Living Dead Dolls Roundup 12

 

This one ended up all ready to post during April, before the second uncomfortable roundup, but I decided to pace it out and leave it for after. Let's begin!

The Girl Who Saw Too Much: Iris

Iris comes from Series 13, and her name isn't from the flower or rainbow goddess. Iris is based on the superstition of the evil eye, the belief that a malicious gaze can actually curse you and manifest evil. Iris saw so much evil before she died that she resurrected with an evil eye on her right which spreads doom to all it looks upon. Iris is also LDD's mod 1960s city girl, which I love, and she debuted a very rare head sculpt of interest, as just one of two dolls with the sculpt. I wasn't so sure if her hair would work out, and her footwear absolutely needed replacing, but she had the promise of a layered outfit, which is unusual for LDD! She was one of those dolls who drew me more and more over time.

My Iris was sealed just to guarantee she had her piece of the Series 13 lucky charm. I'm not yet committed to completing S13, at least not soon at any rate, but in the event I do want to get everybody, I want to make sure I have all the pieces as I go because you can't find them separately and "backtracking" to get the charm completed would require buying new copies of dolls I had. I had to take that kind of hit previously in the task of assembling four table legs for Series 23 after one of the dolls turned out to be incomplete inasmuch as not having their table leg.

Iris's tissue color is different than the impression I got from Evangeline's. Evangeline's tissue looked like a purplish brown tone that I'd also seen on Captain Bonney's coffin.

Because I had these two matching, I thought that was just the way the tissue was, but Iris's is more definitely blue-grey in the "black" tone that many LDD releases have...so I think Evangeline's and Bonney's tissue color just aged and made me think Series 13 had a separate tissue color from the "black tissue" LDD sets afterward.

Here's her chipboard.

The poem says: 

With a quick glance or a long stare

She fills you with a sense of despair

It's an ugly affliction with which you've been struck

Her evil eye has cast you a spell of bad luck

And a very loose rewrite.

With just a glance, or worse, a glare

You're struck with terrible despair

An evil eye may just be someone's bad will

But hers is pure evil, a look that can kill!

Iris's death date is the May 20, 1964, the release date of the Mario Bava thriller film The Girl Who Knew Too Much, distributed in English as...The Evil Eye.

Iris draws her aesthetic from this period and the proto-giallo tone of the film, but her look is also directly inspired by imagery from the film and one of its posters:

The face.

The costume--the protagonist wore this when she witnessed a murder scene, and this is the morning after--she fainted.

The character Iris is visually referencing is an American woman visiting in Italy, though it's an Italian film and the actress was Italian, so it's kind of up to you what Iris's background is.

The US edit of the film has been subsumed by the original Italian cut and title, but the name of the Evil Eye release of the film is the key to this doll's artistic context.

The certificate poem says:

Being a voyeur of the wicked cost her so dearly

She died seeing all that was evil so clearly

Now she is back from the dead anew

Looking to share her cursed point of view

And a loose rewrite.

Her last waking moments were sights of such ill

That the evil itself was enough then to kill

Now walking the earth with her eye so corrupted

All places she's been to, the evil's erupted

Iris's neck wire tying her into the box was thinner and black, not the usual wire type that would match the ankle wires.

Iris's part of the Series 13 luck charm "for you!" forms the "figure-eight" aspect of the sulfur symbol. I'm not able to assemble anything from Iris and Evangeline's pieces because I don't have the shaft which most of the parts thread onto. Evangeline had one of the horizontal bar shapes.

Here's the doll unboxed.

Iris's hair is a short parted bob in Halloween orange, which is distinctive but perhaps not the first thing I'd think of for a sixties aesthetic. It works for the series, though, with Simone being blonde, Evangeline being light brunette, and Jacob and Morgana having black hair. The vivid orange also works with Simone's blue, Jacob's bright red, and Morgana's vivid purple. The character she's loosely based on had a wavier bob and some wispy bangs, though the Evil Eye poster above shows a hairstyle more like Iris's. I was concerned about the amount of forehead showing, which I did not think flattered her. I saw an Iris with hair laying across her face in more of a parted frame that I really liked, but I couldn't risk buying her because she wasn't sealed and I couldn't confirm she had her charm piece. Iris's hair is gelled and not very thickly rooted.

I'll need to see if I can get more of it to lay across her face.

Iris's head sculpt debuted on her, featuring a raised scar in the shape of a pentagram around her right eye, with the scar being large enough to cross over the bridge of her nose. This is the only atypical part of the sculpt, but it's prominent. 

The scar is not singled out by paint and it sits above the face, making it look like an old cut that has healed into this shape, or else demonically extruded from her face. Her face is painted with a grey left eye and a brow above it, with the eye having a glam low lid and lashes all on the side, looking very chic. The eyebrow above the eye is thick and swoops down toward her ear without a malicious expression, but Iris's face looks heavy and determined enough that I don't trust her. I can believe she's just as evil as her eye. Grey airbrushing is used a lot, shading both eye sockets and being used for her lips rather than lipstick paint. The star scar gets in the way of a brow on the right, so there is none painted there, and the evil eye is depicted as a red pinprick in a black void that fits the standard sculpted eye shape. This is perhaps a little boring for the design, but it's effective, and the shadowed look of the socket makes sense given the Evil Eye poster. The airbrushed shading around the eyes does fall on top of the scar, and it feels a little off, but it's fine. The evil eye socket is not recessed into the head, but the raised walls of the scar around it create the tactile illusion that it's deeper. The scar itself has some rougher texture around the lines that feels both more organic and more hand-sculpted in ways I like. It's uncomfortable and scary despite being bloodless.

This head sculpt would be dug back up late in the game twenty series later for its second and final appearance on Larmes de Sang in Series 33, where the scar is filled with red inside the outlines and blood drips down while the socket is painted to look empty. 

Her face looks like it's been very freshly brutalized, but this interpretation makes the raised contour of the pentagram less logical, because it would ideally be indented in Larmes' context unless she had the scar previously and it was unrelated to the current emptying of her eye socket. I can see myself getting Larmes sometime to complete Series 33 and put it to bed, but she hasn't been cheap enough for me to go in yet and I knew I definitely wanted to discuss Iris with the head sculpt before Larmes.

Iris's costume is dominated by a treacherous vinyl-fabric black trench coat.

The condition of the material is okay now, but the finish has already gotten grainy from flaking material and particles have come off on my fingers. This is the best it's ever going to be, too. The coat has lapels and a collar and a belt threaded through loops with a working buckle, but it's not a buckle with a pin and holes on the belt. The belt is a separate piece and undoes like the real thing.

Ugh. It's a nice piece and I value the visual aesthetic which feels so separate from other LDDs, but the material is killing me. I also just know LDD could have used a material to sew that wasn't a coating that could flake off. They used full-composition plastic fabrics for Gabriella and Nurse Necro's smocks and for Toxic Molly's mask. If someone puts me in charge of a doll line, I will veto this kind of vinyl-coated fabric absolutely. There are alternatives and this material is antithetical to collectible merchandise.

The bright side, though, is that when the vinyl all deteriorates and peels off, Iris will be left with a serviceable black coat still, just with a matte look, and it could even help her retro look. While the shiny coat is sixties, the black color leans toward leather jacket toughs and a matte coat in black could look more city-chic. 

Calico's dress isn't as good as it was, either, despite trying my best to keep her out of heat and light. I'm fine with her vinyl coating going too, but when that happens, the dress will have to be dyed to regain its color, since the fabric underneath is white.

Since using dimensional glossy fabric paint layered over Lust's vinyl costume seems to show promise for preservation, I might seem a red paint of the same type to coat over Cal's dress. 

I was excited that Iris had a dress under her coat, but not so excited by its execution. It's a white sixties turtleneck dress with no sleeves...but it's made just like a Series 1 piece, fleecy fabric and all, and it's not opaque.

This girl could rock this dress on display, and I can absolutely edit and light to make her rock this dress for photos, but this is weak for this era of LDD. I like this crappy fleecy quality on Series 1 because it makes sense and works there. For Series 13 and for a doll with this aesthetic, we can't be doing Series 1 felts and translucent dresses. This under-layer feels like a pure throwaway made only to fill out the look with the coat on. It's not meant to be a viable display on its own. Shame, because this is a really good cut for her! I just don't know if it's great with the coat. The high neck of the dress contradicts the V opening of the coat.

Under the dress, Iris has black mesh footie tights, and over the nets, Iris is wearing standard white socks and black Mary Janes. The dark top of the tights is visible through the dress, and taking them off doesn't make the dress translucency better because Iris also has painted underwear in black, and that will show through instead.

In addition to ankle socks over nets striking me as a fashion faux pas (was this done to make her shoes fit better???), this is stylistically unacceptable. The girl desperately needs boots. She's a sixties city lady in a trench coat. You give her boots! The character in The Evil Eye paired this coat with heels and nothing on her legs, so you could argue the LDD sandals (the only fancy woman's shoe until the debut of the LDD Presents heel-foot leg and paired high-heel mold late on with Elvira) would be the right choice here too, but I see a sixties trench and I want to put boots on the lady wearing it.

Fortunately, I have some to spare. 

I took Iris to wash and comb and boil her hair for shape, and popped some pointy boots on her. She kept the white socks on just to tighten the boots, but they don't show from angles except the back. I also trimmed her hair a bit to keep the bob silhouette, since it loosened and looked less like it was originally intended to after washing. I slightly regret the haircut, at least the length of it, as I feel, more often than not as I look at her, that I went a little too short.

I thought she looked more chic and like the Evil Eye film character without the dress or tights at all. This can read as more glam, but has the downside of making her look like a flasher--something, perhaps, the dress was designed to counteract?

The first photos played on lighting and her scar. I made her evil eye glow with editing effects in post. 

This first one feels like a moody color sixties film shot.

And this was just to highlight her sculpt.

Then I took her coat off to work with her dress. Here's just a headshot on orange.

Then I spent time designing a custom wallpaper pattern for her. I was thinking of using it behind a cutout of her to construct fake scenery, in lieu of being able to print it and make in-camera wallpaper for her, but I decided to just use a headshot above it with some edits because the fake scenery wasn't convincing. Here's one unit of the pattern to show off the details:

And a spread of it:

And the composed headshot:

Then some scenery in the orange space:

You see her at a party...

...then you wish you hadn't.

Fortunately, I don't need the completed Series 13 charm to deal with her. There's a real-world talisman designed specifically for Iris alone.

While these blue eyes are called "evil eyes", they're meant to protect from the proverbial evil eye. I decided to put this one on a cord and hang it on her neck to neutralize her, just in case. As with Lilith and her stake, I like playing at the fantastical idea of "sealing" these dolls for my own protection!

Iris prefers to be free.

I don't have fancy metropolitan scenery around, but Iris seems like she's on the seedier side of the city anyway with her tough coat and evil eye, so I put her in and around the garage for some creepy photos like she's a figure of urban legend with various sightings--"the girl with the evil eye".

Iris's coat was deteriorating so rapidly at this point that I decided to put it out of its misery and dunked it in boiling water and scrubbed it of the vinyl coating. I'd prefer a matte black coat now over a slowly dying irreparable vinyl finish that gets over my fingers each time I touch it. There was simply no going back for this coat, so accelerating the process was just meeting the inevitable sooner and expediting the doll finding a nicer stable point. This was before I got Lust and tried the fabric paint on her. I would consider doing that with Iris now, but what was done was done.

Here's the coat now matte. There are still a few small shiny patches where the adhesive remains, but it's overall cleaned. I am sad about the damage and the original coat had something, but this was going to happen eventually regardless without intervention.

I also decided to do this with the peeling "leather" of Bonney's belt and pants. I heated her boot to pop it off her right leg and heated her right arm and left leg to pop out her pirate prosthetics so she could be undressed. This revealed that the hook pops onto a grey peg embedded in the forearm, while the peg leg pops onto a peg built into the shortened leg sculpt.

I'm not sure why both pegs aren't done the same way. Why does the arm have an implant when the leg was sculpted with the peg as part of the mold? This makes me even more curious about the hooks that came later. On The Hook in Series 17, the urban-legend killer's piece was designed to pop onto the bone at the end of the severed-hand sculpt so The Hook's piece can be removed. Later hook-handed dolls all used The Hook's piece but I don't know how it was attached. Hayze has gauze on her arm around the hook cup locking it in place, but the Madame's hook in Series 30 or Resurrection Angus's could probably be investigated to figure out what was done with the later hook hands.

Here's a Hitchcock-esque poster, tried two ways.

And a simpler poster without the doll. I wanted a take on the classic evil-eye talisman.

Here's some contrast shots in black-and-white thriller mode.

I then assembled a collage of evil-eye objects and this was where I started to fully understand Iris's design, because with this juxtaposition, it looks like perhaps her orange hair and her red eye were chosen to be direct contrasts to the classic talismans which would oppose her. Evil eye warding talismans are all blue, so her being all warm, with predominant orange, makes her design more logical.

Alright, Iris. Fair play.

Iris is a fun doll, but it feels like a lot is just slightly to the side of where I'd like her best. Her hair color and shape are a bit strange, her evil eye is striking but maybe not the design I'd have chosen, her coat is fun but it's simply doomed to decay, and her footwear is a really weird choice that doesn't work with her tights. I also think my handling of Iris was kind of a flop, and I'd redo how I approached her hair and coat with a second copy. I have a clear vision for a custom redesign of Iris, so maybe I will get a second-chance copy so I can give the doll a better pass at tidying and preservation, and turn Iris 1 into the copy I customize into a pseudo-Resurrection. That can be its own update and project post when that happens.

This wasn't my favorite doll, and I did her no favors this go around, but she is a worthy justifiable aesthetic at the end of the day and of the two dolls with her sculpt, I like the way she does it better. Perhaps she's not a sight for sore eyes, but she's not an eyesore either. I had fun with her and I can pledge to do better with her when given another chance.

Mysterious as Love and Death: Annabel Lee

This is an atypical solo incomplete doll I'm collecting, and if you don't know this doll and you do know my blog, you are going to be wondering why I wanted her, and especially why I wanted her enough to get her solo, for a while. Trust me on this. You know it's something good.

Annabel Lee was originally released in a two-pack set with a doll depicting a real person: Gothic writer Edgar Allan Poe. The set also included a book of dark stories as a prop and the Raven, using a new mold separate from the cartoonish shrieking Ole Crow from Series 6.

Photo of the contents of the coffin they shared.

Poe is, of course, just a depiction of the real historical man as he is famously known. Annabel Lee, however, is Poe's fictional creation, and is the lost love written about in Poe's final published poem, titled the same as her name. In the poem, the speaker tells of how perfectly in love he and Annabel Lee were, until a cold wind chilled her to the bone and killed her, something he attributes to the angels in heaven envying how pure their love was. To this day, the speaker waits at her tomb by the sea, loving her eternally. LDD's poems for this set frame her like a real person Poe memorialized, and while that could be partly true, her name and story is fictional. I think the most famous female name from Poe by far would be the "lost Lenore" from "The Raven" (enough so that I kind of found the Raven motif in the newest Hunger Games book to be a bit obvious and unclever, though the book is otherwise impressive in its literary subtleties). Pairing LDD Poe with Annabel Lee is an unexpected deeper cut. Both fictional Poe women are associated with death and mourning, but Annabel Lee holds a less bitter place in longing. "The Raven" features the speaker tormented by a deathly bird that will not leave and which stands to tell him he will never see Lenore again, while in "Annabel Lee", there is only a devoted partner whose heart still belongs to the dead woman, and not a sense of terror or finality. (I honestly think Sunrise on the Reaping might have felt less obvious if Haymitch's Covey girlfriend was named Annabel Dove with a thematic reference to this poem instead, given how the story ultimately finishes with him still belonging to his love beyond her death.) I think Annabel Lee was chosen by LDD as the character to pull from Poe's works because she was from his last poem, giving her a more haunting edge and theming the dolls more on the death of the real writer--which was, by the way, a mysterious event that still isn't fully understood.

While I like Poe as much as anybody, I'm not so much of an aficionado that I needed his doll. Maybe my opinion will change, but I'm still pretty far on the side of preferring LDD to depict original characters or public-domain fiction over real people or licensed materials. I'm in LDD more for horror stories than fandom objects. An obscure Poe literary character in Annabel Lee is more my speed than a doll of Poe himself. (I'd also welcome a Fortunato and Montressor duo, with a jester hat and wine bottle for the former, and the LDD cake server repurposed as a mortar knife for the latter.) 

But of course, that niche literary appeal can't be the only reason I went for Annabel Lee, can it?

On first glance, LDD Annabel Lee looks downright normal. Downright wholesome. Downright presentable. I could bring this doll to a church and nobody would object. A child could play with her and see no issue, beyond, perhaps, her being too fine and fancy for a clumsy kid. She looks like an antique bride doll. You wouldn't look like a freak having her on display in a public part of your house--maybe you'd be the antique doll weirdo, but she wouldn't identify you as a horror fan. Heck, ask a million people to name this character, and they can't! Who would see anything but a generic Victorian bride?

But you know what they say about assumptions...

Annabel Lee is one of two LDD original designs with a classic bridal look. She's preceded by Died (of wedding couple Died and Doom), and Died has two Resurrection variants as well, leaving four dolls with a bridal look in LDD's unlicensed cast, three of which being Died. LDD Presents also offers La Llorona from The Curse of La Llorona, bridal-dress Lydia Deetz from Beetlejuice, and veiled Tiffany Valentine from Bride of Chucky. Of the three Presents brides, La Llorona has the most classic traditional dress. Lydia has her iconically offbeat red dress, and Tiffany has a leather jacket over her dress.

Annabel (is it Annabel, or is her first name two words and Annabel Lee is the minimum address?) starts with her veil, which I believe was meant to be hooked onto her hair bun with an elastic, but whatever means it attached to has long since disintegrated, and left no evidence behind. I received the veil as a totally loose piece with no indication of how it was properly worn. 

No sign of attachment.

Letting it rest on the bun makes the veil look too far back on her head where you can't see the rosettes on top from a front view, so perhaps her bun also needs pulling upward? I was content to let the veil sit on her loose for the time being.

The veil falls in a fairly dimensional parted curtain shape behind her head and is a cream fabric that's fairly opaque, and is topped with the same fabric bunched into rosettes, with green ribbon paired so it all mimics white flowers and leaves.

The veil falls to the doll's ankles and has a relatively narrow silhouette, not widening much at the bottom or falling much wider than the body.

Of the veiled LDDs, Annabel has the longest and most opaque veil. If you flip it to fall over her, she looks really ethereal. I did this by turning the veil backward rather than folding the fabric over to fall over her face, since the veil isn't secured to the bun on my copy.

I genuinely wasn't sure whether the Poe set was during the swivel era or the ball-joint era, but I can confirm these were ball-joint dolls. The ball-joint releases that use the double coffin packaging seem to be these, Nosferatu and Victim, Romeo and Juliet, American Gothic (both editions? I know the second edition had ball joints, and if the first were swivels, then the man would be the only swivel LDD with a gripping hand, which I doubt is the case), and the Psychobillies. 

Annabel Lee's hair is reddish brown and is styled in a back bun about in the middle of the head, neither very high nor low. It might have been higher at the start. The elastic band on the bun has disintegrated, but the hair has held its shape rather than spilling loose. It looks like this may be more curled into bun form than wrapped, but I won't poke at it. 

The hair did start uncurling, and I needed the bun higher anyway, so retying it with cord replaced the elastic, made the hair tighter, and raised the bun so the veil sat better.

As is typical, she's rooted soley for her updo, with no hair within the perimeter line.

In front, she has curly bangs.

Her face is pretty simple, but still stands out on account of being painted with closed eyelids as if in her eternal slumber of death. No other LDD has fully-closed eyes. She has angled brown eyebrows that don't look that malicious in context, pale blue covering her sockets with black lashes on the bottom to convey closed eyelids, and the same blue for her lips, which does add a slight dead look to her, but not much. Her skintone is a pale flesh color that a living person could easily have.

There is a very simple beauty and appeal to this face.

Annabel Lee appears, along with her veil, to be dressed in a Victorian wedding dress to play on the classically Gothic juxtaposition of marriage and a funeral. Annabel Lee being dressed this way could be taken literally, as in she died on her wedding day and this was how she was buried, in the nicest dress she had, or it could be metaphorical--Annabel Lee will always be the bride of the poem's speaker even after death. The poem doesn't clarify if the couple were ever literally wed, but Annabel is referred to as the speaker's bride. 

The dress has a wide rectangular neckline that rings true to the era, and another rosette-and-leaves accent trims the collar, with tidier rosettes here made from a shinier material. The sleeves are slightly puffed upward and are gathered above the elbow into a second segment, which is gathered again at a wrist fill. The sleeves have a baggy fit and hang a bit below the wrist. The body of the dress has ribbon trim vertically framing the rosettes and a high horizontal seam below the rosettes, while the rest of the shape does not widen or billow. Below the hips are two satiny ruffles, two horizontal stripes of ribbon trim below them, and lace trim at the very bottom, at the ankles. The ruffles and trim do not wrap fully around the dress, which is a bit disappointing, but the veil would cover that anyway. The back of the neckline dips down in a rectangle as well.

Annabel Lee has typical Mary Janes and white socks, but her Mary Janes are a unique cream color that matches her dress.

She looked good in a coffin in a staged Victorian home corner as if on display for a viewing or wake. I used some portraits from my dollhouse project and chose the elements to match Annabel's color palette. Ole Crow served as the raven for her scenery.

I also liked her with her veil over her face.

I also had to pop her into some moody beach photos, given her tomb by the sea and all.

And here she is in heavenly scenery.

I also took advantage of blooming pear blossoms to frame her in white flowers.

But hold on.

Back up. 

I still haven't remotely explained myself. 

Sure, this doll is pretty and she can be tragic and haunting, but come on, that's not why this doll was so exciting to me. I've been talking like there was something really special here, and you haven't seen what I mean.

Why did I seek out this doll? I don't go to LDD for pretty, mundane design. I appreciate it, I can work it...but I don't collect it. As the Gothic goes, the doll is mostly subtext. She fits into the aesthetic beautifully, but she isn't inherently visually scary or obviously morbid. And being an obscure Poe character on my shelf only goes so far. What is there to this doll? What does she really have that grabbed me???

A secret, that's what. An awesome secret that separates her from her two-pack companion and makes her entirely worthwhile on her own. She looks normal, but there's an entirely different way to view her. And I think the best way to introduce this surprise is through video. Observe:

Yes, there were filtering effects to age the film and remove the color, but that clip was one single shot and those last seconds were entirely in-camera. Didn't quite process? Well, the doll transformed!

The secret of LDD Annabel Lee is that she has a hidden face layer painted with invisible glow paint! (This actually stays glowing for a fair amount of time--not multiple minutes or anything, but it doesn't fall off as quickly as some other LDD glows I've encountered.) When she's in deep darkness, her glowing face heavily changes her expression so her eyes are open, her mouth is open, and her face is contoured like a skull! I had initially thought it was just her eyes glow-painted so they "opened" in the dark, but learning she had a whole second face, and how it was cleverly done, turned this doll into a must-have.

The nose isn't left out of the glow paint, so she doesn't have a skeletal nasal cavity on the glow face. Perhaps her nose was too raised for that illusion to work, but the face still looks good. Macumba also had a skull-style face paint design with nothing making the nose look hollow.

I confess I had to misrepresent the doll a little to preserve the secret and I edited some photos beforehand to hide this gimmick. While the glow paint on her face is mostly really subtle and just makes the finish and color look slightly strange, the pupils stand out on the eyelids in a fairly clear way that's a little disappointing, but not too apparent unless she's up close. I masked this aspect in the previous pictures. 

While I really like Annabel's faceup colors, something the glow paint would have blended better with on the eyelids might have been an improvement, or else Annabel's eyes could be left pupil-less on the glow face. While there's a great thrill in the doll "opening her eyes" in the dark, she'd look fine just with the eyes outlined as dark hollows, and that would benefit her display in the light. The paint here still clearly conveys her eyes are open on this face, even if there's no visible eye inside.

This would work.

With the application on this copy, there is a patch right under her left eye that glows brighter than the rest.

Here's some pictures to show how the glow paint face layers over. It really doesn't read right without pure darkness.

I do think the glow face looks even better with black-and-white camera imagery just because the glow looks white and ghostly. I did also find some success with the blacklight passing over her in light to make the skull flicker across her face as a brief vision. The blacklight coming as a shadow when converted to colorless footage also helps the idea of Death's shadow passing across her!

It also works fine with less-than-total darkness when in black-and-white.

This is such a perfect concept for a doll. Not only is the lovely corpse turning monstrous very tonally Gothic, but the glow face layer feels exactly like an old-fashioned theatrical special effect from Annabel's time, harmonizing with her Victorian horror theme. A stage actor could replicate this as makeup to transform them in darkness. I'm also reminded of film effects where red and blue makeup designs were painted simultaneously onto a person, then lighting switched from one color to the other so the matching colors were made invisible and the actor appeared to magically transform on film, which was black-and-white and didn't reveal the color trick. Leveraging black-and-white also makes the glow effect here shine. 

I was admittedly nervous about even getting Annabel because I was so worried about the glow paint being painfully obvious and making the doll unviable in the light, but only the eyes really have that issue due to the color of her eyelids, and this is a problem common to the doll's copies. I'm not sure if the glow paint discolors and becomes more obvious with age, but I feel fairly confident Annabel's glow paint wouldn't have changed since new. It's not a perfect hidden gimmick, but it's better than it might have been, and the eyes aren't so glaring. From a polite distance, they're not so noticeable. 

A similar glow gimmick would be done for Resurrection The Lost, who has a Victorian aesthetic and makeup that's a little bit mime, a little bit clown, a little bit skull. 

I'm not sure if there's a deliberate reference to Pennywise from the more recent It movies. While the face makeup is strikingly similar, and first-look images of the clown's character design, which were just the face, were revealed before Res X shipped and ended up in collectors' hands, it's a very narrow window of time and it would be strange for The Lost to be based on a character design from a movie that hadn't even come out and proven itself yet. This could be a case of very close parallel thinking. 

The variant is less clowny but still has a similar skull line.

I believe on both dolls, the region above the skull contour line had hidden glow paint so the dolls' faces glowed with a skull shape in the dark. The idea is a lot more hidden and more tonally surprising with Annabel Lee.

I've also discovered surprise localized glow paint on Bloody Mary. On her, it's used very sparingly, only to highlight her irises, but it's a terrifying effect.

I've also read that Jinx's dolls as the Cheshire Cat have hidden glow paint on her smile, which is a brilliant way to interpret the Cat's trait of vanishing with its smile being the last thing to go. Putting the doll in the dark will show a glowing grin and nothing else!

I feel like LDD Present's La Llorona could work pretty well as a counterpart to Annabel as a fellow spooky bride. She could even be played as the lost Lenore if you wanted. She certainly isn't getting very far on her own name recognition. The movie didn't leave much mark.

This was a shot I got while filming the video reveal of Annabel's gimmick. I liked the lighting and colors here.

Here's some pictures playing with the veil and lighting and her glow.

And another shot by the sea, darkened in the scary look.

And with a mix of very directed lighting and a board to make a shadow, plus some editing in post, you can get a good half-and-half shot.

Here's a rewrite of part of her poem to suit the doll.

It was many and many a year ago

In a kingdom by the sea

That a corpse there rotted whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee

And this body did wear the visage of Death

For all who loved her to see

Annabel Lee earns her place in the collection. She may look wholesome and oddly normal, but she's got a sinister secret--and I love a sinister secret. A pretty doll that turns into a nightmare when the lights are out is just a fun concept, and the execution is a clever technique that recalls old-timey special effects as well as playing a Gothic theme to the hilt. This bride in death is a specter and a ghoul resting less peacefully than she looks! I love a novelty done well, and this one (mostly) is. Even if you catch the hidden pupils, you'll be hit with a much bigger surprise when you try them out. I appreciate her as a lesser-known literary character, too, and even if you just wanted to appreciate her in the daylight, she stands well on those grounds. The doll being so video-horror friendly also adds a super fun dimension to her. She was a blast to film with lighting effects to show off her transformation--including this GIF below of turning the lights off and back on! 

She's a lovely doll. Until she's not!

I'll end with this. This is riffing on The Raven, but I love the meter.

There she lay, like deeply dreaming

But in darkness, she was screaming

Screaming, screaming like the ghouls that sleepless walk the earth so free

How I wished her peaceful rest

But terror gripped my heaving chest

As I then saw the shrieking face of Annabel, my darling Lee

Shaking in my bones I knew the two of us would never be

And that she was never free

He Rode a Pale Horse: Death (Horsemen of the Apocalypse)

This one was determined for me by my means of getting Famine for the second uncomfortable roundup. I won an auction by minimum bid with no challengers, in which both Famine and Death from the Horsemen of the Apocalypse series were on offer. This was a good deal for me winning the auction, especially since Death was, for my purposes, a freebie with the Famine doll I was really aiming for. I'd been casually interested in this doll until I saw the photo of the Death in the auction lot, where he didn't look like all that much actually, but getting the package and seeing the dolls in person fortunately proved this doll was all that I liked about him to start.

Because Death is the only Horseman from Revelation whose attribute is named, LDD were able to use a direct quote from the Bible for his chipboard...but like other dolls in this collection, the possessive "its" is given an incorrect apostrophe.

It's very interesting to see the word Hades mentioned in the Bible, since that only connotes the Greek/Roman polytheistic god of the underworld to me. Technically, Hades wasn't the god of death itself--that was Thanatos, so the two being separate entities makes sense, but Hades being present in the Christian version of the end-times is odd. Evidently, the term was co-opted and isn't referring to the Greek god in this context, but it's still never going to not bring that to mind.

Here he is unboxed.

Death is a very very simple doll, but he's beautifully executed. Without his horse, he's two simple pieces--body and robe, and his only real detail is the paint on his head. The rest is pure black.

His robe is made of thin unfinished linen (I think) with no special sewn details. It's a bit translucent and the tatters give the hood a shapeless quality, but it sits well on his head. The hood is not tight, so it easily tucks down off the head and pulls back up. The piece is pretty similar in construction to the robe worn by The After in Series 29, but less detailed. Both robes are this material and neither is sewn with an opening to let the doll undress. You would have to pop the head out.

The base of the robe is also shapeless and tattered and mostly covers the doll's feet.

This robe seems to be pretty similar to the Kiss of Death doll's, but Kiss of Death evidently has more shaping on the lower edge, which flares out on the floor. Kiss of Death has a white-skull and a brown-skull variant, but I don't think the robes changed between them.

The more aged brown-skull variant.

The Horseman doll has the least paint of the Grim Reaper genre of LDDs, with the only paint on his all-black body being the skull, which just on the front of the head. This a unique design among the Death iterations in the brand. Here, the skull is aged with reddish brown, and seems to depict only the upper jaw of the skull.

The paint feels very brush-stroked and almost impressionistic, and the skull is shaded and defined with brown lines and cracks that give Death an intense expression. His black eye sockets are just the base head color, but the paint "overdraws" around the shape of the sculpted eye. 

The paint goes across both lips, and up close, it looks like the lower lip could be suggesting a fragment of lower jaw:

But from a greater distance, it just looks like the teeth hanging down from the upper jaw, with the black zigzag being the shading around the tops of the teeth. That's how I like to view the design. 

I just love the flat contrast of this face paint. Even as it sits only on the front of the doll head like a mask, it feels elegant. It's so artful.

I think with the hood down, the natural LDD head sculpt gives him a boyish childlike cuteness.

All LDD reapers use the normal head sculpt of their doll type, but Horseman Death may suit the head the best thanks to the more masklike minimalism of his skull. I could see this Death as a shadow who wears a skull like a masquerade costume rather than being a full cloaked skeleton.

My only previous LDD reaper is the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, a character who only exists as a Living Dead Dolls Mini. His face has glowing eyes and more thorough skeleton paint including a lower jaw and a cranium that wraps around the head sculpt--impressive work for a tiny piece. 

I'm guessing more of the reapers are on this extent of painting wrapping around the head.

After the face, that's really it for the Horseman doll and his costume. Fastest review of all time! Of course, there is still his horse. Death's horse in the Bible is usually translated as "pale", distinct from the first rider (the one usually classed as Pestilence) who has a specifically white horse. Here, the pale color is interpreted by the hobby horse being a light grey with a slight yellow lean. 

The felt strip forming the mane is black and cut in an ethereal flowing shape that curls in a ghostly manner.

The bone print on the horse is the exact same as on Famine's, since both make sense having skeletal horses.

Death's grip on his horse is a bit tighter than my Famine's was on hers, and the horse doesn't threaten to rock and tip sideways out of the hand on this doll.

Here's some portraits with the doll.

And he makes a good match for Annabel Lee, as if she is wed to Death himself. That's a very Gothic idea. I think this particular Death suits Gothic imagery very well, while S15's more sleek and bright doll is more Halloweeny.

And to depict Death in his habits, I took a photo I could only take at this stage of the collection! A crypt full of coffins, courtesy of an emptied fireplace.

I also decided to put him by a grave. The last two pictures got taken "looking up from inside" the grave by changing the angle of my camera, holding the lens up while it was in the grave itself.

And I edited one of the pictures heavily to match the tone of the edit piece I did for Famine, even adding in the horse which I didn't stage in the raw photos.

I'm very happy with this doll. I think his look is very simple and classic, but perfectly suits a more ominous vintage depiction of the Grim Reaper with a very artsy touch thanks to the way his face paint is rendered. I love Series 15 Death (he glows in the dark and has a scythe!) and I suppose he's perfectly versatile, but next to Horseman Death, there's a starkness to him and there are niches the Horseman fits into that are so well suited to him. The auction with Famine was a really good call. I got a doll for a discussion I'd planned and a passing curiosity who validated my interest! Death here may be one of the most minimalist Living Dead Dolls, but he's not one to count out. He feels fully realized to me in a good way.

With this roundup complete, I have to say Annabel Lee is the biggest joy of the group due to her very fun and dynamic doll gimmick of a glowing second face. 

Annabel's paint isn't perfect for disguising her in normal lighting, but it's close enough to be successful and the fun of manipulating light and color for the purpose of creepy video and animation is just so fun. The gimmick suits Victorian visual effects as well as themes of death, beauty, and terror in the perfect way. Horseman Death is also an artistically strong doll who really holds his own despite his minimalist approach. Iris will have a better day when I get another chance with her. I have a better picture of how to trim her hair and how to save her coat so I'd get a better result with a fresh copy, and I can definitely see some fun coming from redesigning the one I have now. I've got ideas. 

The last two dolls in this roundup put me in a definite Gothic mood which I intend to continue shortly with a following roundup trio which will all suit a Gothic horror tone!