Gothic Living Dead Dolls Roundup (LDD Roundup #13)

My last LDD Roundup pushed me into a Gothic-horror kind of mood with its last two dolls, so I rode that vibe when some cool opportunities fit that spirit in assembling a new trio!

A Little Lost Soul: Resurrection Revenant

This is a doll I've been intrigued by for a long time (at a point, she had been an obsession during my original teenage era discovering LDD) but she hadn't been on my radar until she suddenly became available. I wasn't searching for her, but when she showed up...

Resurrection VII is a weird series because I don't fully understand what was up with its two variant sets. On the archive, one set is listed as the mains and one as the variants, but it's been said that the set listed as variants were produced in the greater quantity? The pricing isn't consistent with this idea if so, with some that Mezco calls mains being harder to find/pricier and some of the designated variants being the bigger prizes. 

Res VII did also have a gimmick where one copy of each doll (though I don't know if it was the main set or both sets) was hand-painted and marked with a golden ticket included in the coffin to signify it was special. Word is the only hand-painted doll not to be documented as discovered is Res Lust.

Revenant doesn't show up a lot in the main edition, but when she did, she was pulling at me for a long enough time that I committed to the high price and got her. I really like this doll's design and I didn't want to be kicking myself over letting her go. She's a big ticket for sure, but I just couldn't stop thinking about it. This is my fourth Resurrection doll, after Sadie, Lilith, and Isaiah.

Resurrection VII is interesting for having silver coffins, adding another group to the club after I thought it was only Series 5 and Series 25. I'm not sure why the color was chosen for this group, honestly. The print on the back of the lid is black like Series 25, not reflective silver like Series 5.

An interesting effect of this coffin color for Res VII is that LDD Dahlia has only ever been released in silver coffins. She originated in S5 as it debuted the coffin color and as the only S5 Resurrection in silver-boxed Res VII, her special coffin color remained the same across all of her dolls.

The box had a 2013 con-exclusive seal on it as a sticker, but this was applied to the removable shrink-wrap, not the clear coffin lid, so the doll loses the little sticker if you open it. The Res II dolls I've handled had the stickers on the clear lids so they remained on the packaging for owners who unboxed the dolls.

I'm not surprised to see red tissue again. Most Res releases seemed to have it. 

Res series started with an evolving chipboard portrait showing what was basically a multi-panel scene of a zombie girl crawling out of a grave in stages across the first three series (Res IV has custom window boxes and no chipboards for its two two-packs), but by Resurrection V, the imagery shifted to morgues and crypts with different settings for each series until Resurrection VIII went to custom window boxes again and then Res IX, X, and XI all had distinct coffin chipboards--IX had vintage styling for its murder-mystery theme, X had chipboards over opaque plastic lids and stark text and an X logo on black, and XI had paper dolls and doodles. Res VII is during the "divergent crypts" era of Res chipboards, and depicts a generic Living Dead Doll peeking out of some doors with occultic embelms on them.

This doll may have been an edited photograph of a hand-painted generic LDD designed for this artwork, but she reminds me a lot of the later Series 30 doll Eeriel, the manufactured mermaid. Her red eyes, apparent mouth dribble, gentle expression, and lack of visible clothing are a lot like Eeriel, though Eeriel has white hair. 

Eeriel.

Res VII keeps the same death certificate style as Res II's which I've encountered before, with the document being a reprint of the original with the color palette changed for the Resurrection version.

I wish this style of certificate had been maintained throughout Resurrection, reprinting the original pieces in this color palette. I think it's really classy. I know that by Res XI, though, they were just reprinting the original text on the current standard design template of the time, which is less special. 

Here's the doll unboxed.

Revenant here is my ideal flavor of Resurrection, capturing the features or tone (either works) of the original while changing a lot to make her a meaningful reinvention. Here, rather than a retro Halloween ghost, Revenant is depicted as a really creepy wispy thing with wings that give her a grim angelic tone, almost like a horrific graveyard cherub as an actual entity rather than a stone carving.

When I turned the doll around, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that both Resurrection Revs have hoods on their robes, not just the variant!

I hadn't dared to hope for a hood on the main doll, but I was excited to see it!

The hood and hair are bundled in back for packaging, with the hair stuffed into the hood against the doll's back, and an elastic band around the hair inside as well as around the hood surrounding the hair.

The hood doesn't want to go up without the hair all being combed forward because the hood is lightweight, wide, and shapeless like a couple of Death dolls by LDD. It's pretty darn cool when the hood works, though, and the wings can help to sort of pin the hood up and push it against the back of the head.

In fact, I rushed out to do some very early staged pictures like this before finishing the overview!

The hood is a wonderful bonus asset to the doll, but I do wish it was perhaps finished around the edges or wired around the side so it could be shaped better and hold an up position more easily. God, she's haunting, though.

Revenant's hair in both Resurrections is changed from the original S6 white color to black, though both Res Revs are rooted with basically the same center-part hair shape as S6. Long hair doesn't play the best with the wings, but I like the visual, and I think there is something correct about the hair color being dark while the rest of the doll is so white and pale. Resurrection's hair is shorter than S6's and may be a little snarly. A lot of hair came out of this doll when combed, but I waited for a wash in mild temperature to see if the doll's hair was fried or merely untidy. I fear I damaged my Res Lilith's hair by boiling it, so I didn't want to be rash here. There is a slight unintended gap between hair plugs on top.

What makes this doll so magnetic is her deeply creepy face.

She has stark white skin and retains S6 Revenant's eye shading, black skin branching, and black lips, but her paler color, dark hair, and her eyes change the doll entirely. It's shocking how much more like S6 Revenant this face becomes when the eyes are blacked out digitally--they make such a massive difference in changing the face paint.

Suddenly, it's familiar. The eyes do so much!

While this doll would work with black eyes like the original doll, the eyes she has form so much of what makes the Resurrection special to me.

Her inset eyes are white with white irises and tiny dot pupils in black which make her gaze more piercing and make her eyes look wider and more childlike. The separation between iris and sclerae appears to be painted, with opaque paint on the surface of the eye creating the sclerae around the translucent irises that look into the eye. 

There was some residue of something over Rev's left cornea, but it gently scraped off to clear her eye. While it was on, it could block her pupil at certain angles. This doll's smaller pupils give the eyes a slightly increased follow-you effect.

There's a Tim Burton-esque feeling to these big white eyes with tiny pupils, and they make the doll look so haunting. She looks like a creepy little baby, a lost child. S6 Revenant looks far more sinister with her dark empty eye sockets, and I see her as an older character than Resurrection.

You could honestly argue that Revenant's face would work for a Resurrection of another Series 6 doll, Hush--lining up S6 Rev, Res Rev, and Hush makes the faces of the latter two more similar than the former two!

Actual Resurrection Hush would come later, with a subtler approach to paint than the three dolls in the prior photo.

I do like her a lot, but I've come to consider S6 Hush one of LDD's best designs, and the Resurrection loses some things I really love about S6.

My Resurrection Revenant's lips aren't very well painted. They're a bit off-center and skewed, with the corner on the right (from our view) being less sharp and less low, making her expression look distorted.

It's disappointing to see weaker paint on a Resurrection, and I elected to gently scrape the paint to try evening the lips later on. I couldn't fix the lips entirely, but making both sides more even helped.

Revenant uses the LDD folding bat wings with white frames and white membrane, though you can see the doll plays with two subtle whites, as the frame of her wings, parts of her robe, and her body are slightly yellower than the membrane of her wings and most of her robe. 

While these wings are not avian, the color still gives her a twisted angelic tone.

If the eyes were the most aesthetically transformative part of the doll design, the wings are the most conceptually transformative, as the addition of wings to the ghostly character gives her more of a "flying soul" or angel theme, despite the batlike shape. This isn't a haunted house Halloween ghost. This is a ghost from an old Romantic graveyard, a poetic wraith searching for an afterlife. Revenant and Lilith are the two characters who gained these wings in their Resurrection, and both editions of both had them. I think it would have been fair for the Resurrection of either to have wings on only one copy, but I can see why they let both have them each. Inferno was the character who debuted these wings back in Series 4, but neither of her Resurrection dolls has them! The Resurrections share a pair of small black birdlike wings which might be attachments on the back of their dresses.

LDD, in taking archive photos of Resurrection Revenant, swapped the wings between the two designs, so main was depicted with the variant's black wings and the variant had the main's white wings. I think the main worked the black wings fine thanks to her hair, but I don't think the variant could say the same with the white wings. I'm glad the released dolls have wings matching their costume.

This is my second doll with these wings, after Resurrection Lilith. Rev's wings are mounted much lower on her torso, at the small of her back rather than just below her shoulders.

It looks a little unnatural from the back, and Lilith's wing position makes more sense, but I don't mind the wings having some variety in placement. Revenant's wing pins are screws that can be tightened with a small Phillips-head screwdriver, which I appreciate in case they ever loosen and need adjustment. Lilith's screws can't be messed with.

I did notice a gap at the top of the membrane on one side, which is not encouraging.

The wings were very heavily glued into the body, including the robe being affixed. It's heresy, but for best results with photography and tidying the doll, I needed the wings removable, so I cut around them to remove them from the robe and got them yanked out of the body. The vinyl needed some gluing to patch it up, and I used fabric glue to protect the hole in the costume, but the holes in the body remained intact for popping the wing pegs into. Since Revenant and Lilith have their wings attached at different positions, I guess the holes are punched into regularly-molded torsos. I maintain gluing was entirely unnecessary for any LDD with this wing piece; the holes and pegs are enough to keep them together stably, and it makes the dolls so much easier to work with if the wings can come out.

Revenant's dress is pretty similar to before, being tattered with two layers, though there's far less contrast since all of this piece is some shade of white. Stitching and layering form the gaps in the dress, while the sleeves hang long over the doll's hands, but are less structured. All of the robe is that thin frayable linen with unfinished edges, and the robe has no opening. Even if you're a sinner who pulls the wings out, you'd also have to pop the head out to remove the costume.

The most structured element of the dress is hard to notice--a stiffened delicate zigzag collar that stands up around her neck.

S6 had a hardier, more structured dress with high contrast between the layers and a triangular flared cone shape to the sleeves with a slit on the inside.

Revenant has never worn shoes thanks to her Resurrection remaining barefoot. My copy's legs aren't molded the best for standing on her feet, and there was discoloration on her fingertips and the back of her heel which weren't part of her design.

Res-variant Revenant has a darker costume and wings as a fun mirror to the main, but has basically the same hair and looks nearly identical to S6 facially thanks to bringing back the elements of glow plastic and imitating the faceup and dark eyes closely--Res-variant just has white dots in the middle of her black inset eyeballs.

Remember: the produced doll has the black wings.

Her hood seems to be on a separate grey cape piece, and her dress is one layer of black. I think this doll is far less interesting than the main. This is the only Res Revenant to glow. The main doll is opaque white vinyl with no glow-paint layer.

The main doll still looks good in blacklight, though her irises don't reflect and they darken in this lighting:

Here she is illuminated by the light from her other self:

It's such a difference!

I took Revenant out into the garden with the trusty Sadie tombstone to stage some photos.

Here she is against the sky.

And playing with contrast and lighting against black velvet.

And here she is against white.

This probably wasn't the best-made copy of the doll, and her costume is inherently fragile. I also personally didn't like the wings being glued the way they were, but upon working with the doll, I found a lot of eerie beauty to her. She really does look like a winged soul stalking a graveyard, giving her a more otherworldly artsy tone than the Series 6 doll's Halloween kitsch. Her hair, hood, and wings give her dynamic display options and that face doesn't cease to be unsettling. The quality issues of this copy do make her a little disappointing, though, and maybe I'd have stayed my hand with the foreknowledge that the copy I was haunted by before buying wasn't fully right. I'm still glad to have her and to have learned about her, but there was probably a better Res VII Revenant out there who I'd have been happier with.

A Doll Will Die When She Is Seen: The Girl in Black

This doll is from Series 29, "The Nameless Ones", all named by abstract titles and epithets and shrouded in mystery like ghost stories and urban legends. This is the only doll in the series with a clear external cultural reference, done in LDD's frequent vein of "royalty-free obvious character adaptation", and it's kind of an odd pull for source material. This doll got me to consume that source material and research the story, which was a fun project. I like to know what I'm talking about when I review dolls, and I like how they can inspire me to get into something external!

The Woman in Black is a modern Gothic horror genre piece by Dame Susan Hill, originating as a 1983 novel and getting adapted to a 1989 TV movie starring Adrian Rawlins and a 2012 theatrical film starring Daniel Radcliffe, who played Rawlins' son in the Harry Potter films! 

The story is set in the Edwardian era and concerns a lawyer sent to settle a deceased client's affairs in a creepy house just off a town haunted by a specter of a woman wearing a color you'll never guess. The book is one of those slow horror stories where things feel a little aimless and you're reading through spooky episodes wondering what the stakes are the whole time until the very end, but I will grant that the ending is very effective once things are explained, dramatic stakes finally enter the picture, and the story hits its finale. Both filmed adaptations of the story wisely bring in the book's late reveal earlier: the actual problem with the Woman in Black being around is that every time she's seen somewhere, she moves to kill a child afterward. In the TV film, it's hinted that children are imperiled after she's seen, but also that they can be saved from death during one of her supernatural attacks, but in the 2012 movie, it's shown from the start that the Woman can supernaturally compel the children to their own deaths and it's indicated the tragedy can't be stopped once it's underway. I found the TV movie a really classic piece of British horror, both in terms of style and actual British flavor to the setting, and it's a faithful adaptation of the book that keeps things a little more active and better in flow while being genuinely creepy. The presence of the Woman herself as a mostly silent, rigid figure is very effective, too, though the TV film has a weird thing about pointlessly changing a lot of character names, and its finale may lose a bit of poetic terror from dropping a narrative echo that the book had. 

The 2012 film is overall more well-structured than the book for narrative purposes and I think the ending still manages to be effective through the changes to the plot and when the audience learns what. The plot is more involved and it's much more of a modern horror movie in its styling, with jumpscares and supernatural atmosphere increased, and even though both adaptations are British, I feel like there was more English authenticity and local flavor to the TV film. You knew the TV film was a British production just from watching, while the 2012 film could have been an American team using British actors and setting. I found the tone of the TV movie more appropriate and appealing, though I appreciated the way the film Woman is shown to kill through supernaturally compelling her victims rather than causing accidents, even if her presence isn't as scary as the TV version. I also can't believe how the screenplay omitted the funeral debut scene of the Woman from the book, changing her first appearance to a later, far lesser moment. I think the first scene with the Woman in the book, and the book's pacing of her appearances, are crucial, and the TV movie understood that. I'd call the 1989 TV film my favorite version of the story despite the needless name changes. I completely see why it became a cult classic.

The Woman in Black also had a sequel by way of a follow-up to the 2012 film, The Woman in Black: Angel of Death, though, very interestingly, it was written with input by Susan Hill herself. I don't think this sequel did much for people and I didn't pursue it in my contextual immersion for this doll.

In the U.S., I wouldn't call any version of The Woman in Black especially iconic, though the novel is common in British school curriculum (not fully sure why). It's a weird pull for LDD, but the Girl in Black doll herself is pretty stunning and has something of a reputation for her production value as a showstopper.

The doll is in a weird spot, age-wise, because she's not a LDD Presents licensed doll and couldn't be named "The Woman in Black" without infringing, so they changed her epithet by making her sound like a child, despite none of the doll being styled as a younger version of the ghostly character. She's dressed as a grown Victorian woman, so the name doesn't really fit her unless you read her as a real living doll, whereupon she fits the epithet of "girl" more. If LDD didn't lean on the doll aspect being literal so often, the name wouldn't work at all. I can see a young girl referring to all of her dolls as girls even if they're styled as grown ladies. And if you're informal or crass enough, any woman can be a girl. I can't help but think "The Doll in Black" would feel more natural, though.

The Woman in Black is also an interesting referent for a doll in the series of Nameless Ones, because while the ghost has a famous nameless epithet which is also the name of her story, the Woman does also have a real name: she's the ghost of Jennet Humfrye (pronounced "Jeanette Humphrey" in the 2012 film by the voice of Jennet reading a letter; Daniel Radcliffe says it more to rhyme with "Bennett Humphrey"). By extrapolation, it could be argued that the Girl in Black might have the actual name Jennet or something similar, meaning she would have a weaker claim to namelessness than the rest of Series 29. The Girl in Black is technically a distinct character, though, so it isn't canon that she would have the same name as the character who very clearly inspired her. In the 1989 adaptation, the ghost's name is Jennet Goss. (The 1989 pronunciation of the first name is more like "Janet"!)

I got my copy sealed.

The Series 29 chipboards depict the characters silhouetted in a cool misty graveyard with glowing eyes, making them look very otherworldly and frightening per the ghost-story/urban-legend tone. The coffin tissue is black to aid this atmosphere. I'm not sure exactly how the Girl in Black's eyes could glow since they're empty black voids, but maybe she has ghostly eye lights sometimes and the doll isn't manifesting them.

Both the series number and series subtitle are recorded on the chipboard and the cut shape has irregular edges.

The doll's poems don't make any narrative allusions to The Woman in Black, perhaps because they couldn't safely do so. Instead, the chipboard poem says:

Have you heard about the Girl in Black?
They say her face is covered in cracks

The tale has been passed down through my family

Should you ever see her, cover your eyes, and flee

When I look at the Girl in Black, I clearly see strained capillaries, not fissures in the skin, so I think the poem calling her face cracked is a little inaccurate or misleading. Those are veiny lines.

Here's a rewrite, maintaining the aspect of family legend which sets the tone of the doll series.

My family tells tales of the Girl in Black

Look quickly away, but there's no going back

She's all dressed in mourning, her face full of hate

And the moment you see her, it's far far too late

The doll's hat is packaged in the back because it's so wide, and the coffin tray has a circular hole cut out for the Girl's hair bun to poke through. The hole was placed off-center, so the doll's head was turned to fit the bun through. I expect other copies might have the cutout more properly in the middle.

I've encountered a similar cutout for Isabel's hair bun in Series 16, but the Girl in Black's looks more elegant. I don't think there was a better way to have done Isabel's, though, so no criticism toward that.

Series 29 must be one of the last, if not the last, with the original LDD death certificate template, because I know Series 31 had the second graphical template that lasted the rest of the classic era.

A certificate from two series later. Don't hold your breath for Series 31 anytime soon, but it'll happen in time.

The Girl in Black has no known death date, reflecting the general air of mystery to the series. In this case (disregarding the lore of the story she's inspired by) we can't even be positive the doll was ever a real living person. She could be purely supernatural in origin, or purely a legend of someone that never existed. The dolls in Series 29 have varying levels of deathdate information, and the Girl in Black has none whatsoever.  I've previously seen Isaac, an earlier doll with no deathdate, awkwardly alter the "I hereby certify that on [time], [doll] has been pronounced legally deceased" statement to shaky effect:

"I hereby certify that on the Unknown..." and nothing, because he hasn't been pronounced deceased.

The Girl in Black does the right thing and just omits the framing statement around the character name altogether. Isaac's date line was filled with the word "Unknown", while a question mark has been drawn here. Less formal, but effective. 

The Girl in Black's certificate poem says:

They say she lurks in every shadow that is near

She waits for you to be alone and feeds off your fear

Everyone knows of her, but no one knows her face

She is the girl in black and vanishes without a trace

And an alternative poem by me.

You never know just when the Girl will appear

It's from this surprise she became such a fear

She kills when she's seen in the light or the gloom

But she doesn't take you--someone else will be doomed!

Out of the box, her skirt has been rubber-banded down and her hat is off.

But when you unleash her skirt, and put her hat and accessory together...I can absolutely see why this doll is regarded as a showstopper. It is a little wild how much this doll has going on and she'd have been disproportionately good value for money at original price, compared to her series fellows (good God, poor The After...) If the budget for Series 29 truly was funneled into this Girl here, then it's showing, and I kind of love how spectacular she is.

In the book, the spectral Woman in Black is described as wearing an outdated form of mourning attire, both in fashion style and in general mourning custom, with a bonnet-style hat and an entirely black costume. She appears corporeal and is fleshy, but only barely, resembling someone with a wasting disease that has hollowed her face tight to the bone, and her expression, once seen closely by the protagonist, is described as one of pure hatred. I think the doll does pretty well at hitting these markers.

LDD's Girl in Black seems like she may be a visual mix of the 1989 TV adaptation and the 2012 film. Her feathered hat and her bodice are pretty similar to the 1989 Woman in Black, just with the hat greatly expanded to a full-head piece and the skirt far more voluminous.

This screenshot doesn't do it justice--Pauline Moran is magnetically imposing in the role.

The film ghost features a lot of screaming face and emphasis on the dark hollows of her eye sockets, making the Girl's face paint more like the film, but the doll's costume is less like the 2012 Woman in Black.

The hat fits the book description better, though I like it less.

The only color on the doll comes from her skin and the stem of her flowers, with the rest being as black as her epithet. Like her reference character, her dress is evocative of mourning clothes, though the Woman in Black is motivated by the loss of a child, not a husband, so it probably wouldn't be accurate to compare the Girl in Black to a widow. 

The hat is a wide-brimmed flocked plastic piece with a domed top and is trimmed by feathers, including one large feather in the back, and a cluster of five satin rosettes. 

Stiff black netting hangs down all the way around the brim from the underside, obscuring the face. The hat has a chinstrap ribbon attached under the brim, which feels very appropriate for the doll. This ties under the chin and does not come pre-tied. 

The rotation of the ribbon strap relative to the rosettes and large feather may vary from copy to copy. The way the ribbons were glued down on mine, the accent feather ended up directly behind the Girl when the hat is worn.

A similar chin ribbon and hat shape were done for Southern belle Goria in Series 22, and like with her, it's been advised to be careful the ribbons don't come unglued from the underside of the brim.

Tying bows is something LDD collecting has helped me get better at, and I think today, I wouldn't have altered Siren's cape because I'd be comfortable re-tying the original bow closure. That's also helped me even consider putting Vanity on the table for the future, since the bow closures on her outfit are an essential part of her costume concept.

I believe Goria has a more solid plastic hat than the Girl in Black, but the Girl's hat is intact as it came to me. Her hat may be the fanciest produced in the LDD brand, what with the flocking, the feathers, the rosettes, the netting, and the ribbon all together. Below her would probably be Betsy, whose hat just does the first three, to far tackier effect (intentionally).

Under the hat, the Girl in Black has black hair with no bangs or parting, pulled back in a tight low bun. The bun puffs out a bit to her left side as it is, and doesn't show on her right from a front view.

I've heard the bun can be pulled up too high on some copies of the doll, such that it pushes the brim of the hat at a slant over her forehead, but my copy's bun didn't have this issue, and if it did, it would be easily adjusted.

Her hair elastic is okay now, but I tied some black cord over it just to make sure the bun won't fall out.

The Girl in Black's face is very startling and ghastly.

I'd thought she was a flesh-toned doll covered in veining, but she's actually cast from white vinyl, then coated with a streaky thin pink layer and then painted with the vein lines, making her look both paler and more unhealthy as if all of her color is from the rage and force of her anger and scream. The veins do not wrap around the back of her head or go past her ears.

And scream she does--she's an open-mouthed doll. Her eyes and mouth are completely blacked out in a classically ghostly fashion so she looks like she has three voids for a face. The eyes are airbrushed over and overdrawn with the shape of skeletal eye sockets, turned up on the inside like angry brows, while the mouth is filled with black paint that drips down the chin and neck as well. She has no lipstick, and no eye makeup (nor eyes to speak of). 

The face has similarities to Eleanor before and Tommy Knocker after, who are also open-mouthed ghosts--the Girl's mouth is blacked out like Eleanor, and the eyes are blacked out like Tommy's, but both Eleanor and Tommy are missing upper teeth to make their mouths look more slack, while the Girl in Black has upper teeth in the standard shape, just covered in black paint that makes them hard to see.

The Girl in Black's face also has some similarities to Series 6 Hush because of the pale pink coloring and veining, though the effect and rendering is quite different and the dolls look like thoroughly different art styles.

Hush won't come up for the third doll's discussion here!

I kind of wish the eye paint on the Girl in Black was darker so the underlying sculpt contour didn't show through, but in the right lighting, it won't. 

The Girl in Black's dress is pretty elaborate, and I needed to overexpose my pictures to show the details properly!

The bodice has a high-necked collar and a jacket-style sew with satin lapels framing an opening over the chest and implied blouse layer. The lapels meet at a central seam with no simulated buttons, and this implied jacket does not open. The body of the jacket has a lace overlay, though this stops at the sides of the torso and does not continue onto the back.

The sleeves have slightly puffed shoulders and a close fit down the arm, with no defined cuffs or frills at the ends.

The skirt is very big, featuring chaotic rumpled fabric gathering in front and back which give the skirt lots of depth and texture. 

The way the skirt works is that there's a defined thin under-layer which the top has been gathered and sewn down to at multiple points along the side seams, creating the creases and puffs of the skirt.

A look at the under-layer the rest is all built onto.

The skirt itself feels pretty full and bushy, and while it needs some fluffing up to give it full presence, it doesn't feel thin or "unstuffed" like Isabel's big skirt did. 

The back of the skirt features an attached bustle to build up the rear, and this is a flap of fabric which has been gathered tight around the edges to let it have shape. This can lift up off the back and be puffed out a little by hand so it lays on the back of the dress with volume.

This outfit has an incredible silhouette.

The dress has a tulle petticoat layer which is a separate piece elasticated around the waist. I hardly think the doll needs it, or that it's functionally doing all that much to volumize the skirt, but it's welcome.

The Girl is wearing the pointy boots in black with no socks, but stands pretty easily and stably. Her hip joints have no issues. 

The dress velcros in back and comes off in two pieces--the petticoat and the rest. The Girl's body is painted head-to-toe with the pink smearing paint effect, which is ridiculous because so little of her skin is seen! Like, why, LDD? This is decadence!

Only her face has the veining, though, which is pretty standard for LDD. The dripping from her mouth does not run onto her torso, either, which is fine. This all reminds me of the mottled paint job done for Faith in Series 8, but she had more of a reason for a full-body paint-up because she's in a bathing suit and all of her body pieces are seen while she's dressed.

The dress has stained the Girl in Black's body some, which is to be expected.

The Girl in Black has the LDD bouquet for an accessory in the requisite color of roses, though the stem is green. Before the Girl, the bouquet would have been most recently seen on 13th-anniversary Sadie, slightly redesigning the Series 1 doll on the ball-joint frame. That Sadie was also the first place the bouquet and gripping hand were paired on the same doll, and the Girl in Black follows.

Not my photo. The gripping hand on this release of Sadie could also be used with her purse, and perhaps her knife if the handle fit well?

The Girl's bouquet is the only part of her that really feels like LDD dropped the ball or ran out of resources, because the paint job does the odd sculpt no favors--the leaves aren't painted green to match the stem like Sadie's flowers, so the black and green colors are more starkly divided and the piece looks more artificial than it did in previous renditions.

The flowers look alright in her hand, I guess, but it's a real squeeze to force the grip open enough for the stem.

This is the older version of the flowers without the palm-peg that Resurrection Sadie's had. 

I don't know. If the flowers were painted with more detail, I might like this accessory more, but it's a minor dud for an otherwise impressive doll. She honestly calls for Return Sadie's bouquet.

These are flowers that look like they belong to the doll.

I might keep these on the Girl in Black, honestly. They suit her and they're not doing anything with Sadie.

I think the Girl in Black also could have used the gripping arm with the bent elbow so her flowers were closer to her body, but her veil netting would probably get in the way without her flowers held further in front of her.

 

So, with the flowers aside, the Girl in Black is a pretty extravagant piece. Her hat and dress are elaborate and dramatic and give her quite the presence on the shelf. Her face is scary and not traditionally appealing, but is done well, and her paint job is outright unnecessarily thorough in delivering her eerie enraged pink coloring, since most of the paint is unseen. This doll comes across as a passion piece for the designers, and I love that.

Here's my screaming Gothic ladies assembled. There's one thing this aesthetic niche has going for it: awesome doll clothes.

Getting The Dark from Series 31 will complete the niche of open-mouthed fancy Gothic ladies.

You could joke about the hypothetical Black sisters: "Tina" and "The Girl in"! You see, the parents really blanked on that second daughter...

I think Tina Black is still my aesthetic favorite, while Bloody Mary has a more shocking horror appeal, but the Girl in Black is definitely the most impressive production of the trio. I think the shrieking ghost face is cool, but I might have personally ended up connecting with the doll more if she had eyes or a closed mouth. This just isn't as scary or magnetic as Pauline Moran's piercing eyes and hateful frown in her performance as (basically) the same character.

I took the Girl out for some photos by a grave and to show her looming around.

And I showed her at the scene of a child's death--Mini Lulu, fallen down the stairs.

When taking these photos, I dropped Sadie's tombstone and it broke into pieces. Fortunately, it was an exceptionally clean break and glued together pretty seamlessly, but that wasn't great. One of Return Sadie's wig tabs had broken from her first faceplate as well. She's been through some. 

Here's some photos of the Girl in Black against fabric backgrounds and playing with lighting.

I then wrapped the Return roses with black wire to give them a grip handle the Girl's hand would actually clip firmly onto, since they were begging to tip and fall out of her hand.

Here she is with a pack of LDD Minis children she's collected. Most of my current Minis are either Sadie or translations of adult-coded LDD characters, so the pickings were a little slim. Mini Lulu is just childlike enough to count, despite her original doll being ambiguous and leaning toward teenaged at the least.

I took her back outside with the kiddies. I wasn't satisfied with the scenery as far as capturing the rigid silhouette of the character, so I found a better spot.

Here she is with her pack of stolen souls, like the worst nanny ever.

I put her in a window.

And in some bushes.

Here's more with her Minis victims.

Then I put up some paper and used a rug to frame her in a Victorian hallway, playing with her silhouette by lighting her from the front, from behind, and then using only the doll's shadow.

Then I cast her shadow wide in the human-size hallway!

She takes nicely to being the Girl in Blacklight as well.

The Girl in Black is something else!

She's weathered the ridiculous LDD aftermarket better than most, purely by the fact that you'd have felt like you were underpaying for her at original price. Where she is about now (or at least, at the price I got her for), she was expensive but it felt less disproportionate than it usually is because her production level is visibly high and could have earned a higher price at the start. Her hat is trimmed with lots of detail; her dress uses a lot of material; her body is fully painted streaky pink when it definitely didn't need to be. Only her bouquet is a miss on the doll. And the production pays off--the doll has presence. Her silhouette is dramatic and imposing, her details make her grim and layered and impressive on the shelf. Her face is deliberately off-putting, yes, but when the doll is displayed just right, she's a rockstar and provides a fun adaptation of The Woman in Black. Obviously, any LDD is a matter of subjective taste, and there are dolls I personally like more than the Girl in Black, but in a contest of objective production value, she's pretty stellar.

A Rose from the Dead: Beast (Scary Tales Vol. 2)

Picking a third doll for the roundup was a little tricky, because it would have been awesome to have this Gothic roundup consist of one white-themed doll, one black-themed doll, and one red-themed doll...but my options for red weren't ideal. I'd already reviewed the best candidates in Bloody Mary and Isabel, and the others that remained, Countess Bathory and variant Series 15 Death, didn't suit me. I want to do a solo topic post on LDD's Bathory dolls sometime, not the S15 in a roundup feature (plus, the legend and historical figure actually precede the Gothic genre and aesthetic), and variant Death doesn't do that much for me. I let the stark color theming go and selected Beast, an unusual male LDD character in the Gothic genre. I previously looked as Scary Tales with LDD's Red Riding Hood doll.

This is the third doll I've selected solo from a pair of two because I didn't care much for the other, though this is also my first solo feature from a duo to be released solo, not in a two-pack. 

Scary Tales Volume 2 was a duo of Beauty and the Beast, though they're rather unlike the traditional fairy tale. Rather than a sweet young woman and an animalistic creature, LDD's duo are a goth lady and a man stapled together and horrific like a moodier, less campy adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The concept is pretty vague--LDD's idea of a twist on the two seems to be that the two feel mutually trapped by the rose that keeps them together and it could be argued that the woman is actually the real Beast among them, but per tradition and marketing purposes, the Beast is still declared to be the scary male character of the duo. 

The original fairy tale of "Beauty and the Beast" involves a man trying to bring home a rose for his daughter, but trespassing on the property of a former prince cursed into beastly form. As payment for the man's theft, the Beast demands his daughter's company, and once they bond and Beauty agrees to marry the Beast after saving his life, the curse is lifted. The Disney film adds the idea of a magically enchanted rose with slowly falling petals that serve as a countdown to the Beast's curse becoming permanent, and adds the romantic rival of boorish, vile Gaston who endangers the Beast's life directly by trying to kill him in the climax. 

The Beast arrived during my Monster High catch-up period/renaissance in June, so he was my re-immersion into LDD. It felt like a bit of a culture shock to switch modes between doll brands!

This guy isn't in the highest demand and it's not too hard to find him sealed. Maybe it's because he's a boy or because he's ugly. The Beauty doll fetches more. 

The cling wrap was dusty and looked gross, but the coffin underneath is clear and looks nearly pristine.

The shared chipboard for Beauty and the Beast follows the Scary Tales formula by depicting a looming close-up of the antagonist half of the duo in the background and the protagonist in a wider shot in the foreground. The poem, as mentioned, is vague.

Entombed in this horror

By a single red rose

Two beings share a fate

That neither one chose

Each one trapped by the other

Wanting to be released

But who is the real Beauty

And who is the real Beast?

It doesn't take much tweaking to form a slightly clearer picture, though:

Sealed in their fate

By a single red rose

Each faced with a horror

That neither one chose

He caught her, but she

Would soon force her release

In a way where one wonders:

Which one was the Beast?

Beauty being the worse one is a decent plot twist and it gives the set more to go on. The reimagined edition of these dolls sticks much closer to the traditional visual of a beast-man and a fair maiden, and changes the story with a different poem that indicates the Beast was never actually a prince--just a hungry monster who got a meal.

These dolls are so pretty.

Here's the original Beast unboxed.

As mentioned, the immediate visual read of his design is a take on Frankenstein, what with the pieced-together skin of his head. This makes the Beast the closest LDD ever came to a male original character in that monster archetype. He feels very Gothic through his more visceral uncanny gore look and his costume suits the genre perfectly. I could see an interpretation of the fairy tale where the Beast is horrific in this flavor rather than feeling animalistic, and it'd be a pretty sharp curse for someone with dreadful vanity.

The Beast has very deliberately sparse hair, most similar to Ember from Series 18. 

Like Ember, the Beast's hair is black and about shoulder length and is rooted solely on a center-part line to make it very thin. Unlike Ember, the Beast's hair has distinct chunks with gaps in between along the rooted line, and those gaps are actually hair that was rooted and then immediately cut down to the scalp.

This is the first doll I've ever seen with hair chopped to the scalp like this. It's an odd effect, and I'm not sure why LDD did it this way. 

This was Ember's hair rooting. Basically the same but with no gaps forming "stripes" of hair between chopped roots.

Ember precedes the Beast, meaning he got this rooting concept from her.

The Beast's hair is a little floatier than I'd like, but it can hang lank and gross in a fun way, while also being able to evoke the shadow of a Victorian pretty-boy with long hair. 

The Beast has a unique one-off head sculpt depicting a face and head divided into different pieces of skin stapled together along the scar lines. 

The head is cast in a pale off-white color with a tinge of green, which feels like colorless dead flesh. LDD's portrait photos online suggested this would be a livelier flesh-toned doll, and I like the way it actually is more. It's more eerie and effective to have it look so dead. The cuts are indented and the stapes are dimensional, though they look less realistic from the sides. The rest of the head is covered in texture bumps and wrinkles that make it feel very uncomfortable, and the head has a slight sheen to it that also makes it grosser. It's not grease or gloss, but the head is just a bit shinier than normal LDD vinyl casting. The head also has a defined brow ridge which reminds me of Edgrr later on--also a black-haired uncanny doll with bizarre sculpting.

The faceup of the doll is mostly smeary, with the red lining his scars and bruise tones around his eyes and lips, but the silver on his staples is bright and his eyes and eyebrows are flat and cartoony LDD fare. His right eye is painted half-lidded with a yellow iris, while his left eye pops with a white iris. Both eyes have red sclerae with a white dot pattern for a bloodshot effect, though I'm not sure how well the dots work. The eyebrows are solid black but have a shaky spidery quality to them.

Here's how the scars wrap around. The scar line from the top of the forehead stops behind the ears, but the scar lines from his cheeks do wrap around and meet as a single line at the back, just without staples.

I find the top scar line not wrapping around to feel unfinished.

The Beast has the 13th-anniversary emblem on the back of his neck owing to his release time, though the scar interrupts it! He also had a black spot of errant paint above the emblem which isn't meant to be there. I wiped that off later.

This is a really cool freaky head sculpt, though it is genuinely shudder-inducing. I think I'd be cooler with it if it wasn't that little bit shiny. That creeps me out.

The scar pattern is actually an inexact imitation of Calico's face paint design several years before him, just made dimensional and stapled rather than stitched. 

The edges of the pieces of skin are differently shaped, but Calico's influence is obvious with the horizontal forehead scar and the split patches which curve around the nose. I'm surprised this Beast head sculpt was never used for a Resurrection edition of Calico, because why else would it have been designed this way? Heck, I want to remake a copy of this head for a Res Calico design myself! Calico herself remained in Series 6 with no other releases past her debut. I'd love to get my hands on a second Beast and try reimagining Calico with this head sculpt. The brow ridge detail is a bit at odds with Calico's vibe, but I don't know. Painting it up with the staples as black stitches and the flesh pieces all in separate shades of one human skintone could be a fun way to reimagine her. 

The Beast's head is also visually similar to the all-painted Bride of Valentine in Series 3, owing to their similar Gothic looks and themes of red-scarred pale faces made of multiple pieces. 

The Bride came before Calico, and, thus, before the Beast too.

The other stapled LDD head sculpt is the one debuted by Dahlia and also used on Misery, depicting slashed-open cheeks held closed by staples.

The Beast's costume is gentlemanly and old-fashioned. The black fabric is a fleecy material that might be aiming for velvet, but doesn't look that fine up close.

At the neck, the Beast has a multi-ruffled frill, whose edges are all finished. This is attached to the shirt under the coat.

The coat has a capelet-style piece parted around the neck frill which wraps around the shoulders and back. A strip of red fleece has been sewn inside behind the neck to suggest a lining to the coat that is not present. I like the color it adds.

The coat has a single row of decorative buttons and hangs to his knees while fitting the body fairly closely. The sleeves are long and have attached white ruffle cuffs to suggest long sleeves of the same skirt the neck frill is attached to.

The coat has some padding in the back to give the Beast a bit of a humped back, though it's not high enough on his shoulders to change his silhouette much.

While a hunch is typical for the Beast in animalistic depictions, I don't know how well it scans on a more human gory take. Horrific scars from a face assembled after destruction are scary for anybody. A back deformity? Some people just have those and it's not inherently gross or scary. The Hook from Series 17 has a similar hunchback-padding effect in his coat, so the Beast isn't the first LDD to do it.

The coat opens down the front with hook velcro which applies onto the bare fabric on the other side, with no loop strip that matches the hook strip. Here's the padding cushion in the back.

While the coat implies the Beast has a full Seinfeld puffy shirt on, the actual under layer is typical Ken--sleeveless top and pants sewn as one piece.

The pants section has a tight waist but looser hips. The doll is wearing black round-toed boots with black socks inside.

Lighting really changes the Beast's appearance depending on how it works with or against the bumps and brow ridges.

I do think there is enough classic clean dolly-face sculpting in this head, and when his grotesque features aren't being emphasized, there is a graceful, romantic face that can shine through.

Other framing can make him quite evil!

Here's my old favorite trick with the Gothic mirror reflecting red as if showing a window to red sky. The Beast is lit in the foreground with high contrast for a mix of classic Gothic drama and goth edge.

Here's some pictures of his shadow cast on a wall with a red curtain hanging in front. I had to use my own fake rose, since the flower from this Scary Tales duo comes with the Beauty doll.

I wasn't really sure what else to do with the Beast (to be sure, not having Beauty creates some limitations) until I remembered I had a little jar I could stage a rose in. Since I can't make the rose float like Disney and because the jar has a hook in the top, I rigged some pipe-cleaner stems for the rose to hang down from. Lighting the scene was tricky, but worth it. I used red light in some pictures to make the rose look glowy and magical.

Here he is outside with real roses.

And with the mini roses as a rosebush on his castle grounds.

This is a really interesting doll. He's ugly and visceral and brutish in ways, but also has an eerie, gentle, romantic beauty to him through the doll face that pokes through his sculpt. He might be too much for some doll collectors, but I enjoy his complexity and the novelty of his head sculpt. I wish his scars were just a bit more thorough by fully encircling his head on the back, and sculpted staples all around the head and not just on the front would also be welcome. There's admittedly less to the Beast when he's acquired solo, but if you want a Gothic horror monster, he's great for that aesthetic and easily floats out of context for that purpose, especially since his interpretation of the Beast is so non-traditional.

Thus concludes the Gothic roundup!

I might be coming out of this finding the group weaker than I wanted them to be. None of the three are dolls I fiercely adore in the way I'd hope for at least one of every roundup. Resurrection Revenant is maybe my favorite doll design in theory, but suffered in execution. Her face paint was wonky and maybe her eyes were too, such that I found it difficult to connect with her face in photographs and get the same eerie personality I saw in the doll's LDD archive photo and which made me want her. She's still fun and haunting and creepy, but didn't deliver quite as much as I wanted. The Beast is good to have around, and I'm glad I looked at him, but he didn't offer many surprises or discoveries. The Girl in Black is the objective champion of the trio, being a fancy, elaborate doll full of display presence and value for money, honestly even kind of for her aftermarket price--her look is just intense and a bit hard to swallow and also takes a little work in framing her to her best. I still like her a lot, though, and she's the doll I wouldn't abandon in a disaster scenario. 

For how much I love the Gothic aesthetic, my favorite LDDs thus far in the visual genre are those I've looked at previously--Tina Black and Bloody Mary are dolls I personally love more than these three, with Tina probably being the winner because it's frankly impossible for her not to look fully clicked-together and display-friendly. I guess it also comes of not having very Gothic scenery to shoot photos in, which can make me feel a little artistically frustrated and limited. With accessible architectural features I could ply to the genre better, maybe these dolls would sing more. This isn't a downbeat disappointment of a doll review...just a "huh. Not an all-timer." kind of affair. Fortunately, I do have an all-timer solo doll review coming up soon. I just love her, and I think you will too!