Yeah . . . Well, Your Mother was the Lightning!
By the time Universal reached the fourth Frankenstein film, The Ghost of Frankenstein, they had done plenty to torque and twist the original story to meet the needs of their sequels. For a guy who didn't seem very interested in creation the old fashioned way in the first movie, Frankenstein certainly found a way to produce a couple of sons and a daughter to keep the monster factory rolling until the mid-forties. After Son of Frankenstein, Karloff had had enough and the job of killing malcontent villagers fell to Lon Chaney, who is the only universal actor to play the four franchise monsters--Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman and the Mummy.
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Geometric's 1/4 scale Ghost of Frankenstein bust has been around a while but is still in production. And rightfully so. The likeness is fantastic and the quality cast makes this an easy kit to do. Like most Geo busts, it comes with a metal mounting rod and a disc in addition to the monster bust, a name plate and a pair of neck bolts for easy charge ups!
The first thing I did is standard procedure--I sanded off the seam lines with fine grit sand paper (below left), washed the kit with grease cutting soap. I also took a small curved wire sculpting tool and re-defined the lines of the jacket a little (below right). When it was dry, I hit it with gray auto primer to seal the kit.
The first step after the primer dried was to begin working on the clothes. I popped in the movie before beginning this stage and found that the monster was more or less wearing black from head to toe. I thought about doing it in gray scale, but I figured it could be done with dark colors . . . but colors none the less.
For the most part, I did the kit with an airbrush--Badger's serviceable Crescendo 175, sprayed at about 10 psi. I went to some old standbys, Badger's Freak Flex Gangrene (for the shirt) and a darker Freak Flex Sour Spleen Green for the jacket. When that was done, I sealed it and let the Testors Dulcote dry.
Next, I began to lay in the undercoats for the face. I put a layer of painter's tape around the neck to protect the In the wounds on the face, and went to work on the flesh areas.
I put in Bad Bruise Purple and around the eyes and in the recesses of the face, he got a shot of Near Black. Over that and around the edges of the face, I very lightly applied Grave Pallor Gray with the airbrush.
However, the main skin color is . . . what else? . . . Frankenflesh! It is a nice pale green. First, I lightly dry-brushed Frankenflesh over the wounds. Then I loaded a little in my airbrush and lowered the air pressure a little to get a very thin layer over the darker colors.
When it dried, I sealed what I had done with Dulcote and allowed him some private time and left the project for a while. I also decided to paint in the eye slits black and then dry brush Frankenflesh over the facial features, especially the eyelids.
Once the flesh tones are finished, it is time to work on the hair. This is not particularly difficult but does require some patience. First, in the large patches of hair, I applied Createx Black as a base coat via the airbrush. In the places where individual strands lie across the flesh, I used a small 00 sized liner brush to get these places.
I let that dry and then sealed the kit again with Dulcote. When it was dry, I applied a dry-brushed coat of Near Black to the hair to bring out the details. Then I dry brushed Anita's Antique Bronze on the sides and back of the kit's torso to bring out the highlights.
We are getting very close at this point . . . but we need the bolts. The bolts are made of pewter, like the name plate, and they can be trimmed and clipped easily. They need to be burnished with a fine grain sand paper to get them to shine, and they also need to be clipped in half to make the kit look right.
You will notice in the shot to the right that I have a couple of bottle caps. This is from many years of experience. In the brown one (foreground), I place the tiny bolts to keep them contained while I am working. I also work on a flat broad surface with a cloth underneath so that if I drop one, it is easily stopped and recovered.
In the second cap, I have a drop of superglue. I spray some CA accelerator on the neck holes and then dip the end of the bolt into the super glue with some needle nose pliers. I apply the bolt to the hole where the accelerator is and it sticks pretty much immediately.
As you can see in the picture above, I have switched out the mounting disc. That lovely new cherry wood disc is really just a coaster I picked up in Pier One and drilled a hole through.
I also need to do the name plate. This was a little moment of serendipity for me, but I painted the plate black and then applied a coat of yellow to the lettering. It looked like Hell so I decided to sand off the lettering with an ultra fine 400 grit sand paper. Lo and behold, the silver pewter underneath came out and looked great! I had to go back and paint black around the edges a bit, but it was easy.
This kit could really be done in a day and is a great first kit for horror fans--the eye slits are too small to worry about and the paint is very simple. I recommend the kit and if you want to pick one up, just click the paypal link below and get $5 off the MSRP.
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