Another week, another five days of hot Halloween action on X-E. In case you missed it, this is the last day to get your entries in for the Whatever-O'-Lantern contest. I said that all entries had to be in by noon, but since a few of you asked for extensions, let's say by 8 PM. Though I do wonder if anyone's seriously going to take off from work or school to carve a pumpkin face into a crenshaw melon.

I promised that this week's run of Countdown entries would provide a more sinister slant, and these toys are nothing if not sinister. I don't know if they're quite "new" and I can't be bothered to check, but whether they've been around for a year or just a few weeks, they're worth your wallets all the same. From Mezco, it's the Screen Grabs horror collection!

Mezco is among the handful of "mature toy" companies that have really kept the spirit of scary movie franchises alive, even when there's a draught of, you know, actual scary movies. In particular, the big time slasher characters have been invigorated and reinvigorated time and time again, with more figures, dolls, wall hangings and doodads than I could ever hope to cover. While Mezco couldn't be considered the leader of this awful initiative, their stuff is often more inspired than the rest. These things are some of the cases-in-point.

The Screen Grabs series has a simple and awesome premise. Mezco created neat dioramas based on what could be considered the most famous screengrabs (as in, still photos swiped from DVDs) from a volley of slasher flicks. The boxes sometimes name the incorrect movie in each series to match up with the diorama, and the settings aren't always 100% faithful to the movies they're based on, but let's forgive 'em for these few minor offenses. I'd prefer to save my nitpicks for when I'm reviewing something more important and life-altering, like, say, Franken Berry Fruit By The Foot.

I picked up all three of the currently available Screen Grabs, so I guess future editions are contingent upon all of you buying these. First up is this swank Texas Chainsaw Massacre diorama, and yes, I realize that it's technically incorrect not to separate "Chainsaw" into two words. I can't help it; they belong together.

Based on the classic "mallet smack" scene staged from inside the cannibalistic Sawyer family's rather interesting abode, here we have Leatherface nailing Jerry across the head with a big meat mallet. If this was a totally faithful recreation, Jerry's shirt would have a disco hula theme.

Of particular interest is the recreation of the wall leading into Leatherface's zen room, covered with a bunch of weird bones and shit. That red wall fascinated the fuck out of me in the old movie. It's one thing to wear skin masks and eat people, but it's another to nail cow and chicken bones all over the wall. As the sole item in my collection featuring an action figure getting bonked in the head with a giant mallet, this one's a keeper.

But Leatherface wasn't the only slasher to see a second of his life rendered in chemical-stinking plastic...

From A Nightmare of Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, this diorama celebrates the scene where Freddy morphs into a green snake and tries to eat Patricia Arquette. Not a sentence that I'll have the chance to type many times in my life.

There were many diorama-worthy scenes in Dream Warriors, and while I don't know if this would be the one I would've picked, I guess I can understand Mezco's enthusiasm for recreating the scene where Freddy turned into a big green dick. Actually, during filming, the snake was originally painted in Freddy's usual fleshy tones, which the crew found so phallic that they repainted it green as a precaution. End result? Green snake, but not without some level of subconscious Freudian symbolism going on.

Only thing that's a little off about this diorama is Ms. Arquette. I understand her figure's need to look a bit jostled, being eaten by a snake and all, but I still think it lacks the innate cuteness of the character. The face is kinda ugly and Linda Blairish. I would've settled for a less interesting diorama scene if it meant getting a cuter Patricia Arquette figure. Like, maybe the scene where she eats coffee beans and builds Freddy's house out of popsicle sticks. God I love Dream Warriors.

I much prefer Jason over Freddy and Leatherface, but this Friday the 13th diorama is probably my least favorite. For one, the overall shape is a little clunky when compared to the other two, which could work as bookends assuming you need to organize excessively lightweight reading material. For two, the scale is off. Alice's canoe seems more like a large boot, and Jason seems like a fully-grown Mongoloid adult in terms of his size relationship to Alice. For three, I hate any toys that try to capture water in mid-splash. I don't know why.

Plastic recreations of Jason in his youthful lake zombie form tend to be less than faithful, for no sculptor and no painter can resist the temptation to make him "more than he was." In truth, he just looked like a bumpy-headed bald kid with lake mud all over him, but the toys that correspond to this usually grey his skin and "overdo" him. On the other hand, this is the only diorama in the Screen Grabs collection with two points of articulation. The others just have one, but here, both Jason and Alice's right arms can be repositioned. If you work at it, you can even make them hold hands. But then you wouldn't be paying homage to the first Friday the 13th movie, but rather, the fanfic I wrote in high school.

This is as good a time as any to link back to my Many Faces of Jason article.

Companies like Mezco are really doing us a great service, whether you're into dumb toys, dumb horror movies, or ideally, both. Buying toys that were meant for people your age takes a little of the edge off, and really, no company that even remotely caters to youthful audiences could get away with stuff so bloody and depraved. Thumbs up on these, despite Patricia Arquette looking like ass.