunity for an enemy soldier to steal your robot and use it against you, another challenge that I haven't seen before in other giant robot games.

Metal Warriors' inventory of combat robots.

Of course, Metal Warriors has a lot more going for it than just a selection of playable robot types and robot-less mission challenges. The environments include destructible floors, ceilings and walls that allow you to make your own entrances and exits; the missions vary widely in terms of complexity and objective; and the animated cut scenes will give fans flashbacks to their favorite robot anime series. Indeed, even though it is a 2D platform game, Metal Warriors features the kinds of missions that should have appeared in the Robotech: Battlecry game but unfortunately did not.

The SNES titles listed here can still be found for sale on eBay, for purchase as virtual console games for one of the current home gaming systems, or for download as SNES emulator ROM files.

Three Wii Horror Games That Were Never Released

With the official release of the Nintendo Wii U console just a few days away, I thought I would take the time to look back at three promising horror titles for the Wii that never made it to the store shelves. Mind you, I'm not talking about horror games that were released for the Wii overseas but not in the U.S. (although there are a few of those, such as Japan's Night of the Sacrifice), nor am I talking about horror games that were released for the PS3 and Xbox 360 and not the Wii. No, these are games that spent plenty of time in production and development but for whatever reason were not released--ever. Click below to read more about these unseen Wii games (listed in alphabetical order), games that may still have a chance on the Wii U.

Title: The Grinder

Developer: High Voltage Software

Plot: The Grinder takes place in an alternate world where vampires, werewolves and zombies are very real problems for humans. Players can choose to play one of four monster hunters--Hector, Doc, Miko and AJ--who are hired by a secretive organization called Book to exterminate hordes of these monsters and to discover their origins.

Background: From what I know about this game, The Grinder looks and feels like what Hunter: The Reckoning would have been like if it had been designed as a first-person shooter. And what a first-person shooter The Grinder would be: Players would spend level after level gunning down rows of gargoyle-like vampires, hulking werewolves, and hard-to-kill zombies. The game is also supposed to feature a "dual wield" option for the weapons, as well as online cooperative play that could accommodate up to four players simultaneously. See the videos below for the teaser ad and a game play preview.

Wii U Release?: There's no word on whether The Grinder will appear on the Wii U. The last I read about it, this game was put on IGN's "Games in Danger" list back in 2011 and I couldn't find anything else about this game since that article was posted. Still, with plans to broaden its player base by porting this game over to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles as a top-down, third person shooter--while still remaining a first-person shooter for Nintendo--I'm hoping that The Grinder will have some kind of afterlife through the Wii U. Click here to see IGN's page about The Grinder.

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Title: Last Flight

Developer: Bloober Team

Plot: Last Flight takes place on a gigantic passenger airplane during its maiden flight. A mysterious virus spreads through the plane that turns many of the passengers into vampires. Players can either play as Larry, a portly American food critic, or Anna, a Romanian vampire, to fight off the new army of bloodsuckers and find a solution that can stop the virus before the plane lands.

Background: Even though its fate has yet to be decided, I'm still excited about Last Flight. It features some very bloody hack and slash action, and it puts the survival horror format into a very confined and claustrophobic environment: an airplane. The plot device of a passenger airplane that carries a virulent pathogen has been used before in movies like Flight of the Living Dead (2007) and Quarantine 2 (2011), but Last Flight would be the first video game that I know of to exploit such a premise to challenge and scare gamers. Furthermore, the game was intended to be released as an ongoing WiiWare title with new episodes released every few months, thus bringing serialized storytelling to horror gaming. See the videos below for the teaser ad and a game play preview.

Wii U Release?: News about Last Flight has been circulating since 2008, so I would like to believe that at least the first episode of this game is ready and waiting for release. However, I have no idea if it will be released for the Wii U or if it is, if it will need to be updated to add features for the Wii U's touch screen controller. Click here to see IGN's page about Last Flight.

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Title:Winter

Developer: n-Space

Plot: Winter puts gamers in the role of Mia, a young woman who awakens within a wrecked ambulance and cannot remember anything about herself or the events leading up to the wreckage. The town she finds herself in is experiencing an unusually powerful snowstorm, which is causing the temperature to drop to dangerous, frostbite-inducing levels. As players keep Mia alive and search for clues regarding her past, they encounter strange creatures that seem connected to the snowstorm ... and to Mia herself.

Background: It's hard to read about Winter and not compare it to another Wii title, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Nevertheless, the development team behind Winter wanted to emphasize the "survival" aspect of survival horror within their game, and that's a creative goal that I'm willing to support. It also helps that the pictures I've seen so far of the game's creatures are as intriguing as they are disturbing, so I'm itching to find out what they have to do with a temperature-plunging snowstorm that never seems to end. See the video below for a game play preview.

Wii U Release?: Of the games listed in this post, I think that Winter has the greatest likelihood to make it to the Wii U. Gamers have shown their interest through a few fan petitions, and a representative from n-Space had this to say in an interview that was posted on the Nintendo Everything site last August: "There's an intense amount of love among the team for the game. And the more we've seen the survival horror genre switch its focus from surviving to reloading, the more we feel the market is hungry for a game like Winter. So what's the bottom line? The bad news is that we haven't yet found the right opportunity. The good news is that Winter is just like any good horror movie monster. It's not dead." Click here to see IGN's page about Winter.

VHS Rental Memories: The Good, The Bad, and The Schlocky

This morning, I saw in the newspaper an article that discusses how the future of movie distribution largely belongs to the digital, on-demand format and how this shift in distribution will change how people select and view movies. This isn't the first article I've read about this subject, and it won't be the last. In fact, I'm a big fan of any distribution service that allows me to watch films that I want to see (regardless of the films' lacking popularity) when it best suits my busy schedule.

Because I grew up in a time when you had to wait for movies to show at your local theater or search for older and obscure movies on late-night TV broadcasts, I can't help but to think that something is lost in the process of making movies available at the touch of a button. If you're a fan of horror movies like I am, then you know that it's not just the films that keep the fandom going; it's also the stuff that surrounds the movies that give them their appeal and stoke the imaginations of both veteran and virgin viewers alike. I'm talking about stuff like books, toys, model kits, comic books, bubblegum cards and video games, as well as the places where these items are found--libraries, newsstands, toy stores, book stores, and hobby shops. These things not only satiated my interest in the films that were currently playing in theaters and the monsters that populated those films, but they also provoked my curiosity of other films and monsters that I never heard of before.

I've posted before about the books I've read as a kid that introduced me to the weird and wonderful world of movie monsters (see here and here). This post is devoted to another kind of fantastic place where I learned about many obscure horror movies: local video stores. In a previous post, I waxed nostalgic about VHS cover art; in this post, I'll talk about the unique horrors that VHS rental stores exposed to my fragile young mind, horrors that I didn't completely understand until I reached adulthood and decided to give them a second look. Read on...

To be fair, renting a movie title online is much easier than going to a location outside of your home to find and retrieve a title. Yet I believe that there's something to be said about devoting spaces and places to particular kinds of media exhibition. In the case of video stores, much of the cover art displayed there made a lasting impression on me, as well as on other horror fans; how digital distribution can replace that kind of experience remains unknown. (Then again, perhaps it never will.)

When the video rental stores first opened, my adolescent brain did not comprehend that some of the smaller video companies were trying to break into the rental market by purchasing the distribution rights of obscure, low-budget movies--both domestic and foreign--and making them available to mom-and-pop video places through low-priced package deals. (For smaller, stand-alone rental stores, these package deals made sense: It was a quick and easy way to fill shelf space without having to rely on more expensive mainstream titles.) As the result of this practice, I wound up discovering all sorts of titles that I never heard of before--and might not have heard of by any other means. Of the new horror titles I discovered via VHS rental stores, I've divided them into four categories: No-Budget Filmmakers, Oldies But Not Goodies, Eurotrash, and Giallo. See the sections below for more details about each category.

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No-Budget Filmmakers

It's impossible to be a horror movie fan and not know who Roger Corman is. Not only has he helmed his own share of well-known horror movies, but he also launched the careers of many other filmmakers. On the other hand, if you weren't lucky enough to have your career launched by Corman, then you could always try to be like Corman by directing and/or producing a series of cheapjack horror films.

Of course, VHS rental stores carried plenty of offerings from the Corman-esque Troma Entertainment, which has since gone on to become its own brand name thanks to the exposure it got in the 80s and 90s through the video rental industry and showings on late-night cable television. No, the Corman wannabes that I'm talking about are of a more obscure variety--in my case, our stores featured flicks by Bill Rebane, Earl Owensby and Fred Olen Ray.

Bill Rebane is largely known for The Giant Spider Invasion, the big bug dud where he tried to disguise Volkswagen Beetles as huge arachnids to keep his budget small. We didn't have that title, though--instead, we had Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake, his no-budget Creature From the Black Lagoon rip-off.

Earl Owensby is an exploitation flick producer/actor who is known in some circles as "the redneck Roger Corman" and "Dixie DeMille". Even though his biggest claim to fame was his involvement with James Cameron's The Abyss (Owensby owned the abandoned nuclear plant where Cameron shot his film), his own cinematic output is not nearly as impressive. (Then again, Owensby tried his hand at 3D filmmaking a few years before Cameron did, so he has that.) Our stores carried Owensby's A Day of Judgment and Wolfman.

Fred Olen Ray did loads of low-budget horror and sci-fi during the 80s and 90s, and it has been said that his films rarely cost more than $500,000 to produce. Of his work, we had Alien Dead, Alienator, Deep Space, and Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers.

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Oldies But Not Goodies

Given the number of older horror films that read about before the VHS rental business started, I was hoping that the new trend would allow me to see more classic horror movies--movies that I regarded at that time as that were release before 1970. The way I saw it, why bother renting out films older than that if they weren't any good?

Unfortunately, our local stores only carried a handful horror and sci-fi classics, including The Fly, Forbidden Planet, War of the Worlds, and Night of the Living Dead. Yet what we lacked in older classic movies, we made up for in older crappy movies: Castle of Evil (1966), Equinox (released theatrically in 1970, but originally shot in 1967), The Flesh Eaters (1964), The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackal (1969) and The Time Travelers (1964). These films have their own quirky appeal, but it was a disappointment at the time if you preferred to see work by folks such as Val Lewton, Ray Harryhausen, Jack Arnold and Christopher Lee instead.

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Eurotrash

There were a ton of cheap, trashy American-made horror films from the 70s and 80s available at our video stores, but I had no idea at the time that we also had quite a few cheap, trashy European-made horror films as well, such as these fine gems:

Charles Band should be on this list as a Roger Corman wannabe but like Troma, he was able to use the VHS rental business to successfully hype his own movie production studio, Full Moon Features (a company that he's still hyping to this very day). No, Band's placement on this list really belongs in the Eurotrash category because without Band's other video company, Wizard Video, made it possible for American audiences to see films by the grand maestro of Eurotrash himself, Jesús "Jess" Franco, with this selection of titles:

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Giallo

Of the categories listed here, Giallo is an actual subcategory of horror. Even though Giallo films existed long before the American subgenre of slasher films, everyone in the 80s was too busy watching the exploits of Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Michael Meyers and their countless imitators to pay much attention to the Giallo titles that made it to American video rental stores.

I didn't discover the joys of Giallo until I was in college, but it turned out that our video stores had quite a few Giallo titles in stock. Come to think of it, between the Eurotrash and Giallo titles, the horror section in one of our local video stores might as well have been labeled as the foreign film section as well. They even had Dario Argento's classic Deep Red, although it was under the title Deep Red Hatchet Murders and it had a cover that was incomprehensible to anyone who hadn't seen the film.

There were other Giallo titles on our video store shelves (mostly from Band's Wizard Video), some of which you can see below. Many of these films are currently available on DVD under their original release titles.