Living Dead Dolls Roundup 7

Welcome to the last standard LDD Roundup for a little bit. LDD content is not slowing down a bit on the blog, but this review format will be on pause in October, replaced by a Living Dead Dolloween extravaganza instead, where I will examine pieces of the Halloween-themed releases in the brand across the original era--smaller roundups per post, but a great number of dolls in total! The next time you'd be seeing an assorted roundup of three again will be November, and no plans at all for who would be included. I also have a couple of solo reviews besides. But enough about those--let's look at now and the September trio of cadavers that entered my morgue.

Who's the Deadest of them All?: Evangeline

Living Dead Dolls Series 13, just like Series 6 and 7 before it, leverages its series number as the direction for its concept. Series 6 was 666, the Number of the Beast, featuring six dolls and a beast companion for each. Series 7 was the Seven Deadly Sins. And Series 13 is naturally all about bad luck--and its iconic superstitions. Each of the dolls in the series has been cursed or damned by an action or phenomenon reviled in superstition. There's Morgana, a girl who opened umbrellas inside. Jacob walked under a ladder. Simone met her end after encountering a black cat. Iris has the evil eye.

And then there's Evangeline, who broke a mirror.

This doll has always been notable and interesting because she's really scary and has a unique face sculpt, and I've become increasingly interested in her, even mentioning her and my interest when discussing Catty Noir, a Monster High character with a superstition motif combining thirteens, a black cat, and broken mirrors. This September, I found Evangeline within a price range that appealed to me and she worked sufficiently well to balance the aesthetic variety of the trio I was building. With a Halloweeny doll and a gothic red/black bloody doll, Evangeline's separate antique-terror look worked well enough to stand apart from the other two. Her listing showed her cling wrap and lids were removed, but I couldn't tell if the doll was complete or loose. Scrutinizing the pictures very carefully indicated that she was still wired into her coffin around her ankles, so I went ahead. That almost certainly indicated her certificate, accessory, and extra would all be present.

I wasn't itching to get her much earlier than now, and she always skirted off my wishlist during my first LDD obsession in my teens. I was generally averse to the more hardcore-scary dolls then, but what's always put me off about Evangeline specifically is her bizarrely stodgy vibe. She's dressed conservatively, like a middle-aged old-time schoolteacher and her name sounds so old-fashioned...and I don't know if that makes much sense for somebody cursed by a mirror. Mirror-gazing is typically associated with vanity, so I'd kind of expect the character to look like a beauty queen or a classic fancy dolly who lost it all when the mirror broke. I'd expect her to look younger, more glamorous or more "wannabe". Perhaps she resented her drabness and broke the mirror in frustration at what she saw, cursing herself into something far worse for her ingratitude? It's not clear. But at the end of the day, I can't deny that head sculpt, and she makes for an awesome surreal pseudo-antique dolly. I always love the LDDs that could pass for real old toys who took a serious trip down the bizarre and nightmarish.

My copy of Evangeline was indeed complete and wired-in but unwrapped. Her box looked a little worn and the lid was yellowed. The coffin design is basic black, and the tissue is a strange purplish grey dark color that I think must be the same as Captain Bonney's.

The chipboards feature the five dolls leaning in with photo portraits, and the design must be the same for each. 

Unlike the previous series which leveraged the series number as the concept, Series 13's number is not also the total of dolls within. That would be quite excessive! Series 13 just has the standard five dolls. If I were to add a bonus character to the series, I think it would be a girl named Friday, born on a Friday the 13th. It's a possible custom idea for some other time.

The huge series logo which fuses the number 13 and the LDD alchemical sulfur symbol clearly debuted in the brand here, but it got a lot more mileage later as the logo for the LDD 13th anniversary on all doll boxes released that year, as well as featuring in a black emblem painted on the backs of those dolls' necks. I've reviewed one such 13th-year doll in Menard. 

The LDD 13th anniversary logo as seen on the back of a box from those year's releases.

The major difference with the later symbol is that a "th" is nested into the 3 shape in the 13th anniversary logos to denote that it is indeed an anniversary. I'd said previously that I would find the logo to be cleaner without the "th", but understood that LDD wouldn't want the symbol to be confused as a denotation of Series 13. Clearly, I didn't realize how correct I was, because that's exactly what happened--the logo did denote Series 13 previously!

Evangeline's chipboard poem says the following:

Shards of a broken mirror

Left Evangeline a disgrace

Seven years of bad luck

Is written all over her face

And a tweak.

A shattered vengeful mirror

Left Evangeline disgraced

A curse of seven years or more

Was etched into her face

As with death dates, it's inconsistent whether a doll's name is thematic or not. I don't think "Evangeline" has any significance to this doll's concept, though I like the choice. I will point out that LDD missed the opportunity to make her name a palindrome that can mirror itself--even something as simple as Anna or Ada would be a subtle way to push the mirror theme further. For a next-level palindrome name, "Aviva" physically forms a symmetrical image when spelled in all caps and could fold perfectly on itself when printed on paper, but it only works in caps and the name wouldn't suit this doll.

"Evangeline" can mean "good news", and, while that likely wasn't being considered, it is rather ironic for a doll full of bad luck.

Evangeline's death certificate reveals she died on December 21, 1937. She visually matches that date to me. 

This date was the premiere of the foundational animated Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which prominently features a magic mirror whose pronouncements of the fairest spur the jealous Evil Queen in her treachery against Snow White herself. While the mirror-breaking superstition is disconnected from Snow White, I'd have been very surprised not to see it referenced with this doll all the same, given that the fairy tale and Disney film are the most famous story involving a supernatural mirror.

The poem continues this reference and says:

"Mirror mirror on the wall

How much bad luck can you install?"

"Seven years of terror you will befall

On this broken face of a doll."

The Disney Snow White quote is famously misremembered--in the film, the Evil Queen actually says "Magic mirror on the wall...". In pop culture at large, though, the quote is firmly "Mirror, mirror". 

The grammar in this poem doesn't work. Try this:

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall

How much ill will I befall?"

"Seven years as cracks will scrawl

Across the face of lonely dolls."

Here she is unboxed. This doll looks dusty. I don't know what happened, but she needs a wash, clothes and all.

Her hair is short and a goldish brown and doesn't fall below the neck. It's parted to her right, with the front of her hair tied off out of her face in a ponytail which is anchored to the hair behind it. This tie is accented with a black-and-white gingham bow.

The hair is messy, but entirely ungelled. This is soft and should tidy nicely with a wash and comb.

The rooting isn't the thickest, but it's okay. The hairstyle is a little drab and unflattering the way it's done, but it does match the rest of her look, which isn't going for bright colors or youthful glam. I can also appreciate the hair being out of the way, because that face can hit even harder!

Evangeline's head is a unique one-off sculpt made just for her, and is one of the rare ball-joint-era face sculpts for an LDD original character that's exclusive to a single doll. Most LDD one-off sculpts or abandoned sculpts (such as the original hook hand, Grace of the Grave's head and arms, Viv's body, Dahlia's torso and her and Misery's head sculpt, and Captain Bonney's peg leg) were early swivel-doll entries that never got modified for the ball-joint doll system, and a couple of abandoned sculpts' concepts just got replaced with new alternatives, like the hook hand or the stitched lips. It's a bit rare for a body sculpt that originated during the ball-joint era to be a one-off, licensed character-specific LDD Presents dolls excepted. (It's also rare for a swivel-era abandoned sculpt to be revived late on, but Uncle Fester for LDD Presents modified the Gluttony sculpts for the ball-joint system and the standard neck size, so anything can happen!)

As a freaky interpretation of the curse a shattered mirror bestows, Evangeline herself has been shattered with cracks and chunks of her face being absent, as if she were broken ceramic or composition. This makes her feel very literal as a creepy doll, resembling a damaged antique! The most bizarre thing is the way the surface below her skin within those empty chunks is painted metallic silver, as if the mirror is replacing her, embedded in her, or has entered forever within as a reminder of her curse. Only the missing-fragment gaps are sculpted dimensionally--the black cracks are purely painted-on and the actual surface is smooth. If I wiped the doll's face paint off, the only texture would be the "holes" in her face. I think that makes sense. Cracks can be undetectable by touch but visible to the eye, and I think it makes Evangeline's shattering feel more supernatural, as if the cracks just manifested in a split second, rather than clearly being done by an impact or physical force (where the cracked surface of her face would be more likely to have physically shifted and created ridges). While the silver mirror idea in the holes could be considered unconvincing, I actually appreciate that the silver parts aren't so overtly reflective and surreal that Evangeline can't work as a generic haunted cracked doll. It also makes her a lot easier to photograph cleanly. If those sections were actual mirrors, it could create visual distractions.

It's impressive to me how the silver paint doesn't seem to have crept onto the inner "walls" of the gaps. It's only on the back wall of each depression, making the cracked "surface" look very clean and defined as a layer.

The cracks go around her face, and even onto her neck, where one of the missing chunks is!

That neck indent is so impressive to me, considering it's so subtle and awkwardly placed for sculpting and painting. It really pulls it all together for me. The painted cracks do not go onto the very back of her head and neck, but they wrap around far enough to look thorough and proper.

While an upcoming Halloween review doll taught me that the screaming Living Dead Dolls use a modular tooth system where the head mold is always the same but the upper teeth sculpts are separate pieces swapped out for the given design, this is obviously not the case for this doll, who clearly has a whole other screaming head. I believe Evangeline and Dee K. in Series 14 are the only two LDDs with the screaming face template but entirely separate head molds--Evangeline for her shattered effect, and Dee K. to depict a blocky-toothed mouth with braces that a tooth swap on the normal screaming head couldn't pull off. Every other screaming doll has the same base head mold but the teeth are separate and popped in with different styles. Evangeline's teeth are clearly a separate piece popped in as well, but I'd believe that was just for the purposes of casting her in a mold or making the teeth a clean separate color--good reasons for the modular system of any of the other screaming dolls as well. LDD couldn't have expected to reuse this face with other teeth--and they never did.

Series 13 debuted another new face sculpt with Iris, who has a dimensional scar shaped like a pentacle surrounding her evil eye. Iris's head sculpt was on track to also be a one-off until shockingly late into the classic era of LDD, when Larmes de Sang used it in Series 33 for the second and so-far final time. It's possible the piece had to be re-sculpted or the mold had to be rebuilt so maybe the two heads are not technically the same mold, but they're certainly the same design. Of the two, I definitely find Iris more interesting, and if I want that sculpt, she's my pick.

Evangeline's face paint is good, too. 

Her eyebrows match her hair and are in an angry shape, and are made of parallel vertical strokes for more of a realistic artistic rendering that feels like an older doll. They're pretty faint and it's hard to see them from a distance, making her face look more scared than angry. Her eyes look like black sockets with blue irises, which are done in bands of color that lend them a strikingly dimensional glassy effect when viewed from afar--they really look like inset glass doll eyes from a distance. The eyes have reddish airbrushing around them. Her right eyebrow isn't fully linear in shape, which could be an error, and the crack in the middle of it isn't painted fully solid black. Not big issues to me. What bothers me more is a flaw in her right eye where the black is broken up by a reddish shape that's not supposed to be there. I'll black that out. Her mouth looks very stylistically flat in a way that can aid her old dolly appearance. She has dark red lips and a pink tongue with red veins as well as yellowed teeth defined with black lines. Her skintone is pale flesh-colored but with a slightly yellowish cast that could work to read her as a composition doll. I totally buy her as an antique that got broken.

Around her neck, Evangeline is wearing a black shawl with a frilly trimmed edge, and it is very dusty. I guess maybe the piece is technically a capelet, since it's more complex than a shawl, but that term sounds too glitzy for Evangeline's fashion sense. 

The piece sits wide around her shoulders and has a flat black bow on the front, and is defined by parallel rows of white stitching above the ruffle. It covers her neck (such a shame to hide the most high-finesse detail!) and is secured in the front with a black plastic snap. The piece evidently gave her chin some small black dye stains. Here it is off.

The rest of Evangeline's main outfit is sewn as one piece, but made to look like a conservative white blouse with a checkered buttoned skirt.

The blouse has a shirt collar and a simulated button panel, but no simulated buttons, and the shoulders are narrow and simple, but the sleeves end in a gathered frill cuff that covers a lot of her hands. Around her waist, she has a velvet accent that looks like a black up-pointed belt or a fancy trim for the waist of her skirt. With the costume being sewn together, it's hard to tell which it represents. The skirt is not the same pattern as the bow, being a grid of mixed black and grey squares betwen white dividing lines. It's not quite a classic check or a gingham or a plaid. The cut covers her ankles, while the skirt is sewn to look like a folded paneled piece with a line of black simulated buttons down the front. The hips have more velvet trim to suggest pockets, but these are not openings to any pockets or pseudo-pocket holes in her skirt. That's a bit unusual for LDD. Usually, the pockets are open or dimensional in some way even if they're not fully real. Evangeline's skirt and dress have a lot of aging stains which were not designed by LDD. That's actual old shelf-doll dirt, and while there's an authenticity to that, it's not intended and it's a little musty, so I'm washing her clothes.

Here's the back of her outfit.

She's wearing the basic black Mary Janes with simple white socks. I'm again unsurprised to see her wobbling inside her shoes.

Evangeline's body features no cracks or mirror chunk breaks. All of her detail is in her head, which is understandable and acceptable but maybe a tad disappointing. 

I'd honestly believe Evangeline is so modest and unglamorous because LDD wanted to cover her up and excuse themselves from the effort of more new molds or further paint detail!

Evangeline uses the evil-skull hand mirror previously sported by Vanity in Series 7. The piece looks like a sharp-toothed skull maw around the glass, and the handle is a cartoon bone. It's a vinyl piece with a panel glued in the back, likely because the decal couldn't be applied from the front with the shape of the frame. As such, the decal was applied on the panel and it was then glued into the mirror from behind. It's painted with an aged grey-washed look.

The mirror sticker isn't the best for reflecting images, but it looks right, and the cracked design printed on is correct. 

Here's an example of the distortion the mirror has. The image is very bent and it doesn't directly reflect whatever's right in front of it. You have to move it around a lot to find the position where the image is recognizable.

Vanity's mirror had a different image--a collage of human women's faces cobbled together, as if Vanity is so in denial that she has rejected her real face and replaced the glass with an image she wants to see when she looks in the mirror, but which is distorted to anybody else.

Close-up of a photo from a bygone eBay listing.

I think it would have been better if this image used collaged LDD faces..but LDD isn't known for classically pretty or sweet dolls. It's possible fashion doll faces were used in the creation of the image in this mirror, but the lower half looks like a photo of a human.

I think the mirror looking so spooky and malicious suits a doll focused on the superstition curse much more than it suited Vanity, though it works there as a symbol of her doom being her obsession with her looks.

The piece is a little bent.

 This is unfortunately a piece with a peg connection in her palm, so she has no way of possibly looking into it. Were the piece modified and Evangeline given a gripping hand (which debuted just the previous series), she could hold the mirror to face her and reflect in it.

Both of her hands are pierced, so she can use either one to hold the mirror. It just can't face her.

The last piece of the doll is more enigmatic to one who'd buy the doll blind of context. It's a piece of cast metal.

Fortunately for buyers, Mezco threw in a leaflet to explain what this is, written in verse. Series 13 has a collect-them all gimmick where you assemble a charm to ward off bad luck such as the kinds that plagued the dolls...or perhaps it's to protect you from the accumulated bad luck within the set of five--if you have 'em all, you really need a talisman to ward off their collected doom energy! The charm is shaped like the sulfur symbol. The paper explains that each doll has one of the pieces (each character is assigned a specific one so there's no random chance) and tells you how it's assembled. The piece can then be strung onto a cord or thin chain to serve as a pendant on a necklace (though I'm sure it could also be a bag charm or dangle anywhere else you'd like to keep it). It looks like the piece is designed so the center column locks the pieces that slide over in one orientation and spaces them apart vertically so the pieces are in the right spot and can't rotate, and the top and bottom screw together to keep it in one piece. 

It looks like Evangeline's designated piece of this charm is the shorter, higher of the two "lines" on the sulfur symbol. It's a little ambiguous which of the two it is compared to the diagram, but the sides don't look as far away from the hole as the longer piece on the diagram.

I'm glad this instruction sheet is there, because I can imagine the purpose of the pieces to be confusing without context, and their assembly could be a bit puzzling too. It strikes me very belatedly that Series 23 has no such instruction about the table leg pieces and their application to turn a cardboard LDD coffin lid into a tea table. I was lucky enough to know about the gimmick ahead of time, but as a blind buyer, I'd really have no idea what the plastic peg in one of the dolls was for, and even if I got all four together and realized this was some deliberate thing, I doubt I'd figure out where they were meant to clip and why. LDD really ought to have printed a slip for those dolls to explain that. 

This Series 13 charm assembly is not exactly the perfect compelling argument to collect them all for me, because the piece is neat, but I can do without Morgana (who, very hot take for LDD fans, I find rather uninteresting and flavorless within her goth aesthetic, and her dress looks cheaply made), and Simone and Jacob are cute but a little basic. I only feel confident I want Iris out of this series next because of her head sculpt and her retro-sixties city look. She just badly needs some boots instead of the Mary Janes she has no business wearing.

Evangeline tidied up nicely. Her shirt didn't fully whiten, but it's a lot cleaner, and her shawl looks pristine. After washing and combing, her hair is gloriously silky and smooth, and I was beyond jubilant to confirm that she has none of those dreaded frazzled ends that so many older LDD heads of hair are blighted with. She may not have much hair and it doesn't make her glamorous, but the texture is far better than most LDDs I've encountered. It's possible her hair held up well because it's so short, but my S1 Sadie's hair is also pristine and smooth while being long. I'm honestly shocked that for a yellow-boxed dusty doll, Evangeline's hair is so in order.

I also added a tiny dab of black paint to fill in the flaw in her right eye.

Evangeline works well with Bloody Mary. Both are especially frightening screaming dolls associated with mirrors.

Vanity would complete the list of LDDs with mirror accessories, but I don't particularly like Vanity. The Evil Queen doll in the Scary Tales line has no mirror, nor does Snow White paired with her. I think a mirror could have helped out the bafflingly simple Evil Queen, but she'd need a wall mirror per the classic rhyme. The Evil Queen could be a fun doll to customize with her strange mouth-covering hooded cape (you could build a Resurrection Thump fan design with her!), but the doll rightfully doesn't fetch a whole lot on the aftermarket.

Part of me wonders if Evangeline would have no fear of Bloody Mary given her curse and mirror affinity...but another part of me wonders if Bloody Mary could be channeled through the mirrors in Evangeline's skin!

"Bloody Mary Bloody Mary-"
"No! What are you doing?!?! AAARRRRRRGHHHH-"

Evangeline works well with my beloved Agatha in the cracked-doll club, but she's obviously the winner. Or..."winner". Maybe this comparison could have given bitter old Boston Tea Party Agatha some perspective--had she known a doll as severely shattered as Evangeline, and one far younger than her, existed, maybe she wouldn't feel so hard on her own damage. 

Or maybe Agatha feels so bitter about herself because she's just a horrible doll.

Evangeline is definitely in the club of the scariest dolls you could ever find in an old cupboard and joins the club of "most haunted" and "antique turned bizarre" aesthetics that I cherish in the LDD output.

I messed around with filters on the earlier photo of her neck detail.

Then I got out my mirror shards I first prepared for Mary's sake and started putting together portraits. First, I just laid fragments onto a backdrop for her.

I had wanted to see if there was some funky way I could arrange other mirrors to reflect her face back into the shards behind her so you'd see her face looking out of the mirrors behind her in any way, but if that would be possible, it wouldn't be with the means I have. I did find success fragmenting and reflecting her with mirrors at angles around her, losing the real doll in a crowd of reflections.

I then put her against a wall with mirrors and frames and shards around her feet for a scary domestic portrait.

I tried a few more reflections by assembling larger and smaller mirrors to make more reflections.

I was able to create a small infinity effect to duplicate Evangeline behind herself in a creepy way. Both images of her here are reflections while the doll is behind the camera.

And I was able to line her up with her own reflection in a small mirror to create a triple image flipping back and forth. I liked the idea of Evangeline in the foreground being out of view, while the third layer shows her full face in a smaller segment. Since I couldn't avoid being in the picture, I put on a glove and black costume cape to lean into my presence as an ominous giant figure.

This has the fun gag of the background reflection revealing the full face of the figure in the foreground, but showing more of the doll in the foreground made a cleaner composition, at the expense of the distant reflection being the only clear image of her.

And lastly, some black-and-white face portraits using lights to get her embedded mirror shards as reflective as possible.

Overall, I quite like Evangeline. She's not endearing; she's scary--but that's the appeal. She looks better in person than in the LDD archive photo (Series 13's pictures had weird lighting that greyed out the dolls, including making Iris look actually grey-skinned) and I'm pretty pleased with the doll in person. The shattered face sculpt and the paint job for the mirror chunks and cracks is stellar. I'm impressed with the intricacy of the paint and sculpting in conjunction. I generally like her face paint, even though she has some flaws, including one I had to cover up in her eye. It's disappointing that her mirror can't face her and her shoes are too loose, but I'm so so pleasantly surprised by her hair in person. It's glossy and tangle-free, and I've been starved for a really nice hair experience in this brand since they've been so infrequent. I will acknowledge that the preponderance of older dolls in my review history has likely skewed things toward worse hair overall, but Sadie stands against that notion, as the foundational origin doll and oldest brand release has lovely hair. 

Evangeline's style is reserved and frumpy and I still don't totally see why this was the direction...but it doesn't really matter. She achieves her look successfully and it certainly suits a vintage antique theme that matches her cracked face to emulate a classic haunted doll in a neglected attic. I love that she works on both levels as a broken old toy as well as a victim of a superstition curse, and her interpretation of the bad luck in breaking a mirror is imaginative, terrifying, and extravagant. Evangeline owns a sculpt that's hers only, and in a way, I'm not surprised it was never reused. 

How could LDD have possibly done anything better with it than this?

These Are Probably the Worst Shows in Paris: Madame La Mort

After getting Maitre des Morts, this doll couldn't be put off for a single further roundup. I'd wanted her even before getting Carotte, and the Moulin Morgue vibe was infecting me and making me eager to get her in. I only started seriously wanting her during this second era of LDD obsession, as the Maitre was the only one on my wishlist in my first era as a non-buying teenager, but I think I was always able to appreciate her.

Read my previous Series 33 reviews here and here. 

This doll is perhaps a little undefined within the Series 32 cabaret context. Best I can tell, she's the hostess and likely also the proprietor of the Moulin Morgue establishment, and the theatrical concept of the series combined with some of her details makes her out as a loose homage to Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Stephen Sondheim's popular thriller musical. As such, I don't know if she really qualifies as an entertainer or guest attraction within the cast...or at least, I don't know what form her performance would take. There's already two dancers, an emcee, and someone who might be a comic, so Madame La Mort might stay off the stage and just take care of the hospitality, management, and public-relations side of the business. She'd be a "local character" for sure, a notable lady about undead Paris, but maybe not a performer. Perhaps that was where she started and she retired from the spotlight, but she's not a stage star anymore.

My most wanted Series 33 doll back in the day was Maitre des Morts, but Madame La Mort grew on me, especially after I becamee a Sweeney Todd fan through the excellent Tim Burton film adaptation. Madame La Mort quickly became my number-two doll from the series on my wishlist, only to be usurped by Carotte Morts and the Maitre in my collection order. I knew Madame would join eventually. I also knew she desperately needed the addition of a certain accessory.

Madame La Mort's name just means "Madame Death" or "Mrs. Death" according to French grammar. Her name would mean "Madame/Lady of Death" if it was "Madame de la Mort".

But the chipboard is throwing me for a loop again, like with Angus before, by showing me a spelling discrepancy. The website lists her as Madame La Mort, but the  chipboard says "Madame La Morte!" 

This changes the grammar. "La Morte" does not mean "death", but rather "the dead" (singular?), or, I'm gathering "the deceased" (feminine singular, as in legal documentation about a dead woman?). So "Madame La Morte" would translate to "Mrs. Dead Lady" with some grammatical smoothing, but the grammar probably doesn't scan properly as a name in French. This name setup, wonky as it might be, doesn't leave as grandiose of a name. "Mrs. Deceased" is a different tone from "Mrs. Death", though there's still some charm to that. Of note for bilingual poem construction--while the "e" is silent, the "t" is pronounced in "Morte" but not "Mort" or "Morts" like in the names of the Moulin Morgue boys.

I was still unsure if this chipboard was to be taken as the official spelling, though. I needed to see the certificate, and if it agreed with the chipboard, then that seals it and "La Morte" is canon and I have data to correct in my deathdate posts.  If the certificate matched the website spelling, then I'd take the chipboard as a typo. I guess my hierarchy of official data for names and death dates goes as follows:

1. Most trusted: Printed death certificate included in the doll (supersedes all other sources and in the case of names, overrides any discrepancies in spelling between the chipboard and website or other sources. This fits the legal association of a death certificate--that thing should be correct! Whatever's on the certificate is canon unless all other sources disagree. )

2. Next most trusted: LDD website archive (incomplete log and sometimes disagrees with the printed certificates or chipboards, so an imperfect source.)

3. Variably trusted: LDD fan wiki (features some information not catalogued on the official website, but this is unverifiable and unreliable without seeing the certificate--in some proven cases, the wiki gets it right or fills in details I'd lack if the website was my only source, but it's a riskier citation.) 

The chipboard poem says:

Death dances tonight at the Red Mill

Come grab a seat and down some swill

The bartender is pouring and blood is the flavor

It comes fresh from the victims of the Madame's razor

And a rewrite.

Death dances now through the splattered Dead Mill
Come, grab a chair, friend, and drink down some swill
The bartender's pouring and blood is the flavor
All freshly drained by Madame's lethal razor

It sounds like Madame and the bartender are separate figures, but I'd like to think they're one and the same.

"Moulin Morgue" would properly translate to "Dead Mill" no matter how transparently LDD has based it upon the Moulin Rouge.

Madame's certificate spells her name "La Mort", and the website agrees, so that's what I'm going with as canon. That makes this doll a rare case of having a chipboard name typo! And I don't have to revise anything! Her name means "Madame Death", which I like for its lofty tone.

I will call her just "Madame" for short, with no article, because "the Madame" is a whole other Living Dead Doll in Series 30. Spoken aloud, Mme. La Mort should be "Ma-damme" in the French inflection, while the Madame would rhyme with "Adam", in the Anglo tone.

Madame died on February 27, 1915. The first incarnation of the Moulin Rogue cabaret was destroyed by fire on this day!

The certificate poem says:

The Madame of Death awaits your arrival
The theatre is packed but we saved you a seat
Tonight's performance is quite homicidal
We are sure it will put an end to your heartbeat.

And a rewrite.

The grand Madame Death celebrates your arrival
The theater's packed, but she'll find you a seat
Onstage, you can see anything but survival
Our acts are so grim that your heart will not beat

The poems reference Madame La Mort using a razor as part of her Sweeney Todd theme, but the doll does not have one. That's the biggest disappointment with this doll. A folding straight razor would be an awesome accessory to complete her, though I wouldn't be surprised if she doesn't have one purely because they'd have to create it for her. Had there been an existing razor, it'd probably fall within budget to give it to her.

Unboxing the doll was a bit tricky because the tissue of her doll tray was taped to the sides of the coffin. I don't recall that happening with Maitre des Morts and most LDDs haven't had that hassle, which basically guarantees damaging the tissue paper. Ugh.

Here she is unboxed.

Madame La Mort's overall visual style is fancy and glamorous, but in a less youthful way. I see her as being coded in a middle-aged age demographic with her more conservative clothing and her design mimicking powdered faces and wigs. She could even be something of a motherly figure to the rest of the Series 33 cast as her troupe of "children". Her look is also one of the most directly unhinged of any LDD. She looks like a very disturbing figure you'd run away from very quickly with her blood splatter, hat and tie, pale face, and lowered lids.

Madame's hat is a porkpie style with a narrow brim and stout cone, and is black flocked plastic with a white ribbon accent around the middle. 

I have to think this hat is a twisted pun of some kind--of course a Sweeney Todd doll would wear something named for a meat pie! (If you missed the reference, the character of Todd is a serial killer barber who cuts his clients' throats, and he works with downstairs baker Mrs. Lovett, who cooks the victims into pies for her restaurant.)

"Long pork" is also a rumored euphemism for human flesh, with "long pork pies" being a cannibal product, so the hat style could not be more appropriate for this doll. The thing is, it's so hard to tell whether the LDD designers are always doing clever things on purpose or if some are fateful accidents. Like, they're not getting French grammar correct and their poetry skills are consistently shaky, but a Sweeney Todd homage character wearing a porkpie hat is a level of twisted genius that, if deliberate, is so subtle I don't expect most people to see it.

The hat has the same clear chinstrap band on it that Maitre des Morts had, which isn't very flexible. Some of Madame's hair was pulled through it to the front in packaging, but there's no visual difference, really, if all of her hair is behind the band. The hat does pull into a secure place on top of her head when the band is around her chin, so I don't mind this system for her. Like Maitre des Morts, this hat feels hardier and thicker than older entries like Betsy, Jennocide, and (especially) Macumba. The strap system makes a lot more sense with her hairstyle than the Maitre's.

Madame's hair is white and wild and styled in long fluffy curls, and her hairline is high. The hair doesn't feel the most thickly rooted, but the volume is probably why. The style doesn't look quite proper and elegant and adds to the slightly deranged look she has going on.

The top is center-parted and tied down in two anchored ponytails to control the shape on top and likely give her hat some room.

The hat and hair together give me slight notes of classic star Marlene Dietrich, but that may not be deliberate. Such an allusion would be appropriate, though-- Dietrich was bisexual and active in the German queer scene at gay bars and drag balls, and Cabaret the musical is about the subversive culture of German cabaret. 

Madame La Mort's frontal face is stark white while her skin is otherwise hearty pale flesh, and she seems to be going for a creepy cabaret powder-makeup look, or a quintessential French Marie Antoinette/rococo caricature with her beauty mark, doll lips, and pallor...but as part of her slasher theme, blood encircles and drips down the white face to create the visual that Madame La Mort has cut off the face from someone else to either replace or cover her own!

Technically, this could be her own face removed and reattached, but I'm betting it's someone else's. Facial butchery is not an element of the Sweeney Todd myth, nor is it mentioned in her poems, but stealing a face works with the theme of brutality inherent to the legend, and the gory face-theft visual works really well against the prim and sweet classic-dolly visual of the stolen face itself. It's just the right kind of Gothic shock for me--beautiful and innocent next to ridiculous horror. Since Madame may be middle-aged or older, this could be her brutal version of a facelift--cut off her face and steal a younger one or readjust her own to de-age herself! I will say the face appears to fit her structure perfectly, and looks like it would move normally too. That's kind of miraculous given that face transplants are a newer procedure and Madame does not look to have gone through medical channels. The odd perfection of the severed face makes this doll feel more camp and fabulous. It's super unsettling, but also genuinely pretty.

Madame is the second series doll in a row who cut off a face--Butcher Boop in Series 32 before her removed and ate her own. Neither doll uses a special head sculpt. Madame's face is all done with paint.

The face itself (whoever's it is, and whatever's underneath), feels very vintage dolly-fancy with the small red lips, pale color, beauty mark, cheek blush, and lashes making her look like a twisted parody of an old-fashioned fancy "grand lady" china doll. I like the pink airbrushing around the eyes, too. Madame has a half-lidded paint style to her eyes with pale blue lids, similar to paint which is also featured on Ella Von Terra in this series, and it's an effect not featured on previous dolls. Some older dolls have had underdrawn eyes, but not with this same upper-lid style. Elisa in Series 9 did something similar, but not quite the same.

Her variant had a different expression with wider eyes.

I think the lids on Madame La Mort, Ella, and Elisa are very elegant because they exactly fill the sculpted eye socket. Dolls like Greed or Salem with narrower eyes have not filled that molded space, and it can be distracting. Madame looks very murderous or glamorously languid with her eyes. My copy has a couple of blemishes on her face which cannot really be dealt with, since all of the white is paint and attempting to wipe or clean would damage the doll. It's disappointing, but she looks good from a reasonable distance.

It's easy to overlook on her, but Madame is browless. She certainly doesn't need eyebrows to be stunning, though.

Around her neck, Madame La Mort has a two-layered bow tie on a choker. 

I appreciate that La Mort has masculine fashion elements while the boys in the series have some femme touches. Ella and Larmes are straightforward femmes, though, befitting their roles as chorus dancers.

Painted blood can be seen seeping from the tie, and undoing the velcro at the back reveals the doll's most obvious Sweeney Todd influence--her throat has been slashed by a straight razor, the method through which Todd's victims were all killed. 

I'm pretty certain she was murdered and got a taste of her own medicine.

Previously, Bloody Mary featured a cut throat, included among her many other mirror-shard lacerations.

While I could overlook the poem alluding to the accessory she doesn't have, the physical doll design alluding to it makes it inexcusable that Madame La Mort does not include a straight razor to hold.

Around her shoulders, Madame has a white satin shrug jacket which covers her arms but has no simulated buttons or lapels. The cuffs are black, in keeping with every piece of the doll's outfit being purely (bloodstained) black and white with high contrast mixed together. None of her pieces except her boots are just one color or the other. Her hat, her tie, her jacket, and her dress all have both tones.

The jacket has some blood splatters below the cuffs. 

Madame's dress is pretty complicated, but not as wide in silhouette as I had thought it would be. I think it still works, but I expected more puff and bustle for a more matronly style. 

The bodice is a strapless sweetheart shape in white with black trim. LDDs don't have breasts, and the shape of the bodice is sewn awkwardly on its own merits, but the ill fit is okay for such an alarming presence as Madame.

The skirt around the waist is mostly open in front and hangs around the sides. The sides are composed of white and black panels stitched together, and the white panels have a black lacy ribbon trim with oval cutouts that pop over the white fabric. A small apron-like panel crosses between the sides of the skirt in the front and hangs short over a larger sheer frilled apron shape in black. The back has a very thin large black tied bow at the rear, which can untie. I didn't do this, though, and didn't have reason to remove the doll's outfit. I suspect the bow may not have to be untied to do so, but I'm not risking the frustration.

The panels of the back and sides.

The sheer ribbed black front "apron".

All of the front is splattered with bloody paint.

Under the whole skirt is a narrow satin underskirt. This does not puff up the rest of the dress at all, and I had thought it would. This isn't bad. It's just different. I'd thought Madame would be my first huge-skirt LDD, but alas.

Under this, Madame has a plastic sleeve to protect her legs from dye staining. Fair play, I suppose. I'd prefer the manufacturers taking care to make the clothing less noxious, though.

The back of the overskirt is sewn to the back of the underskirt.

Madame wears the pointy boots with no socks. I think the dearth of socks had started as early as Series 25 or before, and I wish it hadn't. LDD boots need socks for a more stable stance.

She has some small blood splatters painted onto her hands.

As a black, white, and red performer with fluffy white hair, the doll has some passing similarities to Series 5's Hollywood.

I think I like Madame more.

Are there other parallels between S5 and S33? Well, Ella could be parallel to both Jezebel and Siren--she's got a burlesque theme and black hair like the former and has a purple theme and debuts a stitched mouth sculpt like the latter. Carotte Morts could be like Vincent Vaude very loosely, as (implied) comedy work and escape acts both suit vaudeville. Maitre des Morts and Dahlia could connect because each has unique torso gore with body pieces that were never copied. Larmes de Sang doesn't have anything super specific in common with a Series 5 doll. She could parallel Jezebel if Ella parallels Siren, but Jez and Ella are both references to real burlesque artists and Larmes is not. Larmes and Jezebel are both bloody dancers with a red-and-black palette, though.

Now to address Madame La Mort's lack of a razor.

While I had seen a 1/6 scale folding straight razor from ToyWiz, by the time I was certain Madame La Mort was on my agenda, nobody was selling it. Perhaps it was for the best--it could look overly polished for the doll and the metal craft would stymie me as to implementing a peg that could go into her hand. As this did not dissuade me from wanting Madame La Mort, I decided "screw it--I'll make one myself! 

I rolled clay very thin, using the softer-baked kind I had on hand for the blade to reduce fragility if possible, and used harder clay for the handle. The pieces were cut out and adjusted so the blade could fold into the handle, and I pierced the back piece and blade with a pin simultaneously to align their connection. I baked them before I tried to make the other side of the handle because I wanted the first piece hardnened to "trace" from when cutting out the other piece. This got pierced on a pin too, and I added a clay blob to prop up this half and create space for the blade piece to fold in. The handle would be glued together and lock in the blade on the upper pin, and I pierced the bottom to add another pin to put in the doll's palm, arranging it so the blade faces toward Madame when raised in her hand. A barber shaves a throat toward themselves and it would just look silly to me for her blade to face away from her. The piece is a little wonky and I somewhat regret using the softer clay for the blade, since it may be too bendy, and its thickness resulted in it being unable to smoothly fold into the handle. I can't flick it out of the handle by using the end of the blade that points out of the top--the piece is too flexible and stuck to pivot when folded in. It still works for photos, though. Her palm was pierced accordingly, a bit higher than the center.

At last...her arm is complete!

Swing your razor wide, Mezco!

With Madame La Mort being a French hostess and her poem talking about bartending, I was struck with the idea to make an image referencing Manet's famous painting A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. 

To take a picture with a mirror behind the doll, I had to use another mirror in front of her and photograph the tableau through that, then flip the image I took. While it got me sufficiently out of the image, it messed up the background a little. I think the image still works, and Maitre des Morts was happy to play the gentleman in the reflection. The placement of the mirror in the painting is vague, and the reflection almost looks impossible, so it wasn't possible for me to reproduce the dynamic exactly.

The plaid is my shirt, but it passes here since you can't confirm it's on a human.

And I thought I was done with mirrors after Evangeline!

I wasn't quite happy with how the image read, though, so I made a separate setup in my closet to try again. Same mirror, different bar construction, different setting. This time, I added larger bottles and glasses from Monster High to make the layout clearer, plus some of the toy meat I used with Gluttony. I just ducked behind Madame and let her figure cover my reflection this time, rather than introducing another mirror.

"Onstage", I did another chair-dance photo. This is influenced both by Cabaret, but also by Marlene Dietrich doing her own chair dance where she straddles the chair backward, in the film The Blue Angel.

I then decided to show her onstage working the crowd, holding her hat and her face aloft!

I love the visual gag here and how it plays into the mystery of just what Madame is hiding. The removed-face prop itself was my work, harvested from the copy of The After I used in the workshop roundup. The rest of his head was used in the gruesome roundup. The severed face was actually prepared ahead of time as a prop for a separate upcoming doll, but Madame benefited from it just as well. More on that face in October.

I took off her arm and filled a small container cap with jam syrup to fake a pose and show her drinking and filling a glass from her throat. The second photo is edited to ehh effect to convey the gag.

And some more portraits.

Madame is very detailed, so painting over a flat cabaret portrait for her took a very long time, but I got hers done.

My first run had a black background behind the frame and black text and a white frame border, but I realized the look, while strong, was reading rather Nazi, which was absolutely not a connotation I wanted. I revised the colors and contrast. I went back to an extraneous text color like I did for Carotte Morts, and blue was an easy solution for Madame, matching her eyeshadow. The background behind the frame became a very light off-white, and the frame became brown. 

And here's the posters together now.

Increasingly, I can see myself going in for Ella Von Terra, but I still can't muster the interest in Larmes de Sang.

Here's the original Sweeney Todd poster for Stephen Sondheim's musical.

I edited some pictures of Madame to get a photo base with these proportions so I could imitate this piece, then traced loosely in a mimicry of this caricature style.

I'm really happy with this piece.

I then committed to building a set to recreate the barber shop seen in the movie adaptation, which is set in an angled attic section of the city building with a huge window. 

The end of the film, where Todd gets his ultimate revenge, pays it off by having the blood of his victim spray so far it splatters that window.

I really like the movie, which is my experience with the musical. I've learned it was very pragmatic and surgical about adapting the musical to best suit the strengths of film, but keeps the essence. The shift more to bloody horror tragedy and downplaying the dark comedy in the stage show is effective, and the performances are good. I have absolutely no affection for Johnny Depp as a person, but his turn as Sweeney was one of the only times as an actor that he looked like he was challenging himself, and it paid off. The film is also so tonally dark and respectful of Sondheim that the film doesn't wear its Tim Burton direction very obviously on its sleeve, and I think that benefits the adaptation. It's a story where Burton not being so obvious with his hand works in its favor. Sondheim himself said it was one of his most favored adaptations of his work.

(I will just note that the show isn't wonderful with its female characters, with the three principal female roles being a creepy opportunistic monster and two fairly broken women, and the film significantly reduces the presence of one of the latter, who's Todd's long-lost daughter.)

I used some carboard panels, including the wall I prepared for Dottie Rose's domestic photoshoot, cutting the existing window wider and bending the wall. This and another panel got painted and glued into shape. I also cut a red windmill blade out of cardboard pieces and painted them red, gluing it on to show through the window to incorporate the canonical LDD cabaret setting into the Sweeney Todd scenery. I used a sheet of cling wrap to cover the window and fog it so I wouldn't have to worry about the view outside. The 1/6 door got painted over and slotted into the back wall.

To complete the scene, I pulled cord strands over the window, under the wrap layer, to make the panes, and repainted the sink cabinet I made for Bloody Mary and dressed it with the mirror (broken even further now) and some accessories. The set got moved to a section of my house with wood flooring. Carotte Morts is her client here, using the oversized doll chair I have because it allows a LDD to be placed on it leaning back. He's wearing a bloodied cape and shaving foam. Like a good barber, Madame listened to his troubles.

"I am afraid that I love Maitre des Morts...but I worry that he is so friendly with Ella!"
"Ahh...c'est tragique..."

"But remember--you are the one who can kiss him!"
"Aaah!"

Even for a dead man, it was impossible not to flinch whenever Madame started gesticulating with her razor.

Here's some more barbering photos.

I got some nice work with Madame against the window.

And, loving the musical as much as I did, I was compelled to riff on its lyrics. Several times.

♪ "C'est mon ami-" ♪

♪ "-Voi comme ca brille!" ♪

♪ "Pretty sinners, silhouetted..." ♪
♪ "Holes straight through their chests..." ♪

(For clarity's sake to those unfamiliar with the musical--understandable, given its alienating slasher tragedy theme--, the songs I've referenced are "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd", "The Barber and His Wife", "Poor Thing", "My Friends", and "Pretty Women". The review's header title references the song "The Worst Pies in London".)

And for how nicely the pictures came out, this was what was really happening outside the window!

For Madame's picture with colorful lighting in her element, I kept her in the bar from before, but with her hat on and red and light turquoise light. I did an edit for the crowd silhouette motif of the previous "show's on!" portraits for this series, but, even disregarding the whole logical flaw when the mirror is there, I think the piece works better without the silhouettes. Even with them, the lighting and colors are so delicious here that her photo may be the best of this small recurring series.

My lighting game upgrading in 2024 has been such a massive asset.

Menard and Evangeline are the silhouetted guests I comped in this time.

And Madame's stage epitaph with the wrapped-up body. I put her in her chair, bloodied sheet over her face, severed face on the floor, and topped in a hat. Here's the full series now.

For a doll I worried was going to stymie my photo work, I certainly got a lot of inspiration! Her being so pretty and having such rich potential with her Sweeney Todd element helped a lot.

Madame La Mort is one of those Living Dead Dolls who's very twistedly beautiful, in that I find her a truly gorgeous doll even though she's simultaneously so disturbing. She's kind of spectacular. I adore her white hair and pale rococo-esque once-severed face making her a severely off-kilter take on cabaret, French high society, and a classical fancy toy dolly all in one. Her particular usage of black, white, and red nails the vintage gothic theme perfectly. She feels Victorian and still very French and cabaret, suiting both her setting and her loose Sweeney Todd derivation. I think I was expecting her skirt to have more volume, and I still wish it did, but it's got enough drama as it is and still suits the bustling madame of the house. Her faceup didn't come out flawless and the nature of her paint design rendered it unfixable, but from a fair distance, it's negligible. She's still very pretty. I also continue to critique her lack of accessory, but I was able to resolve that myself.

I think she's a new favorite for me.

Expect a solo post on Ella very soon; Madame convinced me to go for it.

Satan's Pet: Jinx

Since March, when I first started buying Series 6 dolls and then afterward decided to get them all as a throughline in the LDD Roundups, Jinx has become the obvious most difficult doll to obtain in the series. I swear I remember seeing her for $40 sealed like all the rest in S6 months ago, but today, her sealed/complete offerings are heftier. Not at the $100+ mark, but still higher than others. Every cheaper Jinx has a busted/incomplete box or missing pieces. Had I the foresight, I would have made her an earlier acquisition when she was cheaper.

Jinx, in the concept of Halloween iconography within the series, is a black cat girl and sports orange and black coloration for a classic spooky vibe. She's mostly humanoid and looks like she's just wearing a costume, but her eyes are feline in a way that can be taken as supernatural. Jinx also mixes in leopard print for some visual texture, and also indulges in the concept of bad-luck superstitions in a similar way to the aforementioned Catty Noir. That was kind of why I decided to put Evangeline in this setup--she and Jinx work well together and separately cover each of Catty's primary superstition aesthetics. Jinx could also easily replace Simone for the spot of the black cat doll in Series 13. I bet LDD kind of regretted already tapping that concept in S6, since they had to come up with a separate take for S13!.

My Jinx came sealed, which is the only way she's showing up complete at the moment.

Here's her chipboard, following the same formula as the other Series 6 chipboard poems--a couplet that mentions the pet.

Jinx and her Hellcat make quite a pair

Their path is paved with bad luck, so cross if you dare

And a rewrite.

Jinx and her Hellcat make quite a pair

They're nothing but bad luck--cross if you dare!

Jinx died on June 7, 1913, well ahead of the aesthetic she's wearing, but appropriate for her superstition theme. 2013 was a ways off at the time she was made, so it was the most recent year to invoke the number with!

The June 7 date doesn't have any clear meaning, other than the fact that it's a day off June 6, or 6/6. That might be intentional to put her closer to the 666 theme of the series? The 6/6 date proper was used by Revenant, paired with a 1966 year for a 6/6/66 theme.

The certificate poem delves more into superstition theming that would later be individualized in separate topics per doll in Series 13.

Breaking mirrors and walking under ladders till she died

This unlucky kitten used up all of her nine lives

We've already seen the broken-mirror doll, and Jacob is the ladder doll of Series 13.

Here's a loose rewrite.

Most cats have nine lives, but she got thirteen

Yet still, she used all them up

With broken glass mirrors and walks under ladders 

And all of the types of bad luck.

And unboxed. Hellcat did not come with a plastic tray under it like Shriek and Muzzy did. I don't remember Ole Crow or Hun having them, and can't say for Revenant's vulture Carrion, since she was the only S6 doll I purchased unboxed. There's some heavy competition between the (October-released) S6 dolls as to who's the most Halloweeny among them, but Jinx is certainly the one with the most classic spooky seasonal color palette, being all orange and black with yellow/tan from the leopard print mixing in.

Jinx's visual aesthetic is classic, cute, and cartoony LDD, with that vaguely retro 1960s flair that Sadie and Lottie also have, so naturally, I love her. Her black cat theme is downplayed by her orange hair and leopard print, and I have to wonder if she's partially inspired by Josie and the Pussycats as a result--her hair and leopard pattern put together feel too close for coincidence. Josie was a franchise originating through Archie Comics which featured a band of musicians in cat costumes, and Josie herself looks a lot like Jinx.

Josie in the center.

If this isn't a deliberate reference, it's possible it's a subconscious one where the designers paired the orange haircut, cat theme, and leopard print on instincts they weren't aware were informed by seeing the Josie design previously.

Jinx's cat ears are a fabric headband made of black fleece with leopard print lining the ears. This band is a chinstrap piece that slides on from the front.

It's a bit awkward with her haircut, which doesn't pull through and part around the band in the most elegant way to disguise it. 

The haircut and the high-neck cut of her outfit do completely disguise the presence of the chinstrap, though. With some side angles or her top removed, the strap is more visible, but the hair and costume ensure it isn't distracting. I had no idea the band was an elastic chinstrap until getting the doll. I assumed it'd be a rigid arc that worked like a human-scale one.

Jinx's hair itself is a straight shoulder-length bob cut rooted in a more blended orange color with reddish and yellowish highlights coming together. A lot of LDD hair is entirely monochromatic, so a blend is nice to see. She has high bangs cut well above her eyebrows, but the shape works for her. Bangs this high can often be a crime of the highest order (particularly on poor Courteney Cox in Scream 3, whose stylist utterly failed the Bettie Page look), but Jinx wears them well. The bangs were a little unconvincing fresh, but when boiled, laid better...the rooting is still too thin on the bangs, though, and it can show. She might benefit from some gel combed in to spread the hair and keep it covering the empty spots. The hair texture boiled out is just okay, not special, and feels similar to many other LDDs--though fortunately, without fried ends. 

This is her after hair care.

The hair fibers didn't end up hanging down completely straight, either, but the silhouette is right.

Jinx has a pale flesh skin color that can look greyish in some lighting, and a mostly human face. Her face paint is all done in orange, yellow, and black, with harsh black brows, cat-eye makeup outlines (naturally) and wings, and yellow and orange eyes with no visible sclera and slit feline pupils. Her eyes look glowy and catlike and very retro-spooky and Halloweeny. Very cute.

She's definitely in a club with S1 Sadie, Sin, and Lottie. 

I think Series 2's Kitty (a vintage cheerleader who has nothing to do with cats) might also fit this specific aesthetic niche of LDD, and maybe I could end up loving her if I pursued that. I just never thought much of her previously due to her colors not being so unique. If she had light blonde hair, she'd stand apart much better among Sadie and Sin.

Wondering about her...and I was so sure I had no need for anyone in Series 2!

Jinx's outfit is coordinated, but two pieces. She has a sweater-like top in black fleece, with long sleeves, a leopard-print shirt collar, and an applique "13" symbol on the front in orange outlined block numbers.

The black interiors of the glyphs are part of the applique as well.

Jinx's sweater does pull over her waist and lay on top of the skirt to tidy her up. The way it's sewn, though, it pulls up and exposes her belly when her arms are raised.

Like Chloe's dress, Jinx's shirt velcros shut without a loop strip to match the hook strip--the hooks just grip onto the fabric itself.

Her skirt hugs her legs and is the same leopard fabric as the collar and ear lining and has a velour-like black trim on the hem which is separate from the material of the headband. This black material isn't the softest, smoothest fabric, despite its appearance. Maybe it's just old. The piece is elasticated and just slides up or down her body.

The skirt also has a tail sewn on the back. This matches the trim on the skirt, and there's wire inside to pose it. The end of the tail is not tacked static to the seat of the skirt, though, so the posing doesn't make much difference. The tail as it is can flap back and forth on its stitches the way it's attached, which doesn't allow you to pose it in an upright shape.

Jinx has orange socks, which I think are a unique color for the dolls, and black Mary Janes.

While the Mary Jane shoes are of variable tightness, particularly in earlier LDDs and dolls around Evangeline's time, I was quite pleased to find Jinx to be entirely solid with snug shoes. She stands very easily, and I always appreciate that.

Hellcat is exceptionally large, and does really feel like a half-demonic creature given its proportions next to Jinx. It's stylized like the other S6 pets and has a sneer with a protruding fang and a "mohawk" of fur. Like Shriek and the body of Carrion, the cat feels like hollow vinyl. The pet is evidently two pieces glued together on a seam at the neck. The head does not turn. I'm confused and disappointed by the pale grey airbrushing on the cat, which diminishes its spooky Halloween vibe significantly. Orange, maybe. But not a color that makes the cat look white.

I was so distracted by the shading that I tried to see if I could wipe it off...and got the valuable and disappointing revelation that I could not. Hellcat is actually entirely painted, and the black rubbed off too, revealing a reddish cast vinyl underneath. So I had no choice now but to paint over in black. I regret touching the cat now, but that disappointment is my fault. I wasn't supposed to do that. The paint I used is supposedly light-absorbent, but mostly amounts to "really dark and really matte", and it worked well for Hellcat and almost makes it look flocked.

Here's Catty Noir with her two LDD halves--the black-cat and mirrors doll in between the dolls about just one of those!

Simone would also qualify to trade out for Jinx's spot, but Jinx is the doll who actually looks like a cat, plus she shares the 13 symbol with Catty. 

With the two bad-luck dolls in this roundup, I may have to bank on it being lucky number 7 of these posts to negate the evil energy!

Jinx is the fourth doll from Series 6 I'm reviewing who had subsequent releases--hers were the two variants within the Living Dead Dolls in Wonderland collection, where she was a shoe-in for the role of the Cheshire Cat. Her main variant is easily recognizable through the colors, though her face paint gives her a caricatured different expression and her hairstyle might be significantly different under the hoodie. The bangs are certainly different.

This would be equally effective as a Halloween cat doll.

Her variant, like every variant in the Alice line, has stark white skin and changes her hair to black and her stripes to purple, while making her eyes blue. This comes across as a mix of the magenta striped 1951 Disney animated Cheshire Cat and the blue-eyed Cheshire Cat of the Tim Burton adaptation.

I don't know if I'd pin her as Jinx, but like both variants.

To set up photos for Jinx, I used an orange-painted poster board prepared for this year's Halloween blog extravaganza and set up some spooky cat props with Jinx, Hellcat, and some leopard fabric so the display was very Halloweeny but also specific to the doll's look. I did a light saturated take, and then a darker take lit by a red light, which created a moodier scene.

I am so ready for October, and excited to share my Halloween spirit on the blog this time!

I took a portrait just with the background, but her patchy bangs spoiled the effect a little.

Jinx's eyes pop under blacklight.

Here's the two on the leopard background.

And a photo of Jinx outside under a ladder. This toy ladder piece I had appears to be taller than the ladder included with Jacob in Series 13, but neither are long enough to lean against a wall with the doll standing below, so I had to cheat and prop the ladder up on something else cut off below frame.

And Series 6 is now complete! The ranking/overview post will be forthcoming, as well as a recut of all of the Series 6 discussions in one post.

I think Jinx is really sweet and fun, but her execution as a toy ultimately didn't bump her into the top three of the series for me. I'd thought she had a chance of that, but the hair's too patchy and slightly messy, the headband is functional but not the best matched to the hair shape, the poseable tail isn't super dynamic the way it's been sewn on, the shirt pulls up when Jinx lifts her arms, and Hellcat's paint job totally misses the point. I still really like Jinx's aesthetic and she displays great. She's darling and very spooky while having some fun touches that make her interesting in the Halloween aesthetic she embodies. She deserves to exist alongside Salem; both are doing their own takes well. I just wish the doll was a bit more polished. (Love that she stands so firmly, though.)

And that's the roundup assembled!

Madame La Mort is unquestionably the winner for me. Even her lack of a vital accessory doesn't harm her too much with the doll being such a perfect extreme contrast of disturbing gore and creepy appearance and absolutely gorgeous period styling that makes her genuinely pretty and dynamic. She feels like the best of LDD's concepts of parodying old dolls and providing fun horror, with her extremely deranged presence forming an iconic menacing, quirky, and oddly beautiful figure. She's very cabaret and French but easily slots into the Sweeney Todd inspiration as well. I was completely rewarded by my newfound notice of the doll. 

Jinx and Evangeline are both nice. Evangeline was overall the better doll than Jinx in all aspects except shoe fit. She's got a new sculpt with an ambitious and spot-on paint job, her hair is wonderful quality, and her photo opportunities were really fun to work with. Her aesthetic is very creepy and dark and frightening and she best suits low lighting and gritty camera quality--and of course, mirror surrealism. She was fun to work with. She's a more alienating doll because her face is outright terrifying and confrontational in nature, but she's a great antique doll pastiche with a fun surreal superstition twist. I just wish she had the gripping arm sculpt.

 Jinx, on the other hand, is very approachable and she's plain cute with her sweet little wicked cat theme. She suits a lighthearted spooky Halloween tableau very nicely, and I adore that aesthetic. Her quality just isn't quite there. Her bangs needed more thick coverage and her hair is overall not excellent, plus the sew of her shirt doesn't account for her arms raising. Hellcat's design is also a bit baffling with the paint shading. I did value Jinx's steady stance, though. I love a doll whos stands with confidence.

I have two guaranteed LDD posts, each of a solo doll, before the Living Dead Dolloween celebration commences in October. The Series 6 assembly/ranking overview will also be out, and a bonus photoshoot for Bloody Mary, who I got some more nice pictures with recently. Keep an eye out.