NOSFERATU

Thanks to McFarlane Toys, at the begining of this century lots of action figure companys were born, picking up exciting licenses for the newlly formed adult collector sector, like movies, videogames, books or just original characters and one of those newborn companys was Aztec Toys who chose to laucnh themselves with Silent Screamers, a serires of action figures based on silent movies monsters, creatures from the 1900-1930 cinema.

Now day launching a serires based on such niche characters would be unthinkable....everything thats not DC or Avengers is a high risk scenario, but back collectors were hungry for this kind of obscure characters and it worked. The first line consisted on four figures: Cesare and Dr Caligari from The Cabinete of Dr Caligari and Knok Renfield and Nosferatu from Nosferatu.

While i found Knok and rhe Dr Caligari kind of boring, Cesare was a really fascinating figure...but i ended getting of course, Nosferatu since he is a must from any horror fan and a monster by one of the most horrifiying movies even after 100 years. He is taller than your average action figure and cant stand on his own at all thanks to the weird shape of his legs and is totally dependant of his base.

He is articulated on the neck, shoulders, elbows and wrists and thats it, wich makes him a pretty static figure, almost like a statue, wich was the tradition back then. Articlations are limited since they are cut joints and only the shoulders have ball joints soo he can only move his elbows on one direction but thanks to the sculpt of his hands, he can achive a few different poses with certain movement.

He is not accurate, non of the figures are since the sculptor decided to go in a more cartoony way, exagerate the features of the characters to make them look as grotesc as he can and he trully achive it with Nosferatu. His entire body is twisted and contorted in a bizarre way, this vampire is advancing in a zombie like movement, you can see his hips bones protunding from his clothes, he is almost an skeleton.

His hands are huge out of proportion, with big beins covering them and long figer nails and his face is as bony as the rest of his body: with his huge vampire ears down, big insect like eyes and rat fangs in front, he dosnt looks human but more like a dead ghoul. The sculpt of the wrinkles and veins on his skin as well as the texture on his jacket are really amazing.

All this details looks more sharp thanks to a very precise painting as well. Blue ants and grey/black jacket all with different shades of grey to give it a....weird look...he kinda looks like an oil paint on canvas. His skin sectios are cast into a grey and sick looking color plastic with his red mouth and yrellow fingernails as the only brigth color elements.

Also this plastic is kinda transluscent because it have a weird iridisency, like a pearl, wich makes him more ghostly. Also his skin had an action feature: put him under the sun light and his skin will change color into purple. Sadlly, my figure skin change dosnt work anymore.

His only accesory is a big base with a floor full of rats and a crumbling wall. This base can be attached to Knok Renfield base to form a kind of diorama where Nosferatu is out of Renfield cell chamber in the asylum. The base is kinda thick and strong and the rats are all made with soft plastic wich kinda makes them odd to the touch.

I love how the rats have different colors tough and little red eyes, they add a lot of movement to an otherwise static base. 

Over time, Aztec Toys continue making more Silent Screamers and change its name to Mezco, producing the Living Dead Dolls, Universal Monsters and ONE:12 Collective line wich includes lots of DC and Marvel stuff soo they manage to have great succes in 20 years. Last year they even remake this Nosferatu figure as a ONO:12 style figure but it was soo unbelivable expensive i wasnt able to get it.