Written by Jonathan Wojcik

   For the fourth and final installment in HALLOWEEN MASK MADNESS, I'm going to be doing something a bit different. These aren't going to be monster masks collected from across the web, but masks collected solely from the Chinese wholesaler Everbuying.com, the same exact place I discovered The Luminous Big Kito Extrusion Nausea Maggots earlier this year. By now a number of these masks are unfortunately no longer in stock on the website, but you can find a couple stragglers if you just search "ghost mask" on their website.

What makes these cheap, knock-off masks special enough to warrant their own review? You're going to find out pretty fast, and best of all, we're going to make up our own idiotic names for them, since the site only identifies under such inventive labels as "blue mask" and "green mask." Let's begin!

   At first, I thought this mask just had a skunk on its head, which was strange enough, but then I realized that striped tail sticking out of its mouth could belong to the same curious mammal, which really doesn't look any closer to a skunk than it does to a squirrel, lemur, raccoon or some sort of exotic, striped possum, so I think I'm just going to go with that last one. I realize this green zombie-guy could just have one on his head and a different one in his mouth, but I prefer to think that a single marsupial is threaded all the way through his rotten cranium and possibly controlling his motor functions. The zombie is not the true monster, here. He is but a vessel.

And if you're wondering, this is a battery-operated mask presumably equipped with lights and sound. What sort of sound? I have no idea. They were already sold out by the time I considered placing an order.

   I'm sure you took one look at this son of a bitch and realized he can't possibly be given any other name. His facial features are more than 50% snakes, including one big snake head for a nose and a pair of snake's tails for a tongue. The small, black human skull in the middle of his forehead also appears to be the head of another snake, possibly the master face-snake, and probably the one that fires some sort of ray at those who dare to defy his commands; a ray more than likely made out of pure evil, which isn't a concept that makes any actual sense, but try telling him that and you'll just get a big old face full of evil.

   This one may not have an official name given, but it provides one anyway. "END OF SMOKER!" is right there on the top of its head, while "SMOKING DO HARM TO HEALTH!" is written across its jaw. It's almost as if this mask has some sort of message or moral lesson connected to it. I think it's about running into traffic.

   Because I was once a child during the 80's and 90's, a bright blue headband instantaneously translates as "ninja" in my juvenile mind, though the first thing that probably drew your attention here was the vivid blue skull growing like a tumor out the side of his deformed face. It's even anchored in with its own nasty, veiny little roots! Growing up with a second head probably wasn't easy for this poor guy, but he must have declined having it sawed off to the day he died. Now roaming the Earth among the living dead, the two share a deeper bond than ever, and their combined intellect has resulted in one of the deadliest stealth assassins in the entire vast subculture that is skeleton martial artistry.

   This guy has all the post-apocalyptic, radioactive mutant stuff going on. He's skinless, he's green, he's oozing, he's got a boxy cybernetic eye, there's some sort of breathing device lodged in his jaws and some other artificial ventilation system serves as his nose. Yet again, we've got what looks like a monster fused directly with its nuclear holocaust safety gear. If that's so common in Halloween masks, why isn't it more common anywhere else? It's RAD as hell. Get it? "Rad?" I capitalized it. Get it? Like, "rads?" Get it? Do you get it? That he's rad-ioactive? Get it? Do you get that joke? Are we on the same page?

   You thought there was only one skeleton ninja with a tiny, sentient second head, but you were wrong. Dead wrong. DOUBLE dead wrong! DOUBLE TROUBLE DEAD WRONG!. D....no, I think that's as far as that can go. That'd make a pretty awesome motto for these guys, though. I don't know what makes them more evil than the other twins, exactly, since I already established that those guys are assassins. Maybe they only assassinate mob bosses, or something, while these two just take any job that pays...and nobody has a bigger price on their heads than the Non-evil Skeleton Ninja Twins! Watch out, guys...you're gonna end up quadruple-trouble dead!!!!!!!!!

   I can't even tell what's supposed to be going on with this guy, really. He's got a couple weird knots or warts going on, his eyes sockets are almost nonexistent and he has jointed finger-bone things growing out of his temples, so I'm just going to focus on that metal insignia and declare him a star captain, possibly the ambassador of planet Blackskull, a utopian world shaped like a big black skull and inhabited by an enlightened race of noble weird black eyeless skeletons.

   What's with almost all of these masks having smaller creatures emerging from them? I'm not complaining, of course; it's a motif that instantly improves absolutely anything, and I do mean anything. Skeletons, vampires, zombies, demons, aliens, babies, birthday cakes, show me one thing that isn't made better with tiny skulls and worms pouring out of it. In this case, it's a cobra and an incredibly large tree frog, another light-up mask like the one with the possum stuck to it. Since the skull itself looks kind of slimy, I'm going to say it's one of those bog mummies preserved by peat moss, and the frog on his head signifies a leadership role in bog mummy society. The cobra is simply a fashion statement.

   Of all the "small skull growing out of a bigger face" masks, this is by far the most terrifying and confusing. That nasty little round skull is just hanging right out of this withered hag's eye socket, her right eyeball grotesquely shoved up into her forehead! I wanted to give her a "hag" sounding name, like Jenny Greenteeth or Meg Mucklebones. You can probably think of a better one than mine.

Maybe all these monsters come from a world where little parasitic skulls are just the basic form taken by demonic familiars, or something.

   This one probably doesn't seem all that special compared to everything else we've seen on this page, but it's my personal favorite for a number of reasons. For one, its eyeballs are hanging out, which you know is a pretty easy shortcut to my heart. For another, it has an adorably geeky hairstyle for a skeletal fiend. The tusked, inhuman mouth is another plus, and yet again, we have a smaller skull involved, this time lurking within the monster's throat. What really ties this one together, however, is the eyewear. Are those supposed to be thick-rimmed glasses, or protective goggles? Neither would be serving any actual purpose, since its eyes are not only on the wrong side to benefit, but this in itself indicates they have no lenses.

Is this....is this a demon hipster?

   This one was not out of stock when I got off my ass and tried to purchase some of these, so here I am modeling it. Way more impressive in person than in Everbuying's photo, which makes me even more regretful that I didn't collect some others when I had the chance.

   At last, the skull-within-a-skull motif is brought to its logical extreme. This green, grimacing reaper features an entire smalller skeleton, or at least a humanoid being with a skull-face, climbing out of one eye socket to cheerfully mash a big bone in its master's face like some sort of undisciplined child. It probably doesn't really know any better, and Skelemaster seems reluctant to say no to the rambunctious micro-ghoul. Maybe his necromantic powers only work as long as mini-Skelemaster is happy, and nothing makes him happier than slapping regular-Skelemaster in the face with his big, bloody bone.

Gross!