Half In Halves: Living Dead Dolls Viv by Mezco Toyz

This review was written to be a part of my second LDD roundup post and this content resided there for a while. Eventually, I decided that I had done enough work with this doll and that she was extreme enough in subject matter to be taken into her own post to give readers a little more agency vis-à-vis their horror tolerance. I got her between what are now going to be dolls 1 and 2 in the second roundup. I think solo posts will be my policy overall for LDDs that are more hardcore, though of course, not every solo LDD post is for the edgiest of them all. Warning for semi-real gory imagery.

This doll was not a solo release, so my means of obtaining and reviewing her are unusual. Viv was originally one half of a two-pack with the character The Great Zombini, as an exclusive set outside the series. She's my first LDD from this side of their classic output--everything else has been a series doll. Zombini is an undead magician and Viv was his lovely assistant who was alive until she participated in his act. During a "saw the lady in half" trick, Zombini employed no magic or illusions at all and used a real saw. 

LDD photo of Zombini and Viv.

I didn't care too much for the duo set (I'd also want to swap in a top hat on Zombini), nor necessarily for Viv as designed, but someone was selling her alone for $20 in an incomplete coffin that wasn't hers, and I decided to go for it. She's a wicked novelty and I find her the more interesting part of her set, and getting her that cheap was a great opportunity. Again, gory imagery warning-- for reasons you can probably guess. 

I knew from the start that this Viv copy's coffin wasn't her own, since she wasn't one of the exclusive duo characters who had an individually-boxed release. She wouldn't make any sense being sold alone, anyway. I just wasn't sure immediately which box this was. It looked like it was in bad condition, and the package arrived smelling strongly like a gasoline garage, leaving absolutely zero doubt as to where this doll had been stored. I feel horrible for her.

Gee, wonder why she was only $20...

The tissue is red, the lid has green metallic print, and the box is white that has badly yellowed on the back and the opaque lid. The back has metallic red print, signifying a relatively later release. Lots of the top finish layer has filmed and veined with age, and I'm assuming, under extreme garage temperature conditions inhospitable to preservation. It's the worst I've seen on the coffins I've gotten.

The red and green and white colors give it away easily--this box belonged to Christmas-themed exclusive character Nohell, whose packagaing was uniquely done in these colors.

LDD photo of Nohell.

I know metallic colored print on the clear lid was also done for Series 10, with red, to mark it as a milestone.

This coffin is in crappy condition and isn't worth keeping, but I decided to hold onto it for just a little bit longer--there was a photo opportunity for a certain special doll that required a coffin I could cut open and damage. And thinking of that idea drove me to search for that LDD on eBay again--offerings for her are not common and I wanted one with her box and factory hair. Wouldn't you know, I found one, and she was cheaper than the last offering I'd seen. I seized the chance. Things aligned perfectly. I got such great results with that doll, so I'm a little annoyed the roundup she's in isn't finished yet and that Viv extended the delay by ducking out of the third spot! I want to share! Early May, I promise.

If the Nohell coffin wasn't confusing enough, Viv also came with two Series 5 death certificates--variant Jezebel's and regular Vincent Vaude's. Though both show up in some form on the low end of the aftermarket, I want neither doll as they are (and dear lord, nobody wants Vincent Vaude), so these will hardly come in handy. At least I can show a divergent certificate design. S5 was the first series with a different look for the certificates, though I'm learning far fewer series had unique certificate designs than I had thought.

Here's Ms. Diesel Fumes out of the box. Poor girl.

Viv died on March 14, 1975. Zombini was undead when he killed her, having died on March 5 of the same year. Since this isn't a review of the complete duo, I'm not going over their poems this time.

Viv's hair is long, wavy, and primary red, and came tied in a ponytail. Part of why I decided to go for this listing was that seeing pictures of her hair down made her look very workable for a dramatic Gothic character instead of a sleazy modern one. Viv's hair is entirely disorderly and feels quite dry. I anticipate a fight, but I won't boil it without fully assessing the state it arrived in.

Viv is filthy a screaming doll, entirely understandably. 

The first doll with a screaming face mold was Series 3 vampire Lilith, baring her vampire fangs and staked in the heart. The screaming mold features prominent creases by the side of the nose, but also has lines on the cheeks, making this face look more haggard, and perhaps, older, than the more neutral youthful face shape of other LDDs. I had held that 9.5 out of 10 screaming dolls just weren't for me, but I'm starting to see their appeal in creating startlingly freaky dolls. There's something very unsettling about a cute doll with a shrieking face, and yet there's still something cute about them.

It strikes me that Viv has very long upper teeth, which some other screaming dolls don't. There have been several sculpt variants to this face type--Dee K. has braces, the vampires with this expression have fangs, and I believe classical ghost Eleanor has no teeth at all to make her mouth more hollow and spooky. (She's on my list for Halloween.) Tommy Knocker also appears to have very short or absent upper teeth, but that could be the sculpt Eleanor had? I should have both before the end of the year, so I could tell you then. Viv has smudging around her eyes and she's looking sharply down to her right with yellow-red-black irises, as if watching the saw and magician cutting her in half for real. Her lips are red, her tongue is purplish, and her teeth are a bit yellow. Viv herself feels cartoonish in the way I could see on a vintage theatrical painted poster for the magician act. The concentric iris rings feel like a cartoon depiction of intense shock and fear.

Viv's skin is a pale lively flesh tone that indicates she's being depicted in a state of very recent death. Of course she is--she and her duo partner (not long dead himself) are set up to stage the very moments of her murder.

Viv's costume is a sparkly sleazy magician's-assistant number. She has an open short red jacket, and a matching black tank top and bottoms. 

I noticed later that the jacket was fraying and getting holes...or possibly was eaten. It's not a wonderful fit, either.

The tank and the underwear section of the bottoms are black sparkles, and mesh tights are attached to the bottoms. The waist of the bottoms has torn away a bit at the back. Because the bottoms depict underwear shaping, Viv has no underwear paint on her body. 

My Viv has no shoes, though she would have come with red sandals, just like Calico. I'm a little frustrated by Viv's shoelessness because that might hinder my restyle plans with her, and nobody sells LDD shoes alone because why would they? I'd have to find a doll who

1.I want 

2. has shoes 

and

3. can afford to go barefoot

 to rectify this. Not an easy ask.

Viv's waist is uncovered, showing off a clean but bloody red cut above her navel that encircles her. It's similar to (distasteful) Series 5 doll Dahlia, based on murder victim Elizabeth Short, and who had molded stapled scars around her midsection reflecting the real Short's body being bisected. That was possibly LDD's most truly heinous doll, buying into a sensationalized and fully-real murder like that.

But Viv has a key difference from Dahlia, and it's not actually the visuals, though those are different. The major difference is that Viv's bisection scar is actually a seam between two pieces of plastic as well as a visual depiction of gore. Viv's greatest attraction, and the whole reason I leaped on the chance to get her alone for cheap, is her unique gimmick and doll build. Viv's body actually splits into two pieces to display the full extent of being sawed in half, fully explaining her name--it's short for vivisection.

Last warning for gore!

The pieces fit together pretty easily with a push or pull, with the tube in the torso torso popping into the socket in the tube in her legs, which fits into the torso in turn--the pieces each plug into the other in their own way.

Because LDD is ghoulish, the tube that fits into the torso also has some gory detail. The paint is red and glossy to look really gruesome, and to make the connection look less awkward and mechanical, Viv has a bit of internal anatomy sculpted onto it--intestines in front, and spine on the back.

This is wild, and I love the more macabre tactile aspect of a doll who can be taken apart like this. LDD aren't play dolls, but they still embody a sense of twisted play sometimes with their dismemberable dolls. They absolutely could have gotten away with just painting a cut around Viv's torso and let that illustrate her concept by itself, but they didn't stop there and I appreciate it.

I do think the paint might have suited Viv better with a flatter look and bright colors for her guts and spine, since her look is otherwise quite poppy and cartoony. I get, though, that the shock factor and realism of the paint is the objective, to show a cartoonish injury that's all too hideously real. Also, from a sick gore perspective, I think it would have made more sense if the big tube came down from the torso and plugged into the legs, like the internals were hanging out from from the top. I'm guessing the LDD body engineering made it more viable to have the legs plug more into the torso instead of vice-versa.

Part of me has to worry if there's something particularly unseemly about a female doll who's in an objectified profession and exists to be ripped in half, particularly since LDD is a male-headed brand. Maybe there is, but I'm engaging with her purely on the level of very ghoulish fiction, all disconnected from her gender. This is just a very unique and outrageous toy to me. And if anything, I'm at the very least grateful that it's a fictional character who has the splitting torso and that LDD did not do this for semi-biographical Dahlia. That would have been beyond the pale.

Viv's split torso pieces also do permit rotation because the plug is circular, and since the section of waist she's cut at is also a near-perfect circle, the pieces never look misaligned when she turns. That's enough for me to call it a waist joint, and that's something no other classic LDD can claim. The cut is slightly angled, so she tilts as she turns on the point. Viv is on the older swivel body scheme, though, not the ball-jointed one, meaning she and Zombini were an earlier release. Still, with this torso swivel, I think she's the most articulated Living Dead Doll pre-Series 9! That would put the progressive joint total scale at S1-8 swivel body -> Viv -> LDD Minis -> S9-35 ball-joint body -> Return LDD.

It was fun discovering she can turn on her torso cut. I knew she was built differently, but her articulation being unique as well makes her novelty feel even more special. 

Viv's stamp is located on her butt, likely on account of her unique body design.

Viv's legs sit and stand easily regardless of whether the torso is attached, but Viv's detached torso balances upright a little less steady because the disc that plugs into the waist projects beyond the edge of her upper torso, giving it a smaller surface to stand on. She's more stable like this when her arms are braced on the surface.

Viv remains the only LDD built this way, possibly as a consequence of the introduction of ball-joint bodies. These sculpts would probably need to be modified to carry the gimmick into the later brand...or perhaps this mutilation was just specific enough and existed in so few contexts that there was no reason to repurpose the mechanic. I realized that quickly enough when trying to restyle her. Resurrection Dahlia would have been an obvious place to reuse this body design, but either the ball-joint body change or decent moral standards prevented that from occurring, and I'm very glad either way. Elizabeth Short's name has been through far too much already.

Viv has palm holes, so she'd be just as equipped to hold the deadly logging saw as Zombini is.

So I decided to take the motor oil princess for a good good washing, clothes included. Her face cleaned up nicely, but her hair was a long fight until the comb stopped snagging. I gave her fabric softener too, but resigned myself to her hair being a little puffy and tangled. I just wanted it not to be a giant snarl. 

I had also ordered some alternate clothing for her to assume a more antique look, since I thought her hair down and her screaming face could make for a fun old-fashioned doll. I ordered a red Barbie skirt that looked voluminous, and tested doll clothes on Faith to see what a good brand for torsos would be. I decided Ken clothing was a good bet, and found a royal-looking vintage Ken doll coat. Viv's new outfit needed to be able to split along with her body, even if it was no longer showing off the wound.

Here's the Ken coat. It has two snaps in front and an attached ribbon belt.

The Barbie skirt turned out to be a tube with a huge satin train, not a circle, so I trimmed and folded and added a Velcro attachment so it would work as a skirt for Viv. I also had to trim the coat sleeves and hem so it'd suit her body as a jacket. I think this is a really strong look.

She's definitely more "flamboyantly mad countess" than "grand lady", but she looks like a very striking villain. I don't know why she got cut in half under this aesthetic, but she did. 

Viv's hair also cleaned up better than I expected nicely. It's dry and fluffy and snags on the comb, but it turned out far better than it had any right to, being stuck in a garage and deep-conditioned with petroleum.  This is, unbelievably, a good head of hair! Not very good or the best. My S1 Sadie still holds that honor for LDD. But it's good. 

I decided to do what I could with her suited up again as designed and gave her a proper shot on her own merits. She's borrowing Calico's shoes to be complete for this photo session. I thought I could get some really fun gravesite photos with her split body and her legs acting autonomously.

A burial theme for the photos was a fun way to subvert how deep Viv is in the ground, but also allowed me to play with her gimmick in a way that wouldn't give it away completely for the cover photo--beneficial both for mystery and to reduce her shock value for readers who aren't signing on for it.

I really liked this photo with her legs overlooking her, which was my first plan for the cover. However, the way things worked out, her legs wouldn't hit the correct angle unless Viv's torso was horizontal in the ground--there wouldn't be enough distance between legs and torso to hide the gore with the camera frame (and deceptively suggest two dolls) if Viv was upright in the earth. This staging is great, but it shows quite clearly that she's been bisected and I liked the sillier framing of the legs swinging on the tombstone (Return Sadie's turned backward). I like treating the legs like a separate character goofing around!

I suppose I could have had her less deep with the dirt covering her chest up, a bit like a blanket, so you wouldn't see the end of her torso and it wouldn't be obvious there was nothing else underground. The photo session was finished when I came up with that, though, and I'm happy with what I have. And I don't really want a cover photo where you wouldn't be able to glean this doll's novelty at all.

And here I played with two alternate burials for her severed body--one short grave to save space, or two separate graves.

So now we come to a problem. 

I came to like Viv more and more in her default look, and the real fun with her is the fact that her outfit is designed to let her split apart without touching her costume. That interacts with the doll gimmick perfectly.

However, she doesn't make any sense without Zombini or the saw that killed her, plus her costume is damaged. This still isn't totally my ideal LDD fashion aesthetic, either, and she doesn't have that plausible appeal of a doll that would have been made innocently for children before things got twisted. As a ratty solo doll, it's just not worth keeping her around as Viv the magician's assistant. There are no solo Zombinis floating around and I could just get their set complete and in better condition if I wanted the intended Viv. And I'm more here for the gimmick than the character concept, anyway.

And on the other hand, I liked where I was going with the look of the grandiose restyle, but I couldn't ignore the fact that it had nothing concrete to do with her gimmick, and the clothes entirely obscured her gimmick and got in the way of it functioning smoothly, meaning the restyle did no service to the very novelty I wanted her for. She also couldn't be completed that way without any shoes, and there are far better uses for doll money than buying an LDD to donate shoes to Viv.

So I thought very hard. The only thing to possibly do so this lonely copy of Viv wouldn't feel bereft of purpose was itself a list of tricky requirements. I had to restyle Viv in another way that

1. didn't require footwear or another character

2. allowed her to come apart and connect together cleanly while clothed, and 

3. justified and showed off her bisection. 

Two words: Shark attack. Make her a swimmer in a two-piece.

I ordered a red unofficial Barbie bathing suit, hoping the fit would be close enough to work with or modify with small fabric extensions, and put my eye on a hat I might be able to use, but decided to hold off on getting that until I had the costume squared away. I also set to trying to remove the stains her fishnets put on her legs. Nothing really happened there. There's one method I've heard of (using a certain type of acne cream and exposing it to sunlight) that I've heard might work, but I haven't tried it and don't find Viv's stains distracting enough to rush to try it. 

The bathing suit arrived, and the fit was surprisingly close. The halter neck was stitched together, so I cut it and planned to extend the straps a bit and add a velcro closure. The skirt fits worse. It's very tight in back. It doesn't include an underwear section, so Viv can't sit decently in the piece. The bathing suit set came with an inflated swim ring, which is an awesome accessory. 

Viv's waist from her severed torso can be squeezed into the swim ring, which would make a terrific horror gag about her body still floating in the tube after a shark chomped off her legs...but the ring is too small and the upper doll is too heavy to float upright in it.

I couldn't recreate this staging on actual water without maybe tying some kind of weight to the torso (somehow).

Here's the bathing suit modified. I also constructed a very sloppy pair of bottoms with my own red spotted fabric just to keep her covered when seated. The back isn't pretty, but the pieces stay on.

I later trimmed the edge of the skirt to remove the gold trim, which was making the design less poppy.

I then sought a straw hat, choosing another listing than the first I had my eye on because the seller was absent and I was itching to finish a post. I got a pack of three. The hat is a bit large, but not enough to be unusable.

I decided to paint a hat black, and grabbed the Spirit Queen shades I had put in Calico's pool of items. Cal does fine without them, but I thought they'd be more essential on Viv. Here's that result.

I really like this set for her. It feels sunny and goth at the same time with the bright color contrast. It's also a swim look that gives her an entirely different tone from Faith, the official LDD swimmer doll, and that's great.

I have to appreciate how Faith does feel specifically like a lake swimmer as she's written to be. Her murky green color and algae splotches make her feel like she's not a sunny beach gal. While some sunny beaches are on the Great Lakes, Faith doesn't feel like that. She's a forest-lake girl to me. 

I do not have access to a beach at this moment, nor any sand or reasonable bodies of water, so I had to make do with stock photos and lots of digital editing. Here's a beach postcard.

And here's a mockup of the swim-ring gag I wouldn't be able to shoot practically. I realized there was simply no way not to turn it into a parody of the legendary Jaws poster, so that's where I took it.

And this might be my favorite photo of Viv--I found a wonderful bizarre way to balance her halves on each other while disconnected, as if to suggest a disturbing physicality where her pieces move independently and bounce up and down while she walks and turns!

Here's a less-produced test of this pose just to make it a bit easier to read.

I very well might take Viv on a trip to a beach during summer to get some real photos in sand and water, though I won't be able to do sharks and blood and underwater shots, so some things were always going to be done digitally.

Viv's original outfit is in storage, stuffed in the plastic sleeve with the S5 death certificates. She doesn't have a proper box (her coffin was trashed after it served its role in [upcoming subject]'s photoshoot, so it's in general storage because there is no specific Viv storage a coffin would provide.

So that's this unique doll sorted out!

Although Viv was a sketchy, dirty item the way she was resold, I can't begrudge the seller because there wasn't anything dishonest about her listing. I don't think this copy was priced at any more than she's objectively worth, and it was clear this was not a lovely fresh doll from the pictures. 

Getting Viv in the way I did forced me to rethink the doll so she could remain in my collection as a fully-fledged solo character suitable for display, and not just a doll body with a novelty gimmick and no place on the shelf. That was equal parts frustrating and rewarding. I love the way I figured a new way to retain her so she stood on her own with a different concept and the same functionality, and I gave her more personal appeal than her original styling held for me. 

Viv is gruesome, no doubt, but there's still a clear sense of play I found in her extreme death gimmick, and she made for an extremely engaging photo subject because of her unique construction and concept. You can reasonably view her as a disturbing portrait of brutality against women...but you can also embrace a Beetlejuice-style absurdism in the gags that would come from an undead woman who exists comfortably in two parts. That's what I prefer.

Viv may be split, but I'm not: I'm very glad I went for this doll.