Amazing CFX Silicone Masks You Can't Afford
Composite Effects is a company making some pretty top-quality masks and props, and entirely from Silicone! Have you ever even gotten to touch an all-silicone mask? It's so stretchy! It feels SO much like actual flesh! Compared to the more common latex rubber, Silicone can last forever without breaking down, it's easily cleaned, it's odorless and I'm pretty sure it isn't even possible to have an allergic reaction to it.
Yep, there really couldn't be a better investment as far as creepy monster costumes go...but that's if you're the kind of person who can ever in one lifetime afford 500 to a thousand dollars for a single item, which describes neither me nor possibly any person I have ever actually met in my life thus far. Enjoy this look at some of the coolest looking masks neither you or I will likely ever see in person!
Archangel Boogieman
"Boogieman" is one of CFX's classic and best-selling masks, which usually has a set of grisly teeth and no eyes. This variation on it scraps the mouth and adds an eerie, alien ring of eyeballs around the cranium, which the designer says is a personal interpretation of Asariel, the patron archangel of water and of human dreams. The result is a pretty unique and monstrous take on a humanoid angel, especially considering this ain't even the "fallen" kind.
Cthulhu
I'm always saying Cthulhu is a little played out these days, but I definitely enjoy the kelp-like appearance of his tentacles here, the seams of the skull and the fleshy webbing the wearer gets to peer out of. I will say that if you actually took away the eyes, you'd have a much more disturbing sort of "rotten seaweed zombie" figure.
Dagon
So the thing about Dagon is that Dagon has only ever been described vaguely as a man-fish, so any portrayal of Dagon is by necessity sort of a generic Gill-Man. As far as those go however, this is a very nice one with lovable little teeth and huge eyes. I went through a childhood obsession with "fish people" and searched high and low for a fish-creature Halloween mask one year; something like this would have absolutely floored me, but I still appreciate the goofy, natural looking fish head I wound up finding. It's too bad I don't have it anymore, and can't even find pictures of any similar one online.
That's a really sad thing about Halloween masks; in my experience they can be made in such limited runs that no record ever survives of their existence once they're gone.
Envy
CFX has a mask for all seven deadly sins as well as the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, though not all of them are unusual enough that I can comment on them. Envy is cool because it features a whole second face on the back, and that "ribbed" Giger-painting texture is pretty nice as well!
Death
See, this is one of the Horsemen, and compared to some of the other characters here it's not a particularly weird design, but it's certainly different from the usual Grim Reaper interpretation. "Death" manifesting as a hollow porcelain-like figure is pretty creepy and still communicates the concept of death pretty nicely!
Pestilence
This one, I'm not quite so sure of. It's a cool enough looking ghoul with creepy finger bone horns, but I feel like more can always be done with an embodiment of all disease. Where are all the parasites? Fungal growths? Transparent sores? Admittedly, these masks are given names more for fun and quick reference than anything else, and intended to play whatever kind of role the wearer intends them to be, really.
Famine
This is the last Horseman until War, which I'm saving for later because it's one of the best looking masks they make. Like Death, this take on Famine is different from the usual cliche; we usually see an emaciated, starved looking mummified corpse-man, but this looks more like a bloated eating machine. Of course! Famine CAUSES famine! It eats everything!
Gluttony
Speaking of demonic eating machines, however, the mask they've designated "Gluttony" kind of blows the Famine design clear out of the water. The artist was apparently inspired by the look of "microscopic worms and deep sea horrors," though I personally see a lot of naked mole rat here. The sloppy, sucking maw full of teeth says it's going to eat your skin, but the sunken little eyes say it really wishes it didn't have to. It's a pitiful kind of horror that always works so much better than pure "menace" factor.
Cockroach Outlander
This is a variation on another mask just called the Outlander, but mostly only varies in its color scheme and the addition of antennae. Pretty nice! Genuinely gorgeous, distinctly roachey paint job and textures, though of course I'd like it even better with a less human lower face.
Mortimer
How can you not love MORTIMER! The details on this rat-man are fantastic all around, but I think what really sells it are the massive, bulging, translucent pink eyeballs.
Bathory
I've seen a lot of female vampire characters named Bathory, and almost every single one was designed to look human and classically beautiful. A bat-monster Bathory is a really nice change of pace, and I especially like the unique way in which a human nose and bat nose were combined here.
Torque
CFX suggests that "Torque" could be either a product of mad science or a magically created guardian, and it really does work equally well for either fantasy or science fiction scenarios. Most of Torque is just another snarly-toothed ghoulie, but the circular little eye holes of its chunky metal mask give it that precious touch of more sympathetic character I was just talking about.
Vengeance
This was apparently the winner of a 2019 design contest nobody told me about, and it's pretty lovely! It works equally as demonic or alien entity, and though offered in a lot of nice color schemes, the blue and white is probably the most striking. We've got that image of red, horned devils in the firey interpretations of hell, but you know what this icy, faceless thing made me think of? NO, not cold hell! That's already a thing! And it's obvious! What I want to know is why nobody ever thinks of an all-electrical underworld. I think this thing's Aesthetic would fit in pretty well there.
Dweller
Another one just FULL Of personality! Look at those big eyeballs! This mask is even designed so the eyes light up with LED's, and much moreso than a costume, I think this would make one of the world's coolest looking night lights, or even an entire room's lighting if the eyes could be made bright enough or you just have a large enough number of them. Especially for a kid's room, right? What child could fear anything ever again with a bunch of Dwellers standing guard?
Behemoth
I like this because it's literally just a scary turtle-man, and that isn't something I've seen before from a line of horror masks. Outside some Ninja Turtle villains like Tokka and Slash, I just don't see anybody taking turtles seriously enough as threatening beings, despite the number of extremely dangerous predatory turtles out there.
Pack Man
It's just a pale yellow bald man with a big mouth and no other facial features...but they went and called it Pack Man, and yeah, it makes sense that this is something that would spend most of its life in a maze where it has a simultaneous predator and prey relationship with ghosts.
War
I said I was saving War for later because it looks even cooler than the other Horseman, and now you get it! You understand! It's a skinless figure with a spongy brain-head and organic "goggles" and a nasty intestine-like oral tube to give it the appearance of a biological gas mask, a perfect symbol for an embodiment of modern warfare. Of course it also looks quite a bit like something you might see in Resident Evil or some other setting full of biological mutations, so there's that, too!
Eyegore
This is one of their best looking masks for several reasons. For one, it's a monster with a big eyeball for a face, so that's always good, and check out the creepy details of that puckered iris! For another, it has an underbite of goofy, chunky teeth that give it a much more cartoon-like, Rat Fink sort of vibe compared to most of the other CFX masks, and I think that's a direction they ought to explore a little more in the future. As cool as many of these characters are, there's so much to be said of more absurd, improbable and colorful beings as well, nicely demonstrated by the fact that Eyegore also comes in a selection of neon colors with UV glow effects:
Nice!
Larva
So we finally get to my favorite of this company's creations, if only because grub and maggot characters are so hard to come by. The mouth parts are more beak-like than any actual insect larva, but that makes sense given the entire being's more humanoid shape, and the segmentation as well as the paint job on the surrounding grubby tissue is just phenomenal! So phenomenal, I'm actually fairly torn as to which version of Larva I prefer...
I won't get on these folks for making products so out of the average person's league; you can basically either spent $500 across multiple Halloweens or you can buy one of these and keep using it as often as you want, even have something incredibly badass to pass down to someone else some day. I do kind of wish, however, that they offered some alternative, cheaper vinyl versions of some of these characters, because the designs alone are uniquely striking enough to be fun collectibles no matter what the material quality. Even an old-fashioned vacuum mold mask of a monster like Torque would be pretty novel! They're Silicone Mask Makers, I get it, but they could always license some of their creations out to some other merchandisers, too!
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