10 Awesome Darth Vader Helmets

Scary Vader

The Helmet: Vader shows his angry face in a full-scale mould of an unused design by original trilogy concept artist Ralph McQuarrie.

The Awesome: Vader's a bad-ass. He looks seriously sinister here, especially in its sleekly textured metallised finish.

Sadly, the ultra-limited edition helmet looks to be sold out. Fortunately, however, McQuarrie's not the only one reinventing the Sith Lord look.

The following examples all come from The Vader Project, a simple but genius idea that lets cutting-edge artists loose on McQuarrie's vision...

Pop-Art Vader

The Helmet: The spirit of Andy Warhol lives on in the Vader Project's gleeful reinvention of the classic Vader look.

Yet it's one of Warhol's contemporaries, Roy Lichtenstein, who provides the inspiration for this eye-catching swirl of comic-strip imagery and chess-board patterning.

The Awesome: Pop art is all about juxaposition, and since Vader's helmet is already an icon of pop-culture this provides a particularly striking clash of elements.

By plonking the 2D comic graphics onto the 3D curve of Vader's helmet, while adding intricate lines and dots to the face plate, it reminds us how much care and thought went into the original.

Pinhead Vader

The Helmet: Vader gets cross-bred with another figure out of cinematic nightmare - Hellraiser 's chief Cenobite, Pinhead.

For all its lethality, it's also an absolutely blinging piece of headgear.

The Awesome: The simple addition of those spikes is enough to terrify us, frankly. It's a good job George Lucas never thought of it, otherwise we'd all have been traumatised as kids.

But factor in the gold face and the sheer sparkle of the thing, and the beauty makes it even more unnerving. It's a look that screams uber-stylish S&M freak.

Psychedelic Vader

The Helmet: It's hippy-dippy flower power to the rescue, as the Imperial overfiend gets tuned in to peace and love.

For added cutesiness, Vader's also got a pair of teddy bear ears.

The Awesome: A serious amount of 'shrooms must have been consumed to come up with this.

The subversive switch from TIE-fighter to tie-dye is a clever conceit, but the rest of it - from the pink lashes to those ears - smacks of too many psychotropics.

No wonder Vader's eyes look so acid-fried.

Vietnam Vader

The Helmet: At first glance, it's a superb rendering of the classic U.S. marine in 'Nam look, from the tank-olive spray-job to the battered fag packet.

Look again, though, and it's the startling transformation of Vader's face plate into a chilling death's head that grips.

The Awesome: This is a searingly sophisticated G.I. joke, given that - for all Star Wars ' WWII overtones - Vietnam was the conflict playing out in the years of the films' development.

Of all of these masks, this is the one that's screaming out for an actual story to go with it. A wartime action flick about a platoon's skirmsishes with a remorseless skeleton soldier would be epic.

Kitsch Anime Vader

The Helmet: Aside from sticking with the jungle theme, this couldn't be more different from the 'Nam mask.

A monkey with a lightsabers, smiling bullets... To be honest, we're not sure what this is.

The Awesome: No doubt you've all seen the famous Youtube vid about the three-year-old girl recounting the plot of Star Wars from memory.

This looks like another kid decided to draw their own interpretation straight onto the helmet.

It might resemble the Vader Project's equivalent of the Ewoks saving the day, but - in a strange way - it's got the child-like essence of the films spot-on. Especially the heart-and-crossbones motif.

Exposed Brain Vader

The Helmet: Well, half a helmet anyway.

The top's been torn off to expose Vader's brain (which, apparently, is made from felt) to the elements.

The Awesome: Does it really need spelling out? It's Darth Vader, with his brain hanging out.

After all the artistic desecration, it's nice to see a helmet that at least makes passing acquaintance to the actual movies.

Even so, the way that the starkness of the image is undercut by the DIY, pulp 1950s aesthetic symbolised by the felt, is a reminder that, at heart, there's something gloriously B-movie-ish about Vader.

Vader With Antlers

The Helmet: Oh deer. Vader's only gone and sprouted a pair of antlers.

The whole things looks decidedly... animalistic.

The Awesome: This is another design that sets off all kinds of narrative possibilities.

A feral Vader - part-mecha, part-beast - on the loose would be a nasty proposition, especially given the menace of those antlers.

Is it just us, or do they look like a pair of razor-sharp talons emerging from the helmet? Potential for some serious flesh-shredding right there.

Gas Mask Vader

The Helmet: A logical - and literal - reversion of Vader's futuristic breathing apparatus into the design's probable historical roots in the trenches of WWI.

The Awesome: Where so many artists go radical with reinvention, it's the simplicity of this one that chokes you with dread.

The imagery is stark, claustrophobic (masks within masks, helmet atop helmet) and scarily universal, being the kind of death's head soldier that has stalked every modern war.

As if Vader wasn't eerie enough already - imagine this coming at you across a smoke-shrouded battlefield.

Creepy Clown Vader

The Helmet: The Dark Side gets swapped for multi-coloured frivolity, with comedy gnashers, fright wig and a great big hooter.

Funny guy, that Darth Vader, huh?

The Awesome: We don't need to spell this one out, surely? It's all about the fear factor.

Vader's a figure from the collective nightmares of our childhoods. But Mr Creepy Clown, even more so. Combining the two is, frankly, evil.

Some of you have probably already run screaming from the computer screen. Coulrophobia is no laughing matter.