In the past million years, McFarlane Toys has released but four sets of toys dedicated entirely to the reinterpretations of classic monsters. The visionaries at McFarlane's art studios, whom I suspect were required to have been severely abused as children as a prerequisite for the job, had once taken our classic movie monsters and tweaked them into darker versions of themselves. Years later, they took innocent classic childrens' literature, the Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, tore off all of its skin, bit off its nipples and replaced them with flamethrowers which billowed the unquenchable pyroclasm of Hell itself.

Next came McFarlane's 'Faces of Madness', in which we were given a sometimes subtle, sometimes horrific envisioning of history's classic monsters and serial killers, such as Elizabeth Bathory in a bathtub chock full o' blood, and an amazingly classy Billy the Kid. And then... then McFarlane had to go and sodomize every classic fairy tale that they could seduce into their creepy, black, windowless van with promises of candy and puppies. Maybe they're on to something here, though. We're all pretty aware by now that the versions of fairy tales that we know and love have been sanitized by the omnipresent filter of time, and their original incarnations were a lot darker, had a lot more blood and sex, and were issued as far sterner moralistic tales than what they exist as today. There was a time, long ago, when it was perfectly acceptable to frighten kids into insomnia with tales of Satan and fiery retribution.

My own grandmother has kept true to that long-dead tradition by convincing me at a very young age that if I left things on the floor, they'd spontaneously combust, attracting robbers to the scene like moths, who would subsequently steal anything that did not burn. She's also convinced my niece, through a series of miscommunications and uncareful warnings, that Batman lives around the corner and likes to steal and kill little girls like her. Some traditions never get old. Like euthanasia.

I KID!

So, welcome y'all to the Twisted Fairy Tales, grotesque, sexy, and completely ridiculous, just as they were meant to be. Mostly.

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