Heidi Klum, the queen of the Halloween costumes, has finally revealed her latest transformation after weeks of bated breath from the public.
The 52-year-old supermodel sends fans into a frenzy every year with the buildup to October 31, when she finally unveils her extravagant look.
Past Halloweens have seen her dress up as E.T., a giant worm, Betty Boop, Fiona from Shrek and even herself at the age of 95.
Early this month, Heidi Klum revealed she was working on her new look with prosthetic makeup designer Mike Marino, the man behind Colin Farrell’s look as The Penguin.
Now their creation has been unveiled, as Heidi Klum attended her 24th star-studded Halloween bash dressed as none other than Medusa.
Specifically, her version of the Greek mythological figure appeared to be modeled on the one in the 1981 movie Clash of the Titans.
Like the 1980s movie character, Heidi’s Medusa comes armed with a bow and arrow and has a long snake tail instead of legs, in contrast to traditional depictions.
Heidi Klum was accompanied by her husband Tom Kaulitz, 36, dressed as one of Perseus’ friends who gets turned into stone by gazing upon Medusa
She also brought along her children Leni, 21, Henry, 20, Johan, 18, and Lou, 16, while Tom was joined by his twin brother and Tokio Hotel bandmate Bill Kaulitz.
The Medusa in Clash of the Titans was a stop-motion puppet created by Ray Harryhausen, a master of the craft whose films included the original King Kong in 1933.
Ray Harryhausen’s work was recreated in loving detail for Heidi’s costume, with an exquisite level of intricacy from the gleaming scales to the folds in the facial flesh to the segments of the snake’s tail.
Certain touches not in the movie were also added to Heidi’s look, such as matted hair tangled with the snakes sprouting from Medusa’s head, as well as the fact her bow was designed to resemble a serpent.
As Heidi and Tom walked the red carpet, he adopted a variety of poses in which his character was turned to stone while facing down the monster.
While Tom took his various positions, Heidi as Medusa snarled triumphantly at him, her forked tongue spilling out from between her fangs.
‘HAPPY HEIDIWEEN,’ the German fashionista wrote on Instagram as she introduced the costume to her followers. ‘Don’t stare too long or you’ll turn to stone.’
Heidi mingled gleefully with the other guests at her party, including RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Candy Crash, her friend and fellow German.
Hollywood’s reigning Halloween hostess was also glimpsed with Desiree Gruber, the producer of her smash hit reality show Project Runway.
She shared a warm hug at the bash with Leni, who was dressed as the main character of a children’s book called A Bad Case of Stripes, which is about a little girl who wakes up covered in multicolored stripes.
Last year, Heidi and her toyboy husband dressed as two different versions of the title character in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra Terrestrial.
Tom was E.T. as he appears naked upon falling to Earth, while Heidi was E.T. after he gets gussied up in a wig, makeup and accessories by a couple of human children.
One year earlier she morphed into a peacock, requiring the assistance of nine acrobats to be the animal’s feathers and claws.
Heidi is famous for pulling out the stops for her costumes, once spending 10 hours having prosthetics applied on her body in order to dress as a giant rainworm.
She began the tradition in 2000, showing her supermodel figure in skintight black leather gear that exuded an air of sadomasochism.
Her no-holds-barred costumes over the years have included Fiona from Shrek, a man-eating space alien and Michael Jackson as a werewolf in the Thriller video.
She has also drawn inspiration from such varied sources as Betty Boop, Lady Godiva, Hindu mythology, Cleopatra and Jessica Rabbit.
A little over a decade ago she hit the headlines by dressing as herself at the age of 95, transforming so totally that, as she told the New York Post: ‘No one recognized me, and I almost had to tell everyone to let me into my own party!’
Heidi Klum confessed to having experienced ‘some mishaps’ with her costumes over the years, including when she became the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.
She explained that ‘when I was nine months pregnant, I wanted to make sure my belly was well-protected, so I dressed up as a big apple.’
However the ‘problem with that was that I was so big, I couldn’t fit into a car, so I had to get a convertible at the last moment just so I could get to the party.’
She dished: ‘I couldn’t drink water because my arms didn’t reach my face, I couldn’t even sit. That wasn’t so much fun – I didn’t fully think that one through!’