I cannot remember a time when I was not a Godzilla fan. I have vivid memories from a very early age watching Godzilla movies every weekend on the local UHF stations and enjoying week-long marathons during school vacation weeks. To this day I still love these films, not only for the nostalgic aspect of them but also because they are just very creative and fun movies to watch.
In 2015, Lee Lambert released a labor-of-love book on one of the greatest Halloween mask studios of all time, Don Post Studios. The book was huge, was very well received and personally, it’s one of my all time favorite books. I started collecting masks in the mid-1980’s and though I only collected Don Post masks on occasion, I certainly collected a lot of masks by Distortions Unlimited. Lee’s follow-up book is on this very company.
To this day the debate continues. Which werewolf movie from 1981 is the superior one, John Landis’ AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON or the subject of this blog, Joe Dante’s THE HOWLING. To say that I am a fan of both is an understatement and to be honest, I do not understand why there is even a debate! They are both fantastic movies in their own right and credit must be given to all involved for bringing these films to the screen.
Growing up, I loved monsters and always thought that the various plastic model kits offered by Aurora, Monogram and Revell were very cool. Though I did have some of these growing up, and had an absolute blast building them, I just never was able to paint them. My finishing skills on these kits were severely lacking and I found myself very jealous of the results some of my friends were getting with the very same kits.
As I get older I find myself getting more nostalgic for things that I had or experienced as a child. It may be as simple as opening a new comic book, reading a book that has stayed with me or even any of the cool toys I had growing up.
When it came to toys I was very partial to the Mego toy lines with such great toys like Micronauts and the World’s Greatest Superheroes 8″ action figures. My favorite though was monsters. In fact, I would get monster toys from other lines just to incorporate them into playtime with the toys I already had.
