When you do a movie like Harry Potter, Spider-man or Shrek, you know there will be action figures. That's a law of nature. But when a film like Kill Bill comes along, you don't expect it, let alone figures with action features. But NECA has produced a line of five figures, developed off volume 1, that not only look good on the shelf, but some have a nifty action feature as well.

The first series is based on the battle with Go-Go, O-Ren and the Crazy 88's at the House of Blue Leaves. The first series was even scheduled to include O-Ren, but the scuttle butt is that Lucy Lui had issues with the likeness. The series ended up with The Bride of course, three versions of the Crazy 88's, and Go-Go. I put up a review of The Bride and Go-Go last Sunday night at my review web site, and tonight I'll cover the three Crazy 88's.

The only stores with these so far are the Musicland family - Musicland, Sam Goody, Media Play and Suncoast. They air shipped these in ahead of other retailers, but you can expect to see them show up at many on-line retailers (and I have some suggestions at the end) over the next couple weeks. Retail is around $12 each.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, you can always reach me at mwc@mwctoys.com. If you enjoy this review, take a minute to check out my other site at Michael's Review of the Week, and let me know what you think. Now on to the review!

"Kill Bill Crazy 88's"

All three of the Crazy 88's are based on actual characters, but only one has a name - Johnny Mo. He's the bald dude that comes in first when the army of rejects from the Kato School of Fashion show up to attack The Bride. He's particularly important, because he is played by the great Gordon Liu, who's been doing martial arts films for over thirty years. He is one of the stars of the very movies Tarantino is paying homage to, and having him here - and in Kill Bill 2 in the larger role of Pei Mei - is a nice addition.

The other two might be nameless, but if you pay attention to the film, you'll see the actors these were based on. They also all have a rather unique action feature - spurting blood from their arms. I'll discuss it in detail down below, but it is certainly a unique feature.

Current word is that there will be an exclusive at this summer's San Diego Comic Con of a Crazy 88 with QT's head. That's sure to be a popular con exclusive.

Packaging - ***1/2
I love clamshells, and I'm not shy about it. Your mileage may vary, particularly if you don't have a ginsu knife handy. These have fairly obvious graphics, based on the first film, but NECA did a decent job with what they had to work with.

A nice feature (and one that other companies should be paying attention too), is that there are instructions included on the interior of the paper insert. It explains how the Crazy 88 bases should fit with the Bride base. Too often, companies leave out such things, and they are always useful, even for fairly obvious features.

Sculpting - ***
The sculpts on the female figures in this series have been a subject of massive debate. But the three Crazy's haven't had that same level of scrutiny. They are very good though, matching the source material extremely well. The funny thing is that the females and males of this series are opposite in more than just genitalia (if they had genitalia)...they are also opposite in which part of the sculpts are best.

In my review of the females, I said that the bodies were great, but the head sculpts had issues. Here, I think the three head sculpts are excellent, matching the actors well enough, and having solid detail. But the bodies - reused for all three figures - are less impressive. While the detail is good, I'm not thrilled with the modified 'L' fighting stance that all three are in, and the arm articulation doesn't work particularly well with the sculpt. They can hold the sword with both hands, but when working with both weapons, there aren't many posing options that look good.

The three head sculpts represent Johnny Mo (the bald guy), a bearded 88, and a clean shaving 88. I think that these guys are based on two of the guys sitting around the table with O-Ren, although my memory may be fuzzy on that one. The selection of these three is a fairly good choice, and I like the hair sculpted as part of the head, rather than as a separate piece.

Scale is good with the females, and they also look fine with other 6-7" action figures like Movie Maniacs. I've included a comparison photo as well, showing Michael Myers and Batman checking out one of the 88's. The figures stand fine on their own, although you'll probably want to use the stands since they add so much to the display.

Paint - ***1/2
The paint ops are may favorite overall aspect of these figures. The majority are clean and neat, with straight lines, no bleed, and great color separation. There aren't a lot of colors, but what's here is done well.

For the gore lovers, be happy in knowing that the 'severed' joints at the neck and elbows, where the limbs pop off easily, are bloody and red. This works nicely with the 'sliced tissue' appearance of the sculpt, especially at the elbows.

The beard and hair lines are clean, with no overspray of either color on to the other. The eyes are straight and even, and the black masks have a clean definition between themselves and the faces. Overall, the work is very nice, with little slop and solid quality.

Articulation - **
The articulation is pretty basic, designed really for one or two poses. There's neck (which is designed for the head to pop off), shoulder, elbow (again designed to pop off), wrists, waist and ankles. As you can see, there's not much you can do from the waist down, although the figures stand fine on their own.

Even the arm poses are pretty limited by the way they are sculpted. Most annoying, the hands wanted to pop off far too easily, and they have much shorter and smaller posts than the hands on The Bride or Go-Go. I'm not sure why that is, but you'll find yourself dropping the hands every time you re-pose the arms. The articulation isn't great, but at least it does give you a couple basic poses, and more importantly, the ability to pop off the limbs and head allow you to pose the 88's the way they were for most of their screen time.

Accessories - ***
All three Crazy 88's come with two weapons and a base. The base pieces are all identical, but The Bride's base is designed to allow these three bases to sit right against it, even though they are identical. The weapons are predominately reused as well, with each Crazy coming with an axe and sword. Johnny Mo comes with an additional sword/bo staff combo weapon, just like he had in the film.

The sculpting is very good on all the accessories, with lots of small details. They fit nicely in their hands, and they can hold the swords with both hands at once.

Most of the detail paint work on the accessories is also good, although the vac-metallized blades on the swords and hatchets is a little inconsistent. And the gore fans don't need to worry, as there's plenty of blood on the bases and swords.

Action Feature - ***
NECA gets points for coming up with one of the most unique action features for these figures that I've seen in years. As I mentioned in the articulation section, the arms pop off at the elbows. There is a small hole in the back of each 88 (see the one group photo to see the size and location), and a small squeeze pump and tube attaches to the back. You fill up the squeeze ball with 'blood' (disappearing ink), and squeeze - the blood squirts out through the arms! I tried it out, and it works fairly well, although one arm had better flow than the other. It wasn't too messy, but I doubt it will be something I do too often. I am taking the figures to work though, and I bet I have to show my colleagues more than once this gruesome feature.

I was going to try to get a perfect photo of the action for you, but figured that the video available at the NECA website would do it better than I could.

Value - **1/2 for the first one, ** for the next two
Twelve bucks isn't cheap, but as I predicted, prices are going to continue to rise as retailers disappear and production numbers are forced down. Once you have one Crazy 88, the value of spending $13 a pop for what amounts to different heads drops.

Overall - ***
I was disappointed in the line as a whole - I was hoping for four star figures. But the reused bodies, with a less than perfect sculpt to begin with, along with the predominately reused accessories and hefty price tag brought these down for me. I have to give NECA points for trying - they really did go out of their way to match up the little details with the actual scene in the film. But the overall quality didn't bring the figures up above the average.

You may not have seen these yet, but remember that it's because they haven't shipped widely. Don't go paying a ridiculous price on ebay for something that is yet to ship completely.

Where to Buy -
Media Play, Sam Goody and Suncoast are the only stores with these so far, since they air freighted them in. On-line options include:

- Aisle Sniper has the set for $60.

- Killer Toys has the set of 5 for $50, or $11 each.