I will always take the opportunity to recommend HORROR EXPRESS the Best Cushing & Lee partnering committed to celluloid, and it's not even a Hammer film - it's a Spanish (Paella?) Pan-Euro Horror that's basically Steampunk 'The Thing' on a train before they invented Steampunk.

My mate Vern thought he'd spotted that The Devil Rides Out's devil was actually Christopher Lee in a dual role, turns out it isn't but it IS his regular stunt double, and one can't help feeling that was a deliberate bit of playfulness on Hammer's part (and, boy, did they both look similar around the eyes!)!

Main thing I've learned about painting clear is a) use water-based acrylic because it's easy to mess up, and b) work "thick and quick" gradually layering up has never worked that well for me, I always get naff patchiness when I try that way, the best results I've ever gotten (e.g. My MP Grimlock's sword) are pretty generous relatively even single coats, even to the point of letting some excess drip off.
For a more vivid effect I recommend on the outside, with the part removed if possible.

 

I remember passing on that CW Smokescreen when it was at B&M, and then immediately deciding I wanted one the moment it had gone from the shelves. Ah well, it worked out fine in the end.

Both pretty hawt.

 

It's Halloween and Rebecca ferret is in a very bitey mood, blood has already been drawn so any trick or treaters that can't read the sign that politely says "We don't do Halloween" had better watch out  

Got a small package with some diecast guns for Marvel Legends figures, here's Frank testing them,
Punisher #2 by Brendan Mitchell, on Flickr
Punisher #1 by Brendan Mitchell, on Flickr

Not 100% decided whether one of them is a bit big but the Punisher has inevitably been drawn with oversized guns over the years so not a problem. The same ebay seller (gpslot) has a few other combos of diecast weapons and at just over £12 shipped they're pretty decent value.

 

Good Halloween movies? The Monster Squad is great and definitely all ages too.

Written by Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, Iron Man 3, Last Action Hero etc...). One of my favourite childhood movies I somehow forgot for the best part of 20 years. One of the best onscreen Draculas too.

 

Not seen that one. I thought I might have a bit of a search ahead but the full thing is on YouTube. The Thing is one of my all time favourite movies, but I won’t expect the mad practical effect magic of that film.

 

That is a an interesting bit of movie trivia to add to my arsenal!

Horror Express is good fun indeed.

 

To be honest the effects aren't bad for the time. Possible my all-time favourite vintage creature design.

 

One of the best things that happens with Transformers these days is when characters from dispirate iterations of the franchise are integrated into G1. Inevitably most of these end up as Decepticons, like Lugnut, Lockdown or today's featured presentation: Barricade. Now that Siege has made it clear that no mould is safe from being redeco'd to buggery and back, the breakout villain from the 2007 movie has finally ended up in the principle cast... as a bad-guy Prowl. Well, obviously.

But that's not what we're looking at today. Why get Siege Barricade when I just got Smokescreen? And for that matter, when The Last Knight Bazza is still sitting on the shelf as an already-immigrated Decepticon mook standing alongside a couple of Constructicons and a Soundwave? See, much as the new Siege version is quite the looker, the same can be said for this one, plus he's that bit more unique.

Barricade was a creation of necessity, and thank god it finally happened. The 2007 movie needed a normal-sized bot to function as a single antagonist for the first act, and the traditional line-up of Decepticons just doesn't have anything like it. Big hulking jetformers, sure. Sneaky turn-into-a-tiny-thing spy types, certainly. But no-one that could pass for an everyday vehicle in an American town and not turn any heads, as well as not being significantly above or below Bumblebee's pay grade. In the same way that Lugnut was created so that the Animated cast would have someone not willing to stab Megatron in the back, and Knock-Out so that injured Decepticons in Prime would have someone to fix them up, Barricade was a necessary creation.

And long may it continue. Every Transformers franchise needs a Barricade. He fills a niche that was largely empty since 1984. Sure, the Stunticons were the original Decepticon cars, but they worked as a team, and never had a whole lot of presence as individuals, other than a Who's-Who of insensitive portrayals of mental illness. Not that Barricade sits as a paragon of sensitivity these days either. Quite the thing for the otherwise ultra-conservative Michael Bay to have a portrayal of police brutality so brazenly up there. Back in the 1980s Prowl was reminding kids that cops could were trustworthy goodies, while in the 2000s Barricade taught a generation the exact opposite.

While he is officially part of the Bayverse line, TLK Barricade manages to blend in remarkably well among CHUG bots. By the time the fifth movie had rolled around the jaggedy scrap-metal look of the early movies was mostly a thing of the past, and only a couple of the Autobots were still clinging to that look. The only non-G1 part of Barricade's design is the head sculpt, and even that's not all that far off, having apparently arrived via Beast Wars. Everything else is about as traditional as it comes, especially the car bonnet chest. And kudos needs to be given for the achievement of having it not protrude half a mile from the rest of the torso like an overstuffed F-cup. Turns out all it took was a joint further downstream. Who'dathunk.

If you're boring and stick with the official instructions Barricade is surprisingly well armed, with a pistol, nightstick and knuckle dusters. The police-themed weaponry is a nice touch, even if it is a little over the top. Being part of an armed force rather than a peacekeeper, there's not much need for him to ever not be using the gun. Still, it gets even better when the car roof is remove from his back and used as a riot shield. Yeah, it's utterly daft, but it gives a far more unique look for Barricade than he'd otherwise have. Oh, there's a weird Gatling gun thing to wrap around his wrist if you like, but it looks dumb and makes you dumb for liking it. You big dummy.

And then you transform him, and he's a police car. Just a police car. I mean, you can slap the gatling thing on the roof, but it looks even dumber here, and spoils the fact that he otherwise has a pretty good disguise. Why would you want to take that away from him? He's never going to track down Ladiesman217 if everyone spots him from a mile away. Most of the Bayverse toys put alt mode design ahead of robot mode, which is a refreshing choice, even if it comes from having to appease the car manufacturer sponsors that fed money into Michael Bay's gaping green maw. So it's pretty great to have a good-looking car mode and a robot that doesn't suffer as a result. The original Barricade toy's car mode is still a hell of a looker, but the robot an ugly great troll of a thing, unable to even turn its head.

So good for Barricade for having made it. A proper good bad guy, and someone the Decepticons have been sorely in need of for ages. Now give me my Earthrise Tarantulus.

 

That's a really good point about a lot of the newer characters being Decepticons; Blackout is another good example.

I guess Bulkhead is one for the Autobots, even if he just sometimes feels like Ironhide, Hound and Roadbuster fell in a blender. Thankfully Animated made him a trans warp genius and an artist, it's a shame that didnt carry over. I guess Drift is the other one but other than a sword I cant see a huge connection with the movie character and the comic guy. Animated Prowl is a world away from regular Prowl, I wonder if they made Animated now if himself or Jazz would be more closely modelled on Drift? With the movies and comics, I'd say probably!

More than ever though I guess there's a lot of media that the hardcore G1 crowd aren't that aware of. I've not watched Combiner Wars, Cyberverse or Rescue Bots, so where I was going to say characters like Windblade and Nautica are new and popular they haven't really gone multimedia, they probably have and I'm just massively out of touch. Okay boomer. Just ignore me.

 

Tried to do a more splattery Energon stain but it didn't really work. Need to have another go.

Bulkhead is a definite one, but he has a heritage that can be traced from Rhinox in Beast Wars, but while Rhinox appeared slow but was actually the smartest one on the team, Bulkhead was just slow. Drift definitely suffered in the transposition thanks to Bay and his cronies taking the lazy option of making him the most Japanesey thing that has ever Japanesed, with the revolting samurai cliche which sadly was copied by RID.

You should watch Cyberverse. I mean, it's great anyway, and is a good way to see characters from different iterations of TFs integrated together. Lugnut and Lockdown are in it (albeit Lugnut's now female and called Clobber) Drift is there (but hasn't really done anything of note) but ironically Barricade has yet to make an appearance. And in a massive in-joke for dorks like us, Bumblebee, Hot Rod and Cheetor all hang out together as a trio of kid-appeal characters from down the ages.

 

Is it worth trying to do RID first? I got through all of Prime and mostly enjoyed the finale, especially Batman of the Future/ modern Lion-O voicing Bee, but could not get into RID. Only heard bad things about Combiner Wars.

 

Just finished it. Yeah that was a good time. The monster was pretty cool. It took a little bit but I remembered watching it at my Grandparents when I was but a little Skyguy. The brain wrinkles were the apt reminder. Definitely a fun one

 

Nah. RID is a bit of a mess to be honest. There are one or two good bits, but it doesn't really know what it's supposed to be. The problem is that while Prime was generally pretty great and still has a passionate fanbase even today, it pitched itself a little too high and a lot of the people watching and loving the show were already at the older edge of the toy-buying demographic. So RID wanted to pitch down to younger kids to shift more toys, which is the exact opposite of the way these things normally go (e.g. Armada -> Energon -> Cybertron's evolving toy complexity as the audience grew older with it). And as a show the format is very conservative, a procedural monster-of-the-week for most of the first season. I'd like to see the later seasons with the Starscream arc and stuff, but they're not on Netflix because... of gremlins or something. I dunno.

Anyway Cyberverse is a full reboot. You don't need to have watched anything to enjoy it.

As for Combiner Wars, it's a stinking heap of horseshit. I still can't get past the first couple of episodes. It fundamentally misunderstands how to tell a Transformers story from the very first shot. That's an achievement in itself.

 

Haha, that was my impression of CW too.

 

I think it's about done. Obviously being quite small there's no real horizon, which is why I need to get a backdrop of some kind. The pva glue worked fine, to the point where I reckon that the spray glue is just watered down pva anyway.

So if you've become sick of seeing that damn building in all my photos, good news! You'll be sick of this soon enough.

 

Just a thought, but if you can get hold od the SDCC exclusive Fort Max, he both comes with the Master Sword, but more importantly, does this:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...BMAB6BAgAEAI&usg=AOvVaw1JbDKjXgSmUdVUfQnsGNn6

Personally painted just the outside and went with Vallejo paints; Orange Fire on the cockpit 'glass' and Stonewall Grey for the nosecone parts. Then a satin coat over the whole thing followed by a couple of coats of Tamiya Clear specifically over the orange, to give it a bit of a sheen and make it 'glassier'. Hope that helps a bit!

 

Yeah, I love that touch of old school Bad Science from that era is real in a fiction set in it (which in his otherwise sterling commentary Kim Newman guffaws at a bit unfairly I feel), that's why it reads as Steampunk to me, well, besides being an SF Horror on a train with a bit of a passing nod to your locked room murder mysteries. Plus, as Newman sez, it's the platonic ideal of what you want to think Cushing & Lee were like as mates, there's a strong note of their affection for each other that carries through their characters relationship after their first antagonistic encounter.
'Quatermass and The Pit' is another corker of the vintage variety, best of the Hammer TV-to-Film Quatermass films, Andrew Keir is light years away from Brian Donlevy's drunken shouty Quatermass,

LANCERWATCH 2019 continues, much like Brexit her arrival date continues to shift further into the future! From the ID FB comments & replies Post-Hasbro meeting apparently she is listed as arrived at Hasbro UK but has not made it onto this weeks deliveries so "hopefully next week", hopefully that means next week she will have actually arrived and it won't just be her arrival getting re-listed as "next week" again! Cross all the fings, Orthia Limb Requirers!!!

 

I'll see your Black Phillip, and raise you this abomination!

 

Well we can’t really blame them for that. It’s an effective way of them discovering the memory stealing. Heck even a lot of modern movies use the long debunked “Humans only use ten percent of their brain and the other ninety is a mystery.”

The Wife freaked out as soon as I put Netflix on and she saw The Grudge 2. I may have to find happy things too distract her so I don’t have too sleep with the light on.

 

Hell yeah!! Barricade is awesome. And his toy is great too. Even better with toyhax and some paint. I even like the gattling gun. But I'm a dummy. All i wish was he came with his face instead of his battle mask that he never even used.

Our Halloween movie is the original Ghostbusters. Because screw you horror movies.

Got cross hairs finished too. He looks immense! Pics tomorrow. Maybe.