CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON

 Just in time for Halloween and without too much buzz, NECA finished, at last, theyr Universal Monster line with the character that is perhaps the most hyped Monster of the series: the Creature From the Black Lagoon. Distant is now the pandemic time when they release the Frankenstein Monster and an entire year later The Mummy. But just like Gargoyles, this years has een the release of the entire set of main characters closing up the collection and leaving unreleased only the black and white versions of the Monsters.

I actually have already a lot of of figures of this guy, ranging from different quality and style and, oddly enough, i like all of them, each one of them add its own twist and fun and NECA version is not ecception. This guy is actually really really big....like a little bit bigger than the Frankenstein Monster while the other characters are an entire ehad smaller and the Bride reach to his chest. I dont remember this guy to be this huge in the movie, if i remember rigth he was the same size as the rest of the human characters soo i dont know if the size is accurate or not.

I mean, this is a monster soo i am happy he is tall but he really towers a lot over the rest....aside of that he can stand perfectly with those huge feet he have and dosnt need any kind of base eccept for some swiming poses. He is articulated on the head, neck, chest, waist, elbows, biceps, elbows, wrists, legs, knees and ankles. All ball joints with a really good range of movement and the elbows and ankles have double articulation soo they bend perfectly.

The enginering here is soo fantastic!! The neck piece enter pretty deeply in the head as well as the shoulders but still keeps a very good range of movement up and down and to the sides while the double articulations on the elbows and knees are hidden behind the scales perfectly. Actually all articulation in here, including the ones of the torso, are perfectly hidden behind the scales cut just like the Mondo Creature. NECA did a great job adaptinf the joints to this character body type and each section that conect the articulation is made with soft plastic, just like the chest area as well as the hands.

This really helps a lot to give him total freedom of movement without revealing any joint or gap between the pices, a perfect fusion between movement and aesthetic, something really needed for this Creature.

The sculpt is really good, as i already sayd, with a mix of soft plastic and hard palastic pieces and a really nice scaly texture. Each section conects nicelly, even the big fin on his back and the body silhouette looks really lanky and athletic. The feet and hands have a really good bony structure on the fingers that makes them looks trully prehistoric and i really love the 3 claws behind his feet.

Perhaps the most difficult part to sculpt in this character is the head, Diamond Select deffinetly had issues but NECA managed to nail it really good. The head shape and size is perfect as well as all the wrinkles around the mouth and where his nose is supposed to be and the gills on the sides looks sharp and pretty clean. Theres a lot of texturing on the cheecks and put on evidence the amazing complexity this suit had almost 70 years ago.

Now wath makes each figure unique is the paint, somehow every company have its own vision of hos the Gillman should looks and NECA version is realy different to the rest as well. While Sideshows version have a lot of different colors and Diamond version have a pale green and Jada version is neon venomus green, NECA´s version have a pretty militar and dark green with some darker wash here and there to accentuate the wrinkles, specially on the head.

But this time they add a golden metalic finish as well at the end of each section of his bodu as well as the find and gills. This gives him a pretty....exotic look, like an asiatic fish, the golden also gives to the green a kind of metalic look. The effect is really interesting, he looks darker than other versions but at the same time he shines like a jewell, a dark shine.

The palm of his hands dont shine tough, instead of golden they are painted just in brown and i wish they give more details to his stomach. The stomach section is just plain green and looks way too simple with all that gold surrounding it. The face have the same natural green color mixed with golden on the fins and red lips. I hate the red lips look and i was worried about this but NECA used a pretty pale red that matches the whole color palette nicelly. 

Lastly he have blue eyes, a first since they always give him yellow/golden eyes. The pale blue eyes looks, well, like fish eyes, pretty blind but match good the look of the blakc and white movie. I this the closes representation of the character in figure? NECA has been going straigth to accuracy soo far t even given the Bride of Frankenstein red hair just like Elsa Lanchester had. Soo i am guessing this color scheme is the closest we can get to the original 1954 costume of the movie

While this figure is really pretty looking, the accesory section is poor, really poor. He comes with 3 extra set of hands, aside of the relaxed hands he have claw shaped hands, open up hands and hands pointing with a finger. Its actually pretty difficult to see the difference with this hands, the relaxed and totally open hands are almost 90% the same and the claw shaped hands dosnt change that much, with the pointing hands being the most different and the ones i like the most, since the fins between his fingers makes them look really dramatic.

The hands can be changed pretty easy and are made of soft plastic but the sculpt an paint quality is the same.

Then theres two extra heads: one o¿with an open mouth and another one with an articulated mouth. They cna be changed pretty easy and the sculpt and paint quality is as perfect as the basic head. The open mouth head have a very specific and nice detail: the gills are curling up. Its pretty difficult to see it but they managed to sculpt the moment when the Creature is on the outside of the lagoon, strugling to breath.

Now the most perplexing item: the head with the articulated mouth. The articulation is hidden with the multiple wrinkles around his mouth and is almost invisible and it opens up pretty nicelly, opens and close.....and this head literally makes the other two heads completelly pontless. Why spent time and resources sculpting a head with a closed mouth and a head with an open mouth when you are also going to make a head with articulated mouth??

Why soo many hands that looks almots the same? And thats it, theres nothing more in here....no fossil hand, no arpon gun, no net, this leaves this figure behind Jada´s and Sideshow´s and i know is difficult to give this character items since he dosnt touch anyhting at all in the movie, but Diamond add background pieces for a diorama, wich leaves this NECA version behind as well.

I am strugling here. This figure have an amazing sculpt and paint as well as a great ingenering of the articulations, yet it lags behind other releases because of the complete lack of accesorys. Also as pretty as this guy is, he is not as amazing looking as the Mondo version tough i know is unfair to compare them since Mondo is 1/6 and much more expensive.

I am not sure if i could call this figure "Ultimate" but is deffinetly one of the finest exaples of the character in pastic form and looks great completing the Universal Monsters line from NECA. This has been one of my all time favorite lines from the brand in the last 20 years and it even tempt me to get the black and white and glow in the dark variants.