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Light your candles and prepare the salt circles!
Eligos is a minor demon of the mind. He possesses knowledge of hidden things, but preys on the mentally and emotionally weak.
As previously discussed (in the "Ultimate Ash" review linked just above), I managed to completely miss the release of the Ash vs. Evil Dead figures because whoever NECA employed to stock my local Toys Я Us... didn't. Over and over and over and over, they reliably failed to put figures into the store. Or if they did, they obviously didn't put in enough. So once again we say thank goodness for for those seasonal calendar stores, huh? There are so many NECA figures I've seen there that I've never seen anywhere else. Mattel too, but that doesn't matter right now.
Ash has spent years fighting Deadites, but Eligos is a legit demon - that's a couple rungs up the ladder when it comes to intimidating evil. He's specifically named as a minor demonic entity, but still manages to wipe the floor with Ash and all his friends. The only description prosthetics designer Roger Murray was given was "a faceless demon" (which you'll recall was the same idea that got us Stranger Things' Demogorgon), so the only feature on his head is the ragged mouth poking out through the front of his melon-like head.
Eligos is a skinny humanoid figure,
with recognizable musculature and no genitals. Which, coincidentally, is also the first line of Shocka's Tinder profile. The toy is sculpted with sharp fingernails and seeping wounds all over his body and head. (Something that should be in Shocka's Tinder profile, but isn't.) Things really get demonic and inhuman when you get down to the ankles: instead of normal feet, or even typically demonic hooves, Eligos has this thing where he's almost got another pair of forearms, with more hands on one end and a large bone spike on the other. Hell of a design, Rog! Definitely unique and unsettling!
The figure's skin is a pale bluish gray, providing an excellent contrast for the vibrant red blood seen in the wounds and pouring down his flesh. The red on his arms (and feet-arms) is so perfect
and unbroken that it looks like Eligos is wearing gloves, even when you factor in the black fingernails.
NECA gave the figure the standard kinds of articulation, but it isn't enough. Or rather, most of it is good enough, with two annoying exceptions: the head and the ankles. It's hard (though not impossible) to get Eligos to stand up, thanks to his weird feet. But the range of motion in the ankle-wrists' balljoints is so limited that you have to point his foot-legs nearly horizontal, instead of nearly vertical; then, you have to lean his torso forward to keep him from falling backwards, but the range of motion in the neck isn't enough to get him to look straight ahead. That would be fine if his legs worked properly, because he'd be taller than a lot of figures; but with joint issues at both ends of the figure, it's like a sandwich of disappointment. At least he's got an articulated jaw, eh? That's always fun!
Sadly, no toy would ever be able to capture Eligos' most identifying feature: in order to show that he was from a different plane
of existence and didn't really belonng on Earth, a super freaky effect was applied to the footage, in which the entirety of his body would shake and flicker, except for his mouth, which was always steady. Again, an amazing choice for portraying a demon! This toy could definitely have better execution, but that doesn't mean it's bad. What collection couldn't use more gross villains?
-- 10/14/18
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