Here we are, the day before Halloween and my bold plans for a lot of spooky reviews have really shit the bed. Hurricanes and other nonsense sure saw to that. But, at least I made it here with one more shot at it, and I’ll probably keep it going a bit into November to make up for lost time. Over the last couple years, I’ve taken a look at quite a few of NECA’s Ultimate Universal Monsters, but oddly enough I have yet to touch on my favorite one of the bunch. Yup, it’s The Gillman, and he is not only one of my favorite creature designs of all time, but I absolutely love the movies. When I was about ten years old, they showed Revenge of the Creature in 3D on network television and it was a huge event in our house. We got the 3D glasses for the whole family, my Dad made Jiffypop and it was just a great time and a very fond memory.

We’ve seen the packaging for this line so many times now, and this one holds no surprises. It’s a window box with a folding front flap that features some poster art from the film. It took me a while to find this one at a decent price. He seemed to sell out online pretty quick initially and I don’t do a lot of toy hunting these days, so I had to wait for him to show up at regular retail price on Amazon again. The B&W version was around, but as neat as those are, I’m only going for the colored releases. Eventually patience prevailed and here we are!

And what a great design for an action figure! It’s well known now that the Gillman portrait was designed by Ex-Disney artist, Milicent Patrick, and she got zero credit for her work for a long time. And what a shame because it is some amazing work! It’s hard to say exactly what it is about this fishy-fellow that speaks to me, but I just dig him so much! The design certainly gave NECA’s sculptors a lot to sink their teeth into, and naturally they did a superb job with it. The bulk of the figure’s overlapping plates are covered with tiny scale texturing and it breathes all new life into a creature design that I was used to seeing in grainy low-resolution B&W film on a tube TV. There are some smooth plates over his tummy, as well as some smooth areas on his lower legs, but otherwise every bit of this guy is just packed with detail in the sculpt. From behind, he has a strip of fibrous fin that runs from from behind his neck, down his spine, and splits off to his upper legs, with similar tufts on the backs of his forearms. The paint consists of some different shades of muted green and copper, and some lovely gradients throughout.

You get three heads to choose from and all are very well done. These consists of a calm face, a slightly excited face, and a face with mouth open and ready to strike. Yeah, the last one looks more like The Gillman walking into his surprise party, but I still dig it. There’s lots of great attention to detail here, especially the little warts on his forehead and the paintwork for the eyes is excellent.

Articulation is standard stuff for these Ultimate figures, which means a lot of rotating hinges. The range of motion in the elbows and knees could be better, but I can’t say as I really need it in The Gillman. On the other hand, I would have liked him to be able to look up more to hit those swimming poses. And, if you’re looking for accessories here, you’re going to be disappointed, as there are none. Bubkis. You do, however get several sets of hands. That may sound great, but there’s very little variation between two of the sets, and I’m kind of left with just a pair of flat swimmy hands and graspy hands. It does kind of feel like NECA threw in some unnecessary hands here to bulk out the package. Jada did include some extras with their figure, including a net, a speargun, and a fossilized creature hand. You could argue the speargun isn’t a creature accessory, but I would have loved to get a net included with this release to beef it up a bit.

Lack of accessories aside, I do love how this figure came out and I’d say he tops the Jada version, both in paint and sculpt, hands down. He’s loads of fun to play with and was definitely a major gaping hole in my Monsters collection. And Gillman brings me more or less up to date with the NECA Universal Monsters that I’m after. I may pick up Jack Griffin eventually, but only if I stumble upon him at a good price. I do, however, still have some of NECA’s accessory sets to check out, so look for some of those to turn up here in the weeks ahead! In the meantime, Happy Halloween! And like I said, I’ll keep some of the spookiness going for a bit into November so I can get through some unfinished business!