Well I’m not a Leatherface aficionado and also, I’m not really sure how many of those are out there to be honest. When you look for Michael Myers reference you will find essay long write ups on the exact kind of shade of his jumpsuit on a screen by screen breakdown for example. And the lack of posts on this thread and the custom thread for LF show me Leatherface is not nearly as popular a character. So I found it hard to really find a definitive reference guide to judge this figure against other than a 4K transfer of a very old and amateurish (in an amazing way) film.
I’m NOT a horror movie fan. But the original and only the original TCM gets my stamp of approval of cool / iconic character and great / iconic film, enough so to justify getting this guy for my too-large collection.
I’m also someone who will crap all over threezero the first time they get a chance, so let’s say right off the bat this is a pretty good figure.
I was less concerned with this release seeing as their non-human, more monster efforts is where they can get away a bit easier with their sub-par sculpt and paint. I’m happy to say that what you get here for a reasonable price is enough that with just a bit of time invested (more on that later) you won’t have to spend a dime to get a better Leatherface. In fact there is no better Leatherface out there. This dethrones what I think was the best to my knowledge, Betomatalli, by a large, large margin.
The sculpt: 3.5/5
Overall it’s the best and most accurate leatherface of all time, everything is nicely detailed good texture and fine detail, even what can be seen of the likeness underneath looks accurate . All very nice.
My main beef is that as always threezero lacks a bit of refinement. This can be seen in the oversized stitching on the mask.
Now let’s talk the hair. Every in hand and prototype photo I saw of it looked really rough and I always had it in my mind that I’d be gutting it and redoing it anyways. So when I got it I didn’t pay much attention to it. Then I realized that this is animal hair NOT synthetic doll hair. AKA it’s the same thing us guys who work with rehairing use anyways, which not only meant I would not have to redo it, but this is the FIRST time I’ve ever seen this on a mass produced product. I could be wrong about that, but even stull it has me mighty intrigued. This means even a layman can work it to get it looking pretty good. Other than that I think it’s a bit too dark. It’s almost black and to me it always looked dark brown in the film.
What I did to mine:
The hair was not enough of a bother to me to try and dye lighter and while I think doing it from scratch would still yield a better result,I'm fighting the urge to do that but if I see Jake or Owen do one I'm sure I'll be jealous and do one of my own. I was able to get it looking pretty good I think with mere styling. Pro tip, use future floor polish/Mop Glop which you can get at CVS and dunk your finger in it and style with it. Take a toothpick and twist parts of the hair around it very tight . This will make it curl and not be straight. You can get it looking decently natural. The floor polish is an acrylic clear goat, it holds it a lot better than hair product. I don’t use this for everything, but I use it for really specific curl or spikey hair etc so it holds and forms properly.
The clothes: 3/5
The pants and boots, works very nicely with nothing feeling cheap. The shirt is the best I’ve seen for Leatherface. very nice. All as good as you could hope. Where things fall apart a bit is the tie which is too large and too long and the pattern not as accurate as it could be. And of course the apron. Now the apron I feel is very good. They got the sheen to the material (although instead of the right plastic material it’s an acrylic painted canvas material which makes it too thick.) Everyone seems to miss the sheen in their custom efforts, but if you watch the film it’s clearly there. Now the yellow is the hard part. Even in the film it looks less saturated, always still less yellow than the chainsaw, more yellow than the mask but still VERY clearly yellow. and while this is more yellow than the prototype images it’s bit yellow enough. Not sure if it’s technically part of the outfit but I thought it was a nice touch threezero added real rope to the mask ties. Even more bizarre that they didn’t make the ties long enough.
What I did to mine:
I yellowed the apron with Tamiya clear yellow. This preserved the nice finish and got it more saturated. I struggled with myself if it turned out being bright enough. It seems ok to me sometimes and too mustard at other times but at the end of the day now, it FEELS right to me and that’s what’s important.
I also cut the tie down quite significantly shorter and also tied the knot much tighter.
Finally I tried to retie the string at his mask. Still not long enough I affixed extra string to get the ties right.
The body situation : 2/5
The arms could be painted better, all Threezero skin complexions are Trump orange, painted but I do think they do the trick, nicely jointless and thick. They can be posed well to get side swinging and raised above the head chainsaw poses. And the standard and floppy at the knees Threezero body is just too tall. This is one of the main issues with the figure. The fat suit he comes with is good but actually not fat enough. He needs to be thickened a bit more especially at the sides.
What I did to mine:
I put another slimmer fatsuit under this fat suit (don’t remember which one, sorry) and stuffed some cotton in at the sides to thicken him out even more. Very happy now.
Most importantly I swapped the legs below the knee joints with Jon Snow legs. This knocked him down a lot and I still think looks proportional with the rest of the figure. In the photo with Michael Myers who is on a Nathan Drake body, now he looks only a few inches taller (not a foot) and apparently he’s supposed to be 6’4 and Myers 6’1. So it seems about right now. I also put a photo of him beside another mass market figure for context. If you don’t read this long-ass review I enjoy the thought of all the WTF moments those have when wondering why he is standing beside Wonder Woman.
Paint Job:
2/5
This is where I think Threezero really falls short. To me their paint efforts look a lot like a McFarlane Toy. Well maybe not as bad but the black wash on the mask specifically is out of control it really makes this mask look cheaper and more like a toy.
The paint on the accessories and apron on the weathering is passable but not amazing. A customizer can do a better job but hoestly, this is OK more or less in that department it’s the blood splatter effects that could be better.
What I did to mine:
I left the apron (apart from yellowing it) and the weathering on the clothes as is but totally ripped off the amazing work that jki&Cri did to get those accessories looking way more realistic. (nice work dude)
The mask is what I really reworked. I added a bit of a more golden hued acrylic mix of the original tone and drybrushed the whole thing. This left the shading effects, but it killed the blackwash effect a lot. I tried my best to get the color as accurate as I could to the film.
I also painted the gaps in the teeth more significant to get them to look less perfect.
Accessories:
4/5
It seems like a high grade and that’s really only because other than the paint job I don’t see any fault with them. What you see is what you get. I mean a metal chainsaw blade or hammer would be bad ass but these are fine.
Watch out for the chainsaw. The bridge part below the handle is fragile I almost snapped mine trying to pose/put a hand on him
Overall out of box 3/5 – with mods 4/5
