Back in 1987, special effects artist Chris Swift, who did some makeup work on Friday the 13th part 6, molded a well-worn latex copy of the coffin dummy used in the film.
In partnership with horror memorabilia collector David Lady, he sold a handful of copies to collectors. Photos of these copies are known to exist. They include, in no particular order:
Copy number 1. This belonged to a member of the Halloween Mask Association. The teeth on this copy are entirely unique, and probably acrylic inserts. Gorgeous copy. Photo from Marshall Bean.
Copy number 2. The Yakan Nabe copy (this belongs to a Japanese horror collector).
Copy number 3, which also has a distinct set of teeth.
Copy number 4, and by far the most well-known: The Billy Kirkus copy.
About a decade ago, we started to see second-generation copies of these pieces appear. A company called Dimensional Designs molded one of these copies and produced a limited run of 13 pieces for $600 in 2008-2009. They modified the teeth and added dirt and worm FX as well as a mask that appears to be a NECA remake repainted to look like a part 6. They also included a framed copy of the piece as it looked in the film. Nice touch!
In May 2011, Billy Kirkus partnered with the late Sam McCain of Horror Sanctum Studios to produce a limited run of 20 copies of his own coffin dummy for $500 a piece. You can see my copy at left, Billy's original at right. There is a considerable size difference with these copies and evidently cheap latex was used, but the piece is otherwise a faithful reproduction.
A few weeks ago, Billy molded his copy again and released a fiberglass resin version intended to give collectors a better version than the HSS. This new version is noticeably larger and the details are more crisp. The head is also a different shape, more closely resembling the original Chris Swift copies. Below is the new version (left) and the HSS coffin dummy (right).
Doing some photo analysis on the history of this piece, I noticed a few interesting things.
The Chris Swift 1st generation copies and the new Kirkus fiberglass version have a number of features in common, including a very oddly shaped head, depressed right temple (as you look at it), and some depressions just in front of the seam line that runs laterally across the cranium, and a left eye that is oddly close to the nose. The HSS coffin dummy that I own has a rounder head with more anatomical cranial dimensions and a left eye that appears to be in a more balanced position with respect to the rest of the face. The new copies also have a small bit of compression to the right side of the neck and the back of the neck is partially collapsed into the shoulders, an unfortunate but minor side effect of the weight of the silicone mold.
You can see many of the same "defects" in the Dimensional Designs version, which was molded from a sister copy of Billy's piece, as you can see in this video review from October 2009. The DD copies had an additional compression of the cranium on the upper right side behind the axe cut, and notably have the same "collapse" of the back of the neck present in Billy's new copies but oddly enough not in my HSS copy:
These peculiarities left me puzzled: which version is more accurate to the piece used in the film? You'd think it would be the earlier version. Maybe the HSS coffin dummy's rounder head and anatomically-correct eye placement is an accident caused by foam filling, especially since Billy's 1st gen copy more closely resembles the new ones he's released than the old HSS bust I have.
But if you compare photos carefully, it really looks like the HSS coffin dummy more closely resembles the actual dummy used in the film. The head is rounder and less lumpy and the eye placement is not so close to the nose.
It's probably hard to see from these photos, but if you have any of these in person, take a look, particularly at the way the cranium dips in a straight line right from the seam. Seems unlikely to have been a design decision. You can see the same effect in this video of another HSS coffin dummy, so apparently they don't all have the foamed-out cranium like mine:
However, Sam's prototype, seen in this video, looks like my HSS, with the very rounded cranium and even face:
I think the best explanation is that this above prototype HSS coffin dummy best represents how the movie piece was originally sculpted; the newer fiberglass copies are more size-accurate, but retain the "defects" of the Swift 1st gen copies. This is probably because when Chris Swift molded his original piece he didn't stuff it well, and there was some compression caused by the weight of the molding material. Picky collectors like myself have a choice to make--go with a version that may be more accurate to the film, or one that is more accurate to the earliest movie mold copies? I might actually keep both of my copies.
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