According to this article, Godzilla made a licensed appearance in an audio drama spin-off of the Idol Defense Force Hummingbird OVA series.

Color me surprised: Dracula’s Daughter was created as a result of Universal getting the license to adapt Dracula’s Guest.

As many of you all know, King Kong Lives was the sequel to the 1970′s remake of King Kong. But you probably didn’t know that it inspired two Japanese video games: King Kong 2: Ikari no Megaton Punch and King Kong 2: Yomigaeru Densetsu. That movie would’ve been so much more tolerable if it had Kong battle giant robots and blobs like he did in King Kong 2: Ikari no Megaton Punch.

Speaking of King Kong, the old “Kongfrontation” ride once had a crossover of sorts with Darkman and the now-defunct “King Kong Encounter” ride will be replaced with a new Kong ride in 2010.

While we’re on the topic of amusement attractions based on horror movies, the UK-based “Alien War” attraction (based on the Alien franchise and once featured a cameo by a Predator) has since been rethemed as “Alien Wars.” The use of xenomorphs has been dropped in favor of a generic “extraterrestrial attack” theme, presumably in order to save money on licensing fees.

Here’s a shocker: the movie A*P*E was originally advertised as The New King Kong in America, in a presumably desperate attempt to sucker people eager to see the then-current Kong remake into seeing the shoddy Korean rip-off. Unsurprisingly, RKO sued and the title had to be changed. I’d love to know how the hell they thought they could have gotten away with that. As a special bonus, here’s an older version of that Wikpedia entry where they link to a picture of the original poster.

If this is to be believed, William Peter Blatty once said that he considered The Ninth Configuration to be the true sequel to The Exorcist.

Wow, Universal’s Creature from the Black Lagoon musical attraction sounds awful. The article has plenty of spoilers, although I can’t see how one could “spoil” that piece of crap.

This claims that one of the entries in the Bloody Murder series is set at the same camp as the other two films, but doesn’t mention Trevor Moorehouse or any of the killings from the other films. That’s almost as surprising as how the filmmakers weren’t sued over their blatant Jason Voorhees rip-off.

Mystery on Monster Island is advertised as being based on a Jules Verne novel. What they don’t tell you is that the novel in question didn’t have any monsters in it!

Finally, check out this article on the great and noble profession of grave digging.

Even Wikipedia isn’t the most accurate source of information in the world, I still find myself browsing through when I’m bored and need to kill a little time online. I checked the information found in the links below using other resources and can guarantee that they’re all true.

Even though I’m not a fan of the Saw franchise, I’m fascinated by the licensing decisions surrounding it. Not only does the soundtrack for the European version of Saw III has a Dethklok song in it, but there are also an amusement park ride and video game based on the series.

Speaking of odd choices for video games, it turns out that there was a Plan 9 from Outer Space computer game! What’s even weirder is that the game is about recovering the film’s reels (stolen by Bela Lugosi’s double) rather than it being a playable adaptation of the game.

I find it odd that, despite J. J. Abrams’ claim of coming up with the idea for Cloverfield out of a desire to create an American monster, there’s a (currently) Japan-only manga prequel.

You might know John Agar from movies like The Brain from Planet Arous or Tarantula, but I bet you didn’t know that he started a theme park called “Land of Kong” that featured a forty foot tall King Kong statue Sadly, the park (which had since changed its name to “Dinosaur World”) closed in 2005. As noted on in these blogs, the massive King Kong statue’s blinking red eyes and roaring sound effects (along with the now-outdated dinosaur statues) couldn’t compete with the thrill-rides and realistic animatronic effects that can be found in modern theme parks.

It’s a rare treat to get some insight the creation of the horror movie posters of yesteryear. The late Tom Chantrell, who designed the posters for Star Wars and many Hammer horror films, apparently only used a basic plot description and a few publicity stills (along with pictures of himself and others posing) in order to create his masterpieces.

Japan’s first giant monster movie might have been a lost 1938 film called King Kong Appears in Edo. I say “might have” because there are some allegations that the film is a hoax and it’s been theorized that the film was actually called King Kong and the “Appears in Edo” was merely the tagline. You can find an alleged publicity picture here.

When I first read that Viras (and other monsters from the Gamera franchise) had an animated cameo on the children’s television series Franklin, I was convinced it was just a joke. Then I saw a screenshot…

Speaking of giant monsters, I was surprised to learn that the 1977 novelization of The Creature from the Black Lagoon changed the Gill-man into a thirty ton, hermaphroditic monster.

Finally, Poltergay. I honestly don’t know what else to say about this.