Type | Action Figures |
---|---|
Inventor(s) | Clive Barker |
Company | McFarlane Toys |
Country | United States |
Availability | 2001–2002 |
Tortured Souls, also known as Clive Barker's Tortured Souls, is a series of six action figures and a novelette starring the characters of the series. Distributed by McFarlane Toys in July 2001, the series included six monsters designed by horror author Clive Barker.
The toy line was officially announced at the International Toy Fair in New York in February 2001. Barker said the following about creating his first toy line:
People want to see the monsters. We supply the monsters...These are the first toys I've had on the market. I've had model kits and whatnot, but this is a very different order of creation. These are technically amazing and the sheer level of detail is extraordinary. These figures represent the creature that both obsesses you and repulses you simultaneously. These are figures you put in a dark place in your house, probably with some votive candles, to haunt a corner in your home. We've really had fun pushing the envelope.[1]
Each of the figures included a chapter of the 32-page novelette, written by Barker.
Due to the success of the idea, a second series titled Tortured Souls 2: The Fallen was released the following year. The appearance of the new figures was more visceral than the first toy line, with less reliance on the bondage-like clothing styles of the first series and more reliance on surgical alteration and mutilation or, as Clive Barker described it, "the use of flesh as canvas." Additionally, characters of Tortured Souls 2: The Fallen neither appeared in the original novella nor came with any additional story writing.
Tortured Souls is a novelette written by Clive Barker and included with the toyline. Each chapter was included separately with the series 1 figures.
The story was broken into six parts, each corresponding to the figure with which it was packaged. The order is as follows:
Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium is a single volume of the six separate pieces of the Tortured Souls novellas originally available with the toys. It was published by Subterranean Press in February 2015.[2]
A film adaptation, Tortured Souls: Animae Damnatae, was announced as in development at Universal Pictures in 2001,[3] but had been more-or-less abandoned by 2006.[4]