A Living Dead Dolloween, Part 6: Honorary Halloween Living Dead Dolls Roundup (Roundup #8)

Now that the series and exclusive history of LDD Halloween has been looked over...who says we have to stop there? Why not look at other offerings fit for the holiday?

Read the first part here, the second part here, the third part here, the fourth part here, and the fifth part here. 

Before October, I was certain the Dolloween project would entirely preclude a LDD Roundup trio for the month. But go figure. I found the cast and the budget to make it happen within the project!

This is my first LDD Roundup composed entirely of coffins that don't debut a new tissue color or lid print. It had to happen eventually. Fortunately, the conceptual theme gave me license to give the cover photo a unique backdrop in lieu of being able to center a new coffin design, and one of the dolls made so much sense to place in the center coffin this time that that could shake up the image too.

My choices for this roundup ended up working perfectly, since all of them in this moment were floating around the low to lower-mid level on the aftermarket, and I did make the choice to get one for even cheaper by accepting a copy sans clear lid. Those are replaceable. This all worked out in the favor of this monster of an October extravaganza which, in addition to months of pre-acquired dolls, ended up calling for more in-month acquisitions than I'd expected. Listen. I go all out for Halloween.

Don't Go Staking My Heart: Lilith

Lilith is one of two Series 3 characters derived from classic monster-movie aesthetics, with her slotting into the iconic Dracula sphere while the Bride of Valentine is in the Frankenstein sphere. I've grown to like Lilith a lot for her cartoony charm and colors, and she has a fun doll gimmick. She's also a natural Halloween doll, and goodness, it's about time I got an LDD vampire! LDD has done several vampires since, including a whole series in S19 and S18's Ingrid dressed up like one for trick-or-treat, but for me, Lilith remains the most "classic-horror" Halloween-iconic vampire design in the brand.

I previously reviewed a Series 3 doll with Lottie here. 

My doll's secondhand packaging status was a new one for me--she was unsealed and the certificate/accessory packet was removed from the back...and that's it. The doll was still wired into her coffin, and the only disturbances were the transfer of the packet to the front tray and the removal of the cling wrap. Huh. An odd place to stop, but at least that ensures nearly-untouched condition.

Here's her chipboard. Note how her collar section is illustrated here, because it doesn't match the doll.

I also saw differences between the doll and portrait with Lottie.

The chipboard poem says:

Only a stake or sun

Will kill this beast

For on your blood

She will feast

The two halves of the poem don't actually connect. Only a stake or sun will kill her because she will feed on you? Is the "for" intended to relate to her being called a beast, like "A stake or sun will kill this beast, and yeah, we're calling her that because she drinks blood"? I don't know. How about:

Stake or sun 

Will kill the beast

But ere they do

On blood she'll feast

Lilith died on December 27, 1476. I was able to guess even before verifying that this is referencing the cited death date of Vlad "the Impaler" of Wallachia, a brutal ruler who was the first man to bear the name "Dracula". Vlad is commonly believed (though equally disputed) to have inspired Bram Stoker in the creation of his defining literary vampire.

Lilith's poem here says:

Lilith loved all things Goth

Which forced her way into eternal sloth

Now she's damned to wake each night

To feast on blood till morning light.

Lilith has forever been a name with spooky and evil connotations, since it's associated with the figure from Mesopotamian/Jewish mythology often characterized as the banished first wife of the Biblical Adam (Christians do not acknowledge her in their texts) and as a demonic figure...and because she's a woman, often a wicked seductress too (and she was banished for not obeying her man...). Lilith and her forms have also been described as a forebear of vampire legend. While Series 3 Lilith is clearly a vampire derived from the Universal horror classics, her Resurrection dolls seem to portray her directly as her demon namesake, giving her dark soulless eyes, rat fangs, folding batlike wings, and long clawed arms. 

I don't think the description of Lilith as liking goth things makes much sense if she would have been around well before such a concept, so try this:

Lilith was the world's first goth

Damned unto eternal sloth

Now she walks the wicked night

Draining blood until first light

I think this makes more sense and has a more clear retrospective tone describing an older figure with a modern framework.

Here's the doll out pre-tidying.

The hair on this doll is classically vampiric, being black with a widow's peak. It's waist length at the longest point and it has a lot of volume for comparatively thin rooting.

As arranged out of the coffin, it falls over her front like the chipboard artwork, but the doll looks better with her hair all swept backward down her back, and that's how her photo portrait was taken for the LDD website archive.

The hairline doesn't comb backward super flush to her scalp, so even when the shape is cleanly combed and visible from the front, it can look like there are messy floating strands of hair from a top view.

I'm a little surprised LDD didn't give her a white Lily Munster hair streak because she otherwise falls right in that slightly campy/unserious tail end of classic horror (heck, her name could function as an allusion to Lily!) but they would eventually do so for vampire-themed Ingrid.

The hair is a little greasy and tangly and I worried about those dreaded fried ends. I'll see how it turns out post-wash. 

Lilith's face isn't in the simple, retro-1960s dolly aesthetic that I see in characters like Sadie, Lottie, and Jinx, but she does definitely have a cartoony LDD charm to her characteristic of her era of the brand.

Her skin is a great color choice, being a powder blue color that feels very aligned with the family-friendly era of the classic monster-movie phenomenon, and may also reflect the colors of makeup work by actors in the Universal films and The Munsters to film extra pale and eerie in black-and-white. Color imagery of the Munsters cast shows them all (except the "hideous" normal niece Marilyn) with blue-green makeup, which frankly works just fine as a literal depiction of their skintones, even if it wasn't textually what characters in the show would have been seeing.

Ingrid also picks up this trait with more subtle pale blue-green skin that matches this makeup perfectly.

I think Lilith's color is more fun.

Lilith's paint is also very caricatured, with impossible eyebrows that are super thin, extremely arched, and curved further than any real brow in all directions, and her eyes have yellow sclerae outlined by dark red, and green irises with a radial yellow line pattern to create a stylized and flat cartoony sparkle effect. Blue shading sinks in her eyes, adds intense stress lines above and below the inner corners, and shades in the creases framing her mouth. The blue also adds some subtle veins on her face. 

I really like this faceup, and I love how colorful the doll's face is. It entirely makes the design for me, and I think she'd be a worse doll with more "serious" white or greyish skin or red eyes. This face is essentially perfectly designed. 

Lilith debuted both the screaming head shape and the fanged upper teeth piece used with it. As a vampire, the face suits her so her fangs can be bared in a snarl. It's likely also that the utility of the screaming head and modular teeth would have been recognized from the start, so the fangs were never going to be the only style for this head type. She has some shiny dark red blood inside and around her mouth from either her last feeding, her lethal staking, or both, but LDD didn't overdo it and it doesn't spoil the rest of the face for me. There are bloodthirsty LDDs with whole lower faces stained red from their meals, and I struggle more with. As far as I know, the next dolls to use this tooth mold were much later, appearing in the all-vampire Series 19!

It looks like the interior of Lilith's mouth was painted after her fangs were popped in, as there are notable gaps in paint under the canines where you can see her blue cast.

This seems like the wrong way to have done things, but LDD clearly corrected the process later. Salem's mouth is completely filled-in under her fangs. Fortunately, Lilith's paint gaps are pretty perfectly blocked by her teeth in upright positions...but vampires are kind of famous for lying down in coffins, and that might impact those kinds of displays.

Lilith's dress is an unclear style that mixes a lot of tones together. It's cut very modestly and covers everything but her hands and toes. The neck and collar in front are a separate fabric textured and colored like old bandages wrapped around her, which is a peculiar touch. 

It doesn't look like a fashion statement, but the doll is designed so she looks like she's been stabbed post-bandaging, so I don't quite get it. And yes, the bandage section has blood paint and a cut in it from her staking. The strange idea is strange, but it works all the same. The chipboard illustration showed a more normal dotted Victorian blouse layer in the same spot, but I think the bandages read more "classic horror" in a good way.  The rest of the dress is a fairly matte fabric that can easily be mistaken for felt, but is actually closer to velvet, just with minimal sheen and neither very thick and rough nor super smooth material. The shoulders are puffed and the skirt has a slight bell shape that ends in a jagged hem that touches the floor. The ends of the hem can be arranged to spread out on the floor, Morticia-style, though this isn't a mermaid silhouette with pinched ankles and long tendrils. You do have to spread the hem manually to create the splayed look, but it's worth it. A later doll might have wire sewn into the points so they'd stay bent out flat once posed. Perhaps not, though. I'd love a take with wire to keep the shape spread even when the doll is moved.

At the sides of the waist and the back, Lilith has a big fancy butt bow, which is the most frilly thing about her. 

This ribbon does not cross onto the front of the dress and comes from the sides, like the tie on the back of Alison Crux's dress. This bow is sewn into shape and isn't designed to untie (fine by me), and the dress can squeeze down off her body without the bow being damaged. The piece does feel a little incongruent with the austere dress and the bandages together, but it might pass stylistically and I don't dislike it. It's more detail than I expected; that's for sure.

Of all the swivel LDDs I have, Lilith is actually the first I've gotten to be wearing the pointy boots. Every other doll I have with this shoe type is from after the switch to ball joints! Lilith's pair are flexible black vinyl with an indecisive brown brush job over them. It doesn't look very polished, and I can't tell if it's supposed to suggest dirt, blood, or a leather finish. 

You'll never even see this detail, so they could have not bothered.

I was very surprised and disappointed to notice that Lilith has no socks to render these boots more stable, so her feet rock around in them like so many dolls after Series 20 as well. I'm shocked there weren't socks on Lilith because they were very standard during the early era of LDD.

Lilith naturally comes with a sharpened stake accessory, which is really nicely sculpted and painted for a cartoon look. 

The piece has a palm peg to let Lilith hold it, though I didn't find this easy to do. The peg is so thick compared the the palm holes, and the holes aren't that deep, so she struggled to keep it in. I found similar difficulties with the giant axe that debuted in Series 2 (encountered by me thus far on the Tin Man), though that piece had its own issues from being too heavy. Later peg accessories haven't given me issues, and oddly, the heart which also debuted in Series 3 (encountered in the Wizard of Oz doll, and can be given to the Tin Man) didn't feel as tricky to use. The pegs did feel a little too fragile due to their flexibility on the axe, heart, and stake alike, though. 

But there's the obvious superior display for this piece. Because the stake and the doll are both bloodied, the stake naturally plugs into her chest through the bloody patch on her dress!

There's just a small vertical slit cut into Lilith's torso to allow the stake to stick in, surrounded by its own blood. 

Not sure if this slit was cast or just cut in after molding.

At first, this doesn't seem functional.

How can this work?

...but because Lilith's torso has some flex from the vinyl material, it is possible to really plunge the thing in there until the bloody part is all in, and the display result is fantastically macabre.

The benefits of building this mechanic using a slit rather than a circular hole cut to size are that the stake gets really securely wedged in and won't fall out even if the doll takes a tumble...and it's all that much more visceral and tactile to enact when it's a real plunge! The materials and engineering are so so simple (vinyl torso with a vertical cut), but the result is so effective and grotesquely evocative. This isn't plugging in a peg into a socket. It feels like sinking a stake into something softer in a really eerie way. You almost expect a squelch or a splatter.

I always love the LDDs with twisted interactive dismemberment/disembowelment/murder features like these; they're so delightfully ghoulish, and there's an extra fun spooky chill to Lilith as a toy since it invokes the idea that you need to stake your evil doll to seal her and stop her from coming after you! 

When the stake is taken out, the vinyl and fabric kind of hold their shape in a puncture wound, which is grisly in another delightfully twisted way...for those who are delighted by the twisted.

I decided to see how long it would take for the vinyl to relax to its initial shape. I left her overnight, and that was enough time for the vinyl to return to shape.

This stake is technically a unique doll gimmick, though it's been almost repeated later. Series 19, all vampires, features stakes in the hearts of the variant set's dolls, but those stakes are reportedly glued in and not made to be removable. And, like...why? Lilith's way is more fun. If a S19 variant were in my hands, I would be tempted toward the sacrilegious move of breaking the glue to figure out if there's a difference in construction or to make the stake a removable accessory if it's functionally the same.

Lilith was featured in Resurrection II. Her two Resurrection dolls are mostly similar save for some color changes. As mentioned, they both shift her concept toward the demonic Lilith of ancient legend by giving her long clawed arms, folding fabric and plastic wings (of the type seen on a handful of others, and debuting on S4's Inferno), and the Nosferatu rat teeth. The main Resurrection does give her the Lily Munster hair streak after all, but this reference isn't clear on the variant where it's changed to red. Both Res Liliths have more blood around the mouth than I personally like.

Res main.

Res variant.

These Lilith dolls also apparently glowed in the dark with paint rather than cast plastic, something also done with the Series 9 variants. I'd be very curious to see a doll with a glow-paint skintone, and when I have the opportunity and the required huge chunk of budget, I'd love to get a variant Toxic Molly to see it. That doll is such an elevation over her main since her green dress and glowing body should sell her irradiated theme so much more than the main.

I took Lilith down to wash so her hair would hopefully tidy, and I gave her body a scrub too, since it seemed like her vinyl might have gotten sweaty and greasy with poor storage like my Gluttony's did. Thanks to the cut in her chest, I did have to pop her apart to dry out her body, since water got  inside easily.

Once cleaned, she's pretty nice. Her hair isn't bad quality and wasn't horribly snarled and fried. 

Then to set to some photos. I naturally had to use a coffin, and I selected Menard's for its red tissue and blue plank pattern fitting her best. It didn't show that much in all of them. 

The first idea I had was to frame a dramatic old-movie shot of Lilith's killer looming with the stake and mallet that pierced her. LDD has no monster-expert Van Helsing type in its cast, but I thought Dedwin as the Wizard of Oz, with his vintage mad-scientist theme, was close enough. The mallet is the hammer that came with the DC Super Hero Girls first-wave Harley Quinn six-inch action figure, taped to his hand.

And a super grainy, colorless shot of her rising from the coffin Nosferatu-style. The quality is maybe a little too low to have been cut and printed to film, but it does feel a lot like a very old photo image.

And a clearer image from the front, better matching the Nosferatu camera shot.

Count Orlok's coffin didn't have all that manufacturer's print!

These pictures intentionally create the horrific implication that a wooden stake cannot successfully put Lilith down, and to be sure, the doll creates that implication all by herself. What kind of vampire must she be for the iconic execution to be ineffective on her? One wonders if chopping off her head and stuffing the mouth with garlic, possible future insurance in vampire lore, would work on her, either. Dracula in the novel was decapitated to seal the deal, but that was too extreme (and possibly effects-demanding) to put to film in the early 1930s.

I found a really nice lighting for her here, which feels evocative of old movies, but in color.

The image actually loses something by going to black-and-white and feels more dramatic and evocative when it isn't.

I then threw a nod in to Bram Stoker's Dracula, the Francis Ford Coppola film with a great first act and impeccable aesthetics, but such a misguided script and some weaker acting from the younger leads. That film stages the scene where Jonathan Harker cuts himself shaving and Dracula gets excited against a mirror. This scene features a very retro-style film shot (the whole movie is made on old-timey film tools for its style and optical VFX!) and features an effect where Dracula creeps up behind, not reflected in the mirror

My memory of this scene had the mirror against total blackness in more of a void, so that's how I framed the back wall in my homage. Oops. I also reversed the positions of the two equivalent characters unintentionally. It wouldn't have worked out to match the close-up, however, without reflecting my phone or myself in the mirror.

I did the same trick I've done with previous mirror-vampire Draculaura photo gags by stabilizing the camera and taking two shots--one with the vampire, one without, and cutting the two images together in post so she's only on one side of the mirror. The trick never gets old...but it certainly never gets easy, either!

I've long wanted to try doing this "no reflection" gag on a pool of water, and thought this was a good opportunity. I brought back the clay basin I first sculpted for Lamenta, and filled it with blue dye for an opaque reflective liquid surface. I staged it outside with some of the same garden statuary Lamenta's shoot used, and brought in Sadie as the victim. She may prove to be my everygirl actress for photoshoots requiring a generic outside figure for the doll in focus to play off. There's an understandable paucity of LDD characters who look both innocent and normal, so I had to settle for Sadie being a more basic doll whose face looks sweet enough for a Gothic victim. Betsy looks too mean, and her hair isn't dramatic enough, and I think Alison Crux is far too specific of a character to play a separate role. For this shoot, Sadie is wearing Hush's versatile nightdress, which Agatha also borrowed during the Series 23 photo story. I took two takes with different settings, with each being a pair of photos cut together to have Lilith on only one side of the reflection. I did the two takes as insurance to make sure I got a good photo once converted to black and white, but both versions worked, so I'm using both!

And I did some further homage to Nosferatu by depicting Lilith's shadow approaching a door, mimicking the iconic shot of Orlok's shadows creeping up the stairs before it enters the bedroom and is able to physically grab the sleeping Ellen. As such, the second shot has the shadow turned like it's facing forward and touching the doorknob.

Here she is blacklit. This is striking because it reacts to the face but not the paint, making the veins much more stark. Heck, I didn't even notice the one under her right eye before this!

I re-staged some crypt photos on the brick-lined path outside.

Then I took some pictures with the Gothic mirror as a window, like what I did in the bonus photoshoot post with Bloody Mary recently. The mirror is on the floor and the red comes from lighting my ceiling red. This time, unlike with Mary, I shot in more darkness and made sure nothing reflected in the mirror except blank red, and made sure all of the cutouts of the mirror were reflected so the whole frame was defined. I did a take with Lilith very dim but legible, and then boosted it in post for another take that's a pure silhouette. 

Here's the scene front-lit in red.

And with no background, just black.

Then I set to play on a purple/red contrast like I'd landed on for some of Mary's photos, but I was surprised. With the extreme color contrast I managed to achieve, I created an image that feels nearly stereoscopic, with the figure feeling like I'm seeing her through 3D glasses!

The mirror, with its bat ornamentation, suits a Dracula-adjacent doll even better than it did Bloody Mary.

And as is tradition for my vampire posts, I had to mimic the Dracula strip of light across the eyes.

So. I just...love Lilith. 

I can't believe I never brought in garlic with previous vampires.

She's absolutely emblematic of classic horror. She's all of the fear, the menace, the blood and the macabre mixed with all of the spooky charm and poppy, campy charm the classic monsters came to represent in culture. She's a distilled legacy of the old monster movies in all the right directions. I would consider her an essentially perfect character design. Her stylization is absolutely appealing and charming and she mixes darker elements like blood and bandage texture with caricature and cartoony charm really well. Is her dress a strange mix? Sure. But is it an effective character design? Yes. And don't even get me started on the stake. It's such a simple, obvious but brilliant doll gimmick. Stabbing your vampire doll in the chest with a stake that pushes in is delightfully grim and honestly slightly disturbing in the most delicious way for a horror fan because the system of plunging it into her vinyl chest ends up feeling oddly visceral and not too toylike. This is also a significant doll for collectors since she's a milestone in debuting the modular open-mouth head sculpt, and she has the unreplicated gruesome gimmick with the removable chest stake that makes her a unique novelty. I completely understand why she was one of those early LDD characters who became a minor mainstay in the brand, being one of the few who reappeared in most of the major spinoffs-- the Minis, the Resurrection line, the severely questionable Fashion Victims, and the ugly Living Dead Dollies baby dolls (as a convention exclusive). The only recurring spinoff she wasn't in was the caricatured 2-inch blind-box vinyl figures.

My two criticisms for the doll are that the stake peg doesn't work super easily in her palms as a handheld accessory, and the lady really wants for some socks to tighten her boots up. For her point in the LDD brand timeline, it's astonishing she doesn't have any. I guess the paint on her boots feels confusing and poorly-realized if you needed a third criticism, but that's so minor, especially since the boots aren't even seen. But overall, she's a winner, and she's an awesome spooky icon.

The Winning Witch: Holle Katrina

This doll isn't necessarily one that would stand out at a glance, but she's very significant for the unique status being a fan contest winner! I don't know much about the specifics but LDD evidently held a contest for fans and the winner would get a Living Dead Doll in their honor, and this one won. Holle Katrina is cited to be the depiction of a real German LDD fan of the same name, so I don't know what the contest entailed. Was it for fans to submit character designs which were adapted, or were fans supposed to design themselves as a LDD specifically? Holle Katrina the doll is evidently based on a Holle Katrina the person, but how she got there is unclear. I could find listings for a different contest (guessing the amount of LDD heads in a jar) but that one wasn't the "you get a personal doll design" contest. Hm. All I know is that Holle was not released during the same year as the contest.

Regardless, Holle Katrina herself ended up as a fairly cute black-and-white-costumed Halloween witch with some touches of goth in her hairstyle, makeup and costume. I kind of dismissed her before since she's not the most standout doll or witch, but I came to appreciate the aesthetic niches she fills. She's a unique color scheme for a super-witchy witch in the brand, and she's less scary and inhuman-looking, which has its place and its purpose.

Holle Katrina doesn't go for a whole lot on the aftermarket, and I chose a copy without the plastic lid because I knew I would be able to replace it another time. I don't expect her to be on the shelf space I have in the off-seasons that aren't Halloween, so it's no big concern. 

Her chipboard has a short poem that outlines her significance in the brand:

Many have entered but
We can only choose one sinner

Congratulations, Holle Katrina

The 13th Anniversary contest winner

The last line is too long, so the rest of the poem should be extended. There isn't a solid meter in this rewrite, but there's more of a rhythm than before.

This thirteenth year, you tried to be

Our anniversary sinner

But we can only name the one

Holle Katrina's our winner

The name "Holle Katrina" could be a two-part first name (though I don't know if German people do those) or the fan's first and middle names, or else maybe the name is a chosen pseudonym the winning fan goes by. Goth people tend to craft a persona, and I'm assuming LDD didn't come up with the name themselves. I do think the name "Holle Katrina" feels extremely witchy in this context. "Holle" (separate from the Anglo "Holly") is variously cited as being a name related to secrecy, bogs, holes, or Hell, so it fits a goth witch even if this was the fan's birth name.

Her birth certificate says she died on March 16, 1975, which is almost certainly the real Holle Katrina's date of birth. Tina Black and Tina Pink are two other dolls (based on just the one person) who reference someone known to the LDD designers and use that person (presumably, Tina)'s birthday as their shared death date. The real Holle and the real Tina would both be people in the same Gen X age range as the LDD creators.

This poem says:

In the darkest of night

Through the struggles and strife

One can find Frau Holle

She is now an LDD for life

The poem referring to "Frau Holle" is a simple shorthand to confirm the character and fan's German background. In old tradition, "Frau" was equivalent to "Mrs." and referred to married or older women, while "Fraulein" was used like "Miss" for young, unmarried women. That's since fallen out of favor in modern Germany and "Frau" has become a catch-all, with "Fraulein" being seen as antiquated and offensive (I suppose, in the vein of an English speaker calling a young woman "little girl" or "missy"?) I don't at all expect LDD to be keyed into German vernacular, so the use of "Frau" could either be accurate in the old honorific system, inaccurate in the old honorific system, or the actually correct modern marriage-neutral address. Holle Katrina the doll doesn't seem like she's styled as a grown woman, but the fan likely was. Even if LDD didn't know the honorific customs, there's evidence the real Holle Katrina would have been old enough for the ignorant to default to "Frau" regardless.

There's actually a pretty good selection of German or possibly-German LDD characters. There's also Walpurgis the ancient pagan witch, Mephistopheles of Faust, and Hansel and Gretel. Then Ella Von Terra could maybe be German if her name isn't purely a pseudonym, and the Cabaret references in her series work for the idea because that story is set in Germany. Holle is only German by circumstance, though. Her "concept" is only German insofar as the person she's based upon being a German citizen.

Here's a rewrite of the certificate poem:

Frau Holle Katrina

Had undying love 

For everything dark and infernal

Devoted, she won

And even past death

She'll be a Living Dead Doll eternal

Holle Katrina's hat is constructed exactly like Ember's in Series 18, but the material is slightly thinner and more flexible despite being very similar. 

The tip is sewn down in a crook like Ember's hat, and the band and buckle are the same as Ember (and Salem afterward), just with Holle's band being white. The hat maybe could have stood to have a wider cone, but it can pull down properly on Holle Katrina's head. Here's the hats together.

I wasn't worried about this hat causing stains because it only touches black hair on Holle.

Her hair is a unique style in the brand, being a choppy tomboyish chin-length black bob that's trimmed behind the ear and feels very 1990s-goth to me. 

She has bangs, but the hair is oddly rooted with a side part at a fairly steep diagonal angle, not a center part like you'd usually see with this shape. 

The parting doesn't at all impact the visual of her hair, which makes it strange it's even done this way.

Holle Katrina's skin is a pale lively human color, and her paint is relatively tame, possibly in reflection of being based on a real human who likes creepy things. 

As such, she's one of the least scary or undead-looking dolls in the brand, but there's absolutely a place for pretty, lively witches. Her brown eyes have small irises with single white dot reflections and her upper lashes are quite elegant, with thicker wings and thinner lashes combined. It's similar to the fancier "doll eye" art style I saw with Jennocide. On her lower lids, Holle has very long spidery lines that evoke insect legs, tear marks, or cracks in a very goth flair. Her lips are solid candy-red and give her a nice smile. She has high-arched wicked brows similar to S1 Sadie's. Her eyes have some airbrushing around them for some shading, too. There was a dark spot on her face below her lower left lashes, but it cleaned up easily. The white of her sclerae is slightly overdrawn beyond the edges of each eye in a way that isn't deliberate.

Holle Katrina's dress is a little frilly, a little witchy, and a little edgy all in one. Like with Ember's costume, it's sewn to look like it has an open jacket layer over a strapless dress, but it's all one piece. The tights are separate.

The "jacket" section has a white collar trim that throws back to Puritan Salem styles, while the shoulders are puffed. 

The sleeves are the stripy knit used for several LDD tights, done in black and white here. This fabric is also used for the actual tights on Holle, and the fabric style was previously used specifically for a witch's striped tights on Ember, too, in different colors.

The bodice of the implied "strapless dress" layer has a suggested sweetheart neckline and three stacked buckled straps done in black with silver buckles that have sharper corners than the one on her hat. None of the other LDD witches use this sharp buckle shape anywhere. 

The stacked buckles obviously allude to a witch's buckles, but they might also be visually replacing corset laces in a fun gag...and excess straps and buckles are common in edgy alternative fashion as well! 

The skirt of the dress is very poofed and above the knee, with a very frilled trim on the lower edge. There's a layer of tulle inside keeping it puffed out. 

The skirt rises higher and puffs out further in front than in the back, which probably wasn't a deliberate stylistic touch, but it does seem to be consistent in the manufacturing of Holle Katrina dolls. 

The all-white and all-black fabrics of the dress are all satiny, but the tights and hat being matte grounds the outfit nicely. The Oz Walpurgis doll makes an all-satin witch costume work, but it would not work for Holle Katrina. The dress velcros down the back like normal.

As mentioned, Holle has the tights fabric for the typical stripy LDD tights, and they match her sleeves. She wears Mary Janes rather than witchy boots, also like Ember. She is sturdy inside her shoes. 

Her lower face has such striking makeup that I really liked taking pictures with her hat brim hiding the top half.

And a version with the whole face shadowed out. This felt like an antique photo...

...so I styled it as one.

Black and white goes with everything, so she suited the beautiful colors of autumn outside.

I also tried some staging with plants and color editing or full greyscale to suit her own palette.

And some pictures to push a goth aesthetic with selective colors and edgy filters.

Then I put together a photo to show her lit by a colorless candle. I lit her with white light, then used a photo of a candle greyscaled, and a digital flame effect with no color. I think this works for good atmosphere.

Here's the full coven of Halloween-suitable LDD witches now. Only two of these characters, Ember and Salem, were actually made for Halloween, but (variant) Oz Walpurgis, Lamenta, and Holle Katrina all suit the holiday perfectly.

I can see Holle Katrina still being unable to escape the impressions of not being spooky enough or original enough, for sure. But iteration is fine and welcome, and Holle Katrina is her own witch in the pool. Being the most tame-looking is her niche, as is her color palette and edgy goth fashion theme. She's not Ember, a trick-or-treat burn fatality. She's not Walpurgis as the Wicked Witch, a regal Disney-villain-tier glamor hag. She's not Salem, a tribute to old Halloween Americana and the black cat icon. And she's not even Lamenta, whose flavor of goth and witch are far less classic or modern. Holle Katrina has her place. And more is always more for me with witches.

A Shriek Across the Isle: Banshee

I'm actually not sure whether to treat this doll's name as an epithet title or a proper name. Logically, she should be "the Banshee", because banshee is a type of spirit,  but the name works on its own as a single first name too. I guess I'll stick to what's proper and treat it as an epithet.

Series 27 is LDD's "cultural" series, but I think it lands less reductive and stereotypical than most "people of the world" spotlights because these dolls are explicitly based on monster folklore and tradition, rather than coming across, intentionally or not, as a narrow portrait of the whole culture in the present day. That being said, the series does contain LDD's only explicit Chinese character and only Hawaiian/Pacific Islander character, further spotlighting that diversity was not really an interest unless it was driven by an attached concept. Non-White LDDs are never incidental, unfortunately.

Series 27 is a bit uneven. The Hopping Vampire doll, depicting the Chinese jiangshi monster, is really cool and appears to have a gloss finish to look like a traditional Chinese ceramic doll, which I love. I think Hawaiian Milu is a fairly cool-looking doll, but she's probably the most stereotypical and least okay, compounded by the fact that the deity she's based on is male in mythology. I also think there's maybe too much Euro influence, with Banshee, Mephistopheles, and Spring-Heeled Jack all being from Western Europe. 

I think there's one thing that could have tightened up the whole thing, though--if two characters in the brand had swapped series. See, Series 24 is themed around demons and includes...Yuki-Onna? The yuki-onna (snow woman) is a Japanese youkai (spirit) who kills travelers in the mountains, but many youkai don't fit the sense of "demon" anywhere beyond just being monsters and ghosts. Yuki-Onna can be called a demon, but wouldn't be connoted by the adjective "demonic". Series 24 is more about demons in the sense of Abrahamic religion and classic Ars Goetia demonology. Yuki-Onna is great, but she sticks out like a sore thumb and feels really shoehorned into the series. And Series 27 includes Mephistopheles, the bargaining demon from the German story of Faust. He fits the S27 theme, but his concept as a horn-capped deceiver demon really feels like he missed the bus on Series 24. I seriously think Mephistopheles would have made more sense released earlier in the demon series, and Yuki-Onna would definitely fit the world-folklore theme of Series 27 more. It's possible the S27 cast including three boys prevented Milu from being portrayed as male since it would otherwise be a 4:1 boys-to-girls ratio. If Yuki-Onna took Mephistopheles' place, maybe Milu could have been the third boy instead and match the mythology more. And a mix of Ireland, China, Japan, England, and Hawaii would mean no sphere of the world gets a majority in the series. If I could change the LDD timeline, I'd switch the two in a heartbeat. 

Enough rambling about that pet peeve. Whether I agree with her series placement or not, Yuki-Onna is on my long wishlist for another day. And the doll we're looking at today is (the) Banshee, representing Ireland. Both of the Banshee's editions are cool, and I think her variant especially embodies the specific niche of banshee as opposed to another kind of spirit, but the appeal of the main is that she's a fairly classic scary white-on-white humanoid ghost and slides easily into a Halloween theme. 

Banshees are characterized as fairy spirits who take the form of women, and they haunt Irish burial mounds and forests, shrieking and wailing a mournful cry as a portent of an imminent death. Whether a banshee is portrayed as old or young, or mournful or malicious, will vary. Often in pop culture, they're flattened into the idea of "screaming ghost" and given sonic superpowers, but you can also see the foretelling of death taking on a psychic element, as with telepathic Monster High banshee Scarah Screams.

My copy of the Banshee was sealed.

LDD Series 27 uses red tissue, and is one of several series that could and should have gone for something else. Red is fairly overdone. I would favor an ocean blue or maybe a yellowish tan to reflect a global/cartographic tone. Because Series 27 came out in LDD's sixteenth year, a foil sticker has been slapped on the clear coffin lid commemorating the anniversary. 

LDD did less for its sweet sixteen than it did for its thirteenth anniversary, but this was one of the two anniversary years to get a themed mainline series, with Series 28 right after being "Sadie's Sweet 16" and being a formal party series with a new Sadie at the center. The next main series based on an anniversary was Series 35, commemorating twenty years. It was also the brand's last classic series to date, giving it a melancholy tone and more significance than it may have aimed for. I may have to do a full series review on that set...though I don't anticipate collecting all six Resurrection-style mystery dolls randomly assorted within the set.

The Series 27 chipboards have an old map theme, and credit where due--Banshee's is backdropped by ancient cartography of Ireland! 

The poem says:

The Banshee is an omen of death

Once you hear the scream upon her breath

She begins to wail if someone is about to die

Cover your ears and pray she passes you by

And a rewrite.

The Banshee has signaled another new death

With terrible shrieking that leaves on her breath

Her wails are a judgment a person will die for

Pray that you aren't the one that she cries for

The Series 27 certificates are not written in verse and not styled as death certificates, instead providing a classification of the character, a brief explanation, and a date of emergence in folklore. As such, they do functionally have dates for the timeline despite them not being people who died and their dates not having the same concept. Only Milu has no date whatsoever, but the other dates can all be accurately traced to sources regarding when the monsters became well-known or codified in culture. 1380 is when the banshee was first evidenced in a recorded form. I appreciate that the note of banshees being fairy folklore is acknowledged. Banshees aren't just spooky screaming ghosts in a haunted-house sense...no matter how much that interpretation motivated the doll's acquisition here!

I couldn't pin down much about the map background of the certificate, but the inclusion of India suggests this is not personalized and that every doll in the series uses the same backing graphic on their certificates.

Here's the Banshee out of the box.

The striking thing about the doll is that she's nearly all white, with the exception of her face paint, her silver chain belt, and some grimy staining effects on her dress. The white coloring starts with her hair, which is center-parted and falls to the bottom of the shoulderblade area at the longest...and is also gelled solid in a gathered-back shape, presumably for packaging's sake.

Crunchy.

I've seen plenty of LDD's with their hair pulled under the twist that encircles the doll's neck in the box, but all of them were loose, including Agatha, whose hair is of comparable length to the Banshee's. I wonder why the Banshee's was so gelled. Did she really need it to keep the hair controlled for the coffin?

The Banshee's face is quite frightening.

Her skin is bright white, and her face pops a lot against it. Grey paint gives her wrinkles that age her face to look elderly, as well as put stress lines in her forehead to intensify her scream. An unusual smudgy, fuzzy paint technique outlines and sinks in her eye sockets. It's like a midpoint between the painterly eye shading seen on many dolls since Series 2 and the sooty eye shading of Alison Crux. I haven't seen another doll with eye shading quite like this.

Comparison of eye shading types--Alison, Banshee, Faith.

Banshee's eyes themselves have flat solid-red irises in black sclerae, making them look like they're in dark sockets, and the same flat red outlines the inner edge of each eye. Banshees have been described as having reddened eyes from crying too much, and this paint can evoke a stylized red eye and waterline. I'm frankly shocked neither edition of the Banshee goes for the imagery of creepy tear-streaks under the eyes as a result. Several other Living Dead Dolls have, but LDD's Banshee sheds no tears, apparently.

Her mouth has yellow teeth and a pink tongue, and is outlined by stark black with a jagged effect as if her mouth is tearing from the force of her scream. Very very similar mouth paint featured on The After in Series 29 not long...after.

My Banshee's cheek wrinkles are not symmetrical, and her left iris is a bit misaligned.

Still, what a scary face.

The Banshee's dress is very simple and relatively humble, and has an unfinished shabby fraying effect. The material might be linen. 

The dress has no collar accent and has a fairly wide triangular neckline. The bodice is cut to shape, but not tailored by extra seams. There's no sewing around the waist, and the shape just flows outward into a great flowy triangular floor-length skirt. I love the silhouette. 

The sleeves are the most dramatic feature, with multiple layers of fabric to create a wide cuff and the effect of a trailing extra-long wide sleeve. While these seemed to be tidy fabric that formed actual long fully-enclosed sleeves on the chipboard, the mass-produced doll instead has a cuff layer and a layer sewn inside that creates something of a second cuff and includes the trailing accent.

It's not super polished, but the dress isn't necessarily meant to be with its deliberately thin, fraying appearance. Still, the billowing sleeves lend the costume an element of grandeur that make the Banshee feel mystical or somewhat noble. It also adds to her drama and silhouette when posing.

Subtle greyish-brown stains that pair well with her eye shading appear across the dress as a deliberate stylistic effect. I did notice some reddish staining on the back that also seemed to get to her ankles, so I don't think those ones are deliberate. The dress velcros down the back.

The Banshee is a barefoot doll, suiting a shabby spirit who haunts outdoors.

Around her waist, the Banshee has a metal chain belt which is secured with a simple single-loop knot. This obviously doesn't stay tightened super well, so it needs to be adjusted from time to time. I suppose I could add in a metal link hidden in myself, crossing between the lines to keep it closed, but it's not much of a hassle.

The Banshee's body is entirely unpainted below the head, which is fine. I think this may help in one aspect--underwear paint could be at risk for showing through the fabric of her dress, but I don't think LDD would have chosen a dark color if she had that detail anyway.

There was a spot of grime on her neck.

I took Banshee down to clean, and her hair turned out very soft and her neck cleaned up. The hair isn't super thick, but it's okay.

My first staged photos tested out the blacklight on her, and she lit up beautifully.

There's something Shakespearean about her presence here. Shakespeare dealt in England and Scotland and Rome and Italy, but never Ireland. The Banshee makes a good argument for why he ought to have!

Her face overexposed by the light made for a fun abstract image.

She looked good more defined with an all-white portrait too.

Then I took her outside for a modicum of forest imagery with the scenery I have available.

And she did find a recent death to mourn, hanged from a tree. Both dolls arrived on the same day, so I figured they could cross over to tease the latter, who won't be posted until November.

Here she is swallowed by leafy plants.

And in a field of spooky Irish green.

And against some other plants to let her hair "float".

Then I took her out later to the same tree to play with colored lighting.

And a version with red and green light, which I switched to orange and green for Halloween and Irish imagery combined.

And some pictures against the Irish flag to suit the cultural-showcase theme of the series.

And now to lean more into the generic-ghost Halloween appeal. I put together two versions of faux-antique ghost photography using staircase images I found and edited images of the Banshee. The second is more stylized and colorful to push the holiday theme more.

And isolated in a floaty pose on a black backdrop.

And on orange in a hair-floating scream.

The Banshee works well with Eleanor unshrouded and Bloody Mary in a trio of old European castle ghosts, even coming across as a direct aesthetic midpoint between the two.

She also works with Revenant and Eleanor shrouded in a trio of Halloween ghosts.

In that sense, she has the same versatility as Eleanor, but without requiring any physical changes to shift her from one aesthetic to the other. 

The Banshee is a really fun doll. She's spooky, scary, and elegant in her own frightening way, and does succeed as an eerie old Irish fairy spirit from ancient times, while still having appeal as a ghost for any occasion. I'm not discussing her variant here, because I do fully intend to get it someday as another feature, but that doll feels less generic to me. I think it was smart designing Banshee with a broader appeal for the main edition, and she does it without feeling reductive or inaccurate...from where I'm standing as an outsider. But like with Series 7, LDD Series 27 does display effort and research toward its concept, even as some details are changed or potentially stereotypical (Milu). Largely, Series 27 isn't as out-of-touch as I might expect from LDD, so that's something. And the Banshee is a nice little terror.

Thus concludes this seasonal assorted roundup! Of the three dolls, I think Lilith is an easy favorite. Her aesthetic is perfectly on point for horror cartoon camp, and her stake feature is so special. The Banshee and Holle Katrina both got me into fun aesthetics with a lot of fun atmosphere even if I don't find them to be all-timers. They're still good dolls with a lot of charm and spirit. 

I could easily put together a holiday roundup for Christmas, but my plans with LDD this December are going to take another tack and there definitely won't be room for a roundup trio within my December 2024 plan. I was glad to have the space to do so for Halloween this year, however!

The celebration continues just a bit further for October, however. Stay tuned.