AUTOPSY ZOMBIE & SILENT NURSE
Review from AFM magazine issue # 41
REVIEW WRITTEN BY MIKE FALCIGNO FOR AMAZING FIGURE MODELER MAGAZINE
Once again, I gotta hand it to UK sculptor/zombie fanatic Tony Gibson!
Following up his maggot infested Conquistador kit (reviewed in AFM # 38) Gibson is back
with a two course meal of undead resin morsels.
The appetizer being a ¼ scale bust based on one the best zombie flicks you never saw;
Jorge Grau’s 1974’s The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue. This vastly
underappreciated gut-muncher, a Spanish / Italian co-production shot in England (go figure),
has plenty to offer fans of the living dead. I highly recommend seeking out Anchor Bay’s
excellent DVD release of the film under its alternate title; Let Sleeping Corpse’s Lie.
Getting back to the kit, one of the coolest things about the film were the
shuffling, autopsy stitched zombies, one of which Gibson chose to immortalize
in this resin portrait. The bearded zombie Gibson presents has its head tightly
wrapped in medical gauze, sporting a trance-like expression, with a huge
incision running the length of its chest. Gibson’s bust is cleaved off squarely
at both shoulders and just below the sternum, leaving ample space to capture
both the ghouls’ creepy visage and the surrounding elements of his decaying
torso. The sculpted bandages are rendered very tightly with plenty of fine
textures for detailing and the likeness to the actor who portrayed the zombie
is spot on. Gibson smartly offsets the polished flesh areas with some nicely
sculpted hair detail on the characters beard and chest, while finishing off the
sculpt with a gruesome portion of autopsy suture and a missing chunk of flesh
on the torso. The casting job is absolutely flawless, so he’s ready to prime
right out of the box. Fans of the movie will love this obscure zombie tribute;
anyone not familiar should watch the damn movie!"
Now for the main course, one of the creepiest creatures to lurk across movie screens last year
were the undead nurses from Silent Hill. These deformed dames clearly struck a cord with
Gibson as he decided to sculpt one in ¼ scale bust form.
Considering the Nurses heads are essentially mangled piles of flesh
wearing medical uniforms, I was pleasantly surprised to find Gibson pushed a
lot of detail into the bust. Cut in a similar manner to his Manchester Zombie,
the Silent Nurse bust features smooth, crisp detail on the clothing areas with
a wee bit of ample cleavage poking out from her blouse. The head is a suitably
warped combination of sculpted textures and fine wrinkles, giving modelers
plenty of paint options for finishing the piece.
Cast with the same high standard as all of Gibson’s’ sculpts, the end result is a perfect Garage Kit of
a character so evil….she’d consider being slapped with a malpractice suit complimentary!"
