It’s almost Halloween, and if you’re an action figure collector, what’s scarier than something made by NECA? The long-running toy company specializes in making action figures and collectibles for the discerning adult collector, and is famous for licenses like Alien, Predator, Ninja Turtles, Godzilla, Sesame Street (weirdly), and also pretty much any horror franchise they can get their mitts on. The other thing they’re famous for? The “quality” of what they put out. Basically, they’re notorious for making action figures that look really nice, but are just not designed to be played with at all. I’ve heard about stiff, locked joints, unfriendly, pointy handfeel, but mostly breakage out the wazoo. Broken joints, broken accessories, broken bits of sculpting, stuff that’s broken out of the box, and so forth. Because of that, it’s been a company I’ve generally avoided, despite liking a lot of the things they make figures of. But I finally broke down and got something of theirs, with the caveat that I got it in a trade with my brother-in-law, who’s big into their offerings, and is more of a “put them on the shelf” kind of guy.
So, Friday the 13th! The 7th film provides a pretty good overview of what it’s all about in its prologue, above. It’s odd that it’s a franchise I’m into, since it’s so outside my usual wheelhouse of interests. Let’s also be clear: None of the movies are actually good. It’s not like Halloween, where there’s a couple of important, genre-defining classics in there, or Nightmare on Elm Street, where there’s a unique premise, or even Child’s Play, where there’s at least a consistent creative voice. Nope, it’s schlock all the way down with Jason, with the occasional film that gets a bit self-aware and goofy with it on purpose. As for my interest in that schlock, I blame the fact that most of the movies used to air in rotation pretty regularly on The New TNN when I was younger. I became oddly fascinated by the kind of ongoing, ad-hoc mythology that formed around Jason Voorhees, a sort of unknowable, indestructible, mysterious cryptid haunting the woods. What he really was, and what he wanted were unclear, beyond “destroy every person I come across.”
Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood really leaned into the “revenant that only exists to destroy” angle, on top of being the first one of these I actually saw start-to-finish. The film’s sometimes nicknamed Jason Versus Carrie, because the premise is that a teenage girl with psychokinetic powers (named Tina instead of Carrie, though), has come back to Crystal Lake, after accidentally drowning her father with her powers as a child (her mom’s there, too, played by Susan “voice of G1 Arcee” Blu!). When Tina attempts to use her powers to resurrect her father from his watery grave, she accidentally unseals Jason Voorhees from his imprisonment beneath the lake, who, almost mechanically, sets about his usual mission, with the film eventually culminating in a set of “unstoppable force versus immovable object” showdowns between the pair. I don’t know if it’s my favorite of the movies, but it’s got my favorite Jason design, and so it’s the one I picked for this singular foray into the NECA mines. Come, join me if you dare.
The Sculpt
The man behind the mask!
Even the biggest NECA haters can’t deny that they know how to make action figures that look good. And Jason here’s no exception. By the time we got to Part 7, this former human had decayed into a crumbling, rotting revenant, who visibly bore the wounds of his previous defeats. It’s a gnarly design, and they did him justice here.
His chiropractor’s got it easy.
What was once a bald guy in a hockey mask, dressed in fairly normal slacks and a button-up, is still that, but decayed. His clothes have shredded, and are full of holes. Beneath them, the flesh is mottled and leathery, and frequently gives way to show actual bones, on places like his kneecaps, ribs, and spine. And it’s all sculpted in excessive, grisly detail. Uptop, he’s still got the traditional hockey mask, but it’s missing pieces, and you can even see exposed teeth on his left side of his face.
He’s doing the Ninja Turtles Grimace.
Speaking of that, I like how there’s literal continuity on and around his headsculpt, as the various ways in which he was defeated in previous films are all included. He’s got a long cut and a chip in his mask on the top of his head from Part 3, a much worse cut on the side of his head from The Final Chapter, and the chip by his jaw and chain around his neck from Jason Lives. I’m even pretty sure some sculpting on the left of his spine’s a machete wound from Part 2. Basically, the detail here is nuts.
You can maybe say he scales with the Beast Warriors.
Scale-wise, he’s a bit bigger than I’d like. NECA stuff tends to be 7-inch, instead of 6-inch, so he towers over basically every Marvel Legend, Figma, and other 6-incher I’ve got, and stuff like his head and hands are proportionally larger, so it’s hard to pretend he’s just like, really tall or something. Still, it’s hard to blame the figure for being a part of a different scale ecosystem than an unrelated company’s stuff, and it’s in scale with other NECA things (and, apparently, McFarlane DC stuff, since that’s also 7-inch).
Waiting for camp to open.
The one bit of sculptwork on him that I find a bit hinky, though, is specifically, well, his pelvic area. For whatever reason, that whole region of his pants is a separate piece over top of the whole area, so it makes it look like he’s wearing pants-shaped briefs. It’s a little bit odd.
The Colors
He’s been on the grill too long.
This Jason must be from the XboX 360 era, because he’s mostly brown. Well, okay, to be fair, his clothes are mostly a mottled, dark green. His skin, bones, and mask, though, they’re all mostly different shades of brown and beige. Still, there’s a lot of color variety here, and tons of really intricate paintwork, like fading on his mask, and inkwashes on his bones. In a particularly gruesome twist, there’s a paintwash applied to some of the skin/bones regions to give them a shine, making them look wet (and creepy!). It could have been a boring set of colors, but there was some real effort here.
Build Quality
He’s been rotting at the bottom of a lake. Surely that makes him fragile?
Ready to get into the scary part? Well, to be honest, the scary thing is….there’s no real problems here? I don’t know about you, but that fact has startled me. Firstly, nearly all his tattered clothing is made of soft, rubbery plastic layered on top of his hard plastic skin, so there’s no pointy, painful handfeel, and none of it’s breakable. The chain around his neck is made of real metal, which is funny, because apparently the physical suit in the film made it out of plastic, to make it easier on the suit actor.
And harder for you to survive!
Beneath the clothes, his joints are definitely all a little bit on the tight side (really noticeable when compared to Marvel Legends), but none of them feel like they’re in danger of breaking. I’d say the tightest ones are some ratchets on his shoulders, I have to struggle a bit with them. But again, they feel sturdy enough. In an ironic twist, the left wrist of one of his hands actually became a bit loose during my photo shoot, instead, a problem I can probably fix with some nail polish. As for how he managed to avoid all of the problems NECA is known for, maybe it’s because this is a more recent release? Or maybe because it’s pre-owned and broken in, but either way, it’s…..fine? I can’t shake how odd it is to say that.
He’s not teleporting offscreen, he’s actually just sneaking around like this.
Well, okay, two things about the assembly bug me. One is that he’s a bit hard to stand up, thanks to being a tall, bulky figure with normal-sized feet. That photo above this took some really careful balancing. My brother in law actually threw in a little figure stand for him that can go into some pegs on his feet, but he doesn’t come with one natively, though NECA sells them separately. That and, spoiler alert, his mask’s removable, and while it stays on him while neutrally posed, moving his head can make it slide around a little bit. Still, that’s literally all the complaints I have, and it’s got me shook. Is everything a lie? Or did I just get lucky?
Articulation
Bendy enough to do the Belmont Stride.
Okay, this is a bit of a mixed bag. See, Jason’s got plenty of joints on him, but they don’t have a ton of range. Going bottom to top, we’ve got:
-Sideways ankle tilts
-Universal knees
-Universal hips, with a surprising amount of range.
-No waist joint, but a pectoral joint that gives him sideways articulation, and a very slight ab crunch.
-Ratcheted universal shoulders
-Universal elbows and wrists.
-A full universal neck.
That head tilt’s important.
So, outside of the oddness of the the waist not being at his waist, it’s a pretty full-featured set of joints. The biggest issue is that there’s not a lot of range to a lot of them. He can kick decently, sure, but he feels a bit immobile compared to a Hasbro 6-incher. That said, this is Jason, a character who isn’t exactly known for being limber and agile, and instead is usually played as a slow, strong, implacable glacier. So, basically, I don’t mind if he’s a bit stiff, because that’s what he’s supposed to be.
Accessories and Features:
“Hi, friend! Are you planning on chopping some wood?”
There’s a LOT going on here, which is pretty typical of NECA. A big thing with every Jason that they do is that each comes with a big pile of weapons, based on e nearly every murderous implement he used in each film, and this one’s no exception. To hold them, he’s got easily swappable hands, with one set having splayed fingers, and the other set shaped for grasping. And these accessories all fit into these hands very well! So, let’s run down what’s here.
Machete bros!
Firstly, he’s got his classic machete, something every Jason needs. Next up, a fairly standard wood-chopping axe.
*Swish!* “Whoa, there. You gotta be faster than that!”
After that, he’s got a strangely mundane kitchen knife.
Evil gets a sandwich.
Trending towards the more exotic, he comes with a big, curved scythe.
Samus was never the best at situational awareness.
Moving onto larger stuff, he’s got a…long pole with a curved blade at the end? Honestly, I’m not sure what it’s supposed to be when it’s not being used as a weapon, but he did use it in the film during a particularly important death scene.
“Not THIS time, buster!”
His largest accessory is the strangest one: An entire weedwhacker, fuel tank and all.
When your gardener hits the Obari Pose.
There’s this odd pop culture misconception, where Jason is often depicted wielding a chainsaw, something that he never once did in any of his movies. Him deploying this gardening tool in this movie was the closest he actually got to doing that, though.
“Good job on the grass, Jason!”
Turns out I’m missing an extra weapon on top of these ones, a bloodstained tent stake, used in another plot-pivotal beat.
This little guy. Knife for scale.
A bummer, but hey, everything else in this set’s here, and I’m not hurting for accessories. His victims are hurting, though.
Oh no! To be continued!
Rather than get granular, I’ll point out that all of these accessories are really intricately sculpted and painted, complete with little details like woodgrain, and metal rivets on the handles of objects. Some of the silver paint on a few of them is worn and scratched a bit, but much like Generation One Scoop, I think it adds to the presentation.
*Samus arm cannon noise*
Time for the real fight to begin!
Moving back onto Jason himself, his headsculpt came with an unexpected surprise: His mask is fully removable. I knew he came with two swappable heads, but I assumed it was “mask on, and mask off.” Instead, you can just slide the mask off, and his alternate head is of that same face bellowing at the viewer.
*Breathes in*
“LAAAAAA!!!!”
It’s a terrifying, zombie-like headsculpt, all mottled flesh over a skull-face, with visible bone, and those same wounds from past movies on display.
“Oh, my! I hope you’ve got a great personality!”
“Everyone a critiiiiiiiiiiiic!!!”
There’s also an entirely separate, cracked mask accessory, and the open-mouthed headsculpt comes with a hole in the back of it, so you can mount it on him to replicate the moment where Tina broke his mask off with her powers. It’s all more elaborate and well-thought-out than I expected, which is funny, considering the source material.
Overall
“Come now, my dear. You merely need to loosen up!”
I’m shocked at how good this figure turned out to be. I was fully expecting to get something that looked great, but was terrible to handle, and possibly broken, and then I’d get to write about the problems with NECA. Instead, I found no problems at all.
Insert scare chords here.
This is an elaborately-detailed, well-made replica of a horrifying revenant killer from a schlocky horror film, with a ton of accessories. It’s a figure that poses and holds together way more solidly than it has any right to. Any complaints I have (his odd pants, the mask sliding off a bit) are all really minor, instead of the massive problems I’d figured I’d be saddled with.
“HELP MEEEEEE!!” “No, I think you’ve got this, hun.”
The thing is, I can’t blanket recommend NECA stuff, because I know they haven’t gotten the problems out of their system. For example, I was looking at their Alien Romulus Scorched Xenomorph, but heard reviews and reports that many of them have tails that are broken out of the box. That, plus other reports have assured me that the usual NECA problems still exist. And I can’t speak for any of their other Jasons, as well. What I can say, though, is that this particular Voorhees, a.k.a the best (worst?) looking design, came out really good, and if what you see here appeals to you, for some strange reason (hey, glass houses), then I recommend it as a one-off NECA purchase. Anything else NECA, though, it’s very much buyer beware, and check reviews.
King of the Voorheeses.
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