Emce Toys and Diamond Select have again teamed up to bring back Mego style toys. the amazing recreations of Star Trek and Planet of the Apes comes a new Universal Monsters series starting off with Frankenstein and the Wolf Man.

The sculpts and design are a big improvement on the original figures, without making them look too perfect.

The toys should be available in August.

For a look at the original figures visit: Gallery of Monster Toys

Happy 68th Birthday H.R. Giger.  The Swiss surrealist artist is probably best known for his design work on Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) but has also done album covers for Debbie Harry, Danzig, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer.  His artwork used as a poster for the Dead Kennedys’ album Frankenchrist caused quite a stir and arrest & trial for Jello Biafra.

Giger has decades of stunningly original artwork and design in his portfolio.

George Romero is easily the creator of the modern horror genre.  With Night of the Living Dead, he brought visceral horror and gore to theatre screens.  He also paved the way for indie film making.  NOTLD was made by a goup of friends on a miniscule budget.  By the time Romero came out with the Living Dead sequel, Dawn of the Dead, dozens of other gore auteurs had made their mark.  Names like Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter, and many others owe a great debt to Mr. Romero.

My personal favorite George Romero flick!

Tippi Hedren is 79 today.  She starred in two of Alfred Hitchcock’s best films; The Birds and Marnie.  Hedren was famous for being an object of obsession for for Hitchcock and along with Kim Novak and Grace Kelly embodied his ideal icy blonde.

Tippi’s daughter Melanie Griffith was named after her character in The Birds, Melanie Daniels.

Amazing poster.  The pulp novel artwork is antithetical to the film, but who wouldn’t want to see it after glimpsing this poster?

Although she appeared in films in six decades, starting in the silent era, Elsa Lanchester will always be remembered for a few brief minutes at the end of James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein, as the “Creature’s Mate”.

Happy Birthday to the creator of the last great American Horror film, The Evil Dead, and thank you for bringing Bruce Campbell into the world!

Who?

Una O’Connor was a minor Irish character actress that was made immortal as hysterical comic relief in two classic James Whale Universal monster films; The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

Happy Birthday Catherine Deneuve.

She is not only one of the most beautiful women in the world, she created two of the most memorable women in horror movie history; the sexually repressed psychotic Carole Ledoux in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and Miriam Blaylock, the icy lesbian vampire in Tony Scott’s The Hunger.

I think she was in some other movies, wrote some books, had famous parents…but her legacy will be that metal bikini!

Happy Birthday Tom Conway…no not Tim Conway.  Tom Conway was a leading man in the Falcon film series, did voice work for Disney starred in three Val Lewton horror masterpieces and even played Sherlock Holmes on the radio.

He was born in 1904 and died in 1967.  His face and voice will be more familiar than his name to most genre fans.  He appeared in Voodoo Woman (1957), The She-Creature (1956),  Bride of the Gorilla (1951), but is best remembered for his rouge-ish characters in Val Lewton’s Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and The Seventh Victim (1943).