The Giant Behemoth #2
Here's my second build of this dinosaur monster from the 1950's film "The Giant Behemoth". My first run at it can be seen here: https://www.oneeffgeof.com/the-giany-behemoth. This time out, it is a very nice and HUGE kit (coming in at about 12” tall!) is offered by Alchemy Works and sculpted by Joe Laudati. Included is a debris strewn base with a collapsing Big Ben, the result of the huge critter's clumsy mischief. There are also two title boards of different sizes using different fonts and styles.
The kit has a total of fourteen pieces and it went together pretty well although I had to spend a lot of time cleaning up the attachment points of the creature's body parts. Big Ben only had two parts along with a printed sheet of sticky back clock faces for the tower.
As in the first kit I built, I pretty much had a free hand in color palette since the film was shot in black and white. I went on the Google machine to get a few actual photos of Big Ben since I wanted it's colors to match reality. Color versions of the behemoth models had various interpretations ranging from overall olive drab to dark green with faint banding which looked very nice but is not evident in the film. I ended up going with a very dark green with a medium brown for the under belly and dorsal fins.
The box art for this kit
For the base, I added a few features. Using modeling paste, I put some small blobs of it on a plastic sandwich bag and, using the flat dode of a knife, I lightly pressed down squashing it a bit. I then quickly lifted the blade horizontally to give me a pointed object. Once the molding paste cured, I painted the lower half orange and upper a florescent yellow which yielded some nice flame effects which I placed randomly about the surface. Because I made the flames on a flexible plastic bag, it was easy for me to peel them off.
I then randomly coated the base here and there with scattering on my home made crud. Home made crud is acquired from the inside of my airbrush spray booth which is no more than dried over spray. About once a month, I collect the material which is granular in appearance and is usually a medium gray in color. Once applied, I secure it with a dilute mixture of PVA (Elmer's) glue, alcohol and water from an eye dropper.
Although I am not a fan of the film primarily due to the creature's almost cartoonish appearance and the uneven special effects, I still can appreciate the craftsmanship of Joe Laudati's work which is always above par. The level of difficulty of the kit is about a three on a scale of ten with painting being its most challenging aspect in my view. 6/24/2023