Really Scary Horror Movie News: Really Scary: Horror Movie News, Video Games, Comics, Books, Music, Art and TV: Figure Review: Springwood Slasher Freddy Krueger

by Valarie Thorpe

We just got our grubby little hands on Sideshow Collectibles' The Springwood Slasher Freddy Krueger figure. We of course washed our grubby little hands before we touched this magnificent piece d'art.

We don't have to tell you about Sideshow Collectibles, we've raved this company for quite a while now. Years ago, they were making top-notch horror action figures when almost no one was making horror figures at all. The level of sophistication they put into their creations is topped only by the inventiveness they display in picking niche genre work to present. The Springwood Slasher is a perfect example of this. They've given us Nightmare fans phenomenal 'Freddy' figures already, complete with the burned, scarred face and legendary sneer. But now they give us the version of Freddy pre-supernatural form and it's a stunner.

Click the ## below for the entire review.

First up, the thing that everyone looks to first -- the face sculpt. It's dead-on Robert Englund. That's the other element of Sideshow's sculptors' work that sets them apart. It's one thing to get a monster's face to look like someone wearing a mask or heavy make-up, and Sideshow kicks ass at that as well. But it's an entire other to get a likeness of a human, an actor we know down to the last smile line (heheh, don't tell Mr. Englund we know him that well...he'll envision us staring at photos for hours and hours. And that simply isn't true, plus the police may take our photos away.)

Brian Dooley, who's quickly put together an impressive portfolio of work with Sideshow, pulls artist duties for this one. He also sculpted several of Sideshow's other Freddys, Jasons and the very cool Mrs. Voorhees.

This face sculpt is perfect -- you could take all the little clothes off the figure and still know exactly who it was without the trademark striped sweater and fedora. What? Did we take Freddy's clothes off? Are you nuts? Of course we didn't. This is Freddy afterall. We'd like to keep our eyeballs out of his mouth.

This is from the 12" fully articulated line of figures. The legs have a spin articulation at the ankle, full knee mobility and even a thigh-twist option for more positioning. The waist has a good spin and slight angling ability but doesn't fully let you bend to a good sitting position but what the hell would Freddy be doing sitting down anyway. A small bit above the waist is a chest articulation that lets you manipulate the upper body in a lot of different positions as well.

The arms are given just as much care with full socket maneuverability for the shoulder, elbow and wrist. There's an additional spin articulation spot in the forearm for further movement, which is of course extremely important when positioning the arm with the bladed finger-glove hand. Our figure came with two interchangeable hands, one a glove hand with articulated blades, as well as the hand with the one finger blade attachment. And the head articulation receives a lot of care as well. This is a full ball in socket with the ability to twist, tilt or canter Freddy's head in any whichaway you want. Very nice.

Freddy's dressed in cloth dark brown pants, even with little pockets for criminy's sake. The aforementioned striped sweater, a nice brown coat, looks like a pleather or vinyl contruct and a plastic fedora. If there's any part of the figure we'd complain about at all, it would be the plastic hat. Don't push it down on Freddy's head too hard and leave it for long. If you do, as we did, you may pull some of his forehead coloration off when you remove the hat. Just place the hat on without jamming it on there and you'll be fine. Another sweet touch is a little plastic scrapbook of Freddy's newsclippings, complete with a ribbon pageholder attached. You also get the figure stand with a Freddy vs. Jason plastic base.

The packaging is classic Sideshow -- a full-color box with front panel that opens to reveal the figure behind a clear plastic enclosure. You can view it just as well in the box as out but trust us, you want to take this out. Plus, with Sideshow packaging, you can get these out fairly simple and still keep all of the packaging intact. There's a handful of those wire ties you have to untwist (we believe the Devil invented those) but they keep it to a minimum.

This is one of our favorite figures in a while, you can pose Freddy as the Springwood Slasher into just about any position you remember from the movie. We love the ability to cock the head to the side in that way Freddy has long used, sort of like the way your dog looks at you. But of course your dog doesn't generally rip your guts open after he gives you that look. But he's probably thinking it.