Directed by: Anthony Hickox
I'm returning to the 80's with this little gem. "Waxwork" was again one of those favorite movies of mine back in my teens, even though I usually craved more blood and gore in my movies than this one delivers (well, there are some great looking gore effects in this one though) it does deliver a buttload of popcorn movie horror fun and that's more than enough to make me a happy dude. I suspect that one of the reasons I loved this flick was the call back to the old universal horrors in some of the waxwork displays (and short vignettes) in this movie... here we've got a mummy, a vampire, frankenstein's monster, a werewolf and even the invisible man. It's not an anthology movie, but at times sure feels like one and having grown up on the Amicus anthology movies I love that as well. Makes an interesting movie with lots of different horror action.
It's a very 80's movie, some of the "comedy" (it is a horror comedy after all) feels extremely dated and, like I said, very 80's. And we also have some actors who, to me at least, are best remembered for their movies done in that decade, like Zach Galligan who did Gremlins four years before this flick. And we of course get "Sallah" himself (John Rhys-Davies) as a werewolf (although nowadays I should probably call him "Gimli", but he's always gonna be "Sallah" to me). Another thing that screams the 80's to me are the special effects, and this is a thing I like, it's the real deal with rubber masks and prosthetics. No bad looking CGI in sight, which can be explained by it not being around that much back in 1988 of course. I don't hate CGI effects, it's just that I like the "real thing" a lot more, maybe I'm just an old fart yapping on about how everything was so much better "back in my day".
Who the hell would place a wax museum (or "waxwork") in the suburbs? Well, David Lincoln (David Warner) apparently... The two "teenage" (and I use that word very lightly here) girls Sarah (Deborah Foreman) and China (Michelle Johnson) manage to get themselves and "no more than four" friends invited to visit the local wax museum by the owner, Mr. Lincoln. They invite Mark (Zach Galligan), Tony (Dana Ashbrook) and two more and later that evening head over to look at the dummies (the ones made of wax that is...). The two friends I didn't even bother to name get scared and decides to not do this and then there were only four...
The gang are left alone to wander the place and all end up in front of different displays. The first one to do something stupid is Tony who manages to drop his lighter into one of the displays and when he stumbles across the rope surrounding the display he is immediately transported into a real version of the display where he ends up meeting a werewolf, get bitten by it and then killed by a werewolf hunter. And at the moment of his death he appears as a wax dummy in the display where there were none before. China also manages to disappear into one of the displays (this time a vampire one) where she get to experience if human meat really tastes like chicken before she also dies (and becomes part of the display). Mark and Sarah notices that Tony and China are gone, but are told they left early. (And the prize to the person to over use the word "display" in one and the same paragraph goes to... me! holy shit, maybe I should have used the word "exhibit" now and then, huh?)
Mark doesn't believe that whole "left early" thing and get the police to visit the wax museum, but of course they don't find anything weird with the place and leave. The cop get second thoughts though and returns to do some actual cop work (although, not believing teenagers' stories seems to be actual cop work in horror movies), but ends up getting killed by a mummy (the egyptian and bandaged kind). With the help of a friend of Mark's grandfather we learn that David Lincoln sold his soul to the devil and created the wax figures of the world's most evil people to help him bring an end to the world... all he needs are victims for all of his displays and the wax figures will come to life and help him with that end of the world business.
Mark and Sarah returns later that night to burn the wax museum down, but Sarah manages to enter the display of Marquis de Sade. Apparently this mousy little girl don't mind getting whipped at all, hell... she gets off of it! But like the stick in the mud that Mark is he "rescues" her as he have found the trick to not getting killed in these displays. It doesn't matter though as they both get captured and two others (the two who were too scared from the beginning of the film) take their places as victims. And now all of the wax figures come to life... good thing that friend of Mark's grandfather has his own little army to deal with these guys as they turn up at the right moment and one of those truly silly looking low budget fights erupt. It all ends up in the wax museum being burned to the ground (and the effect of the house burning takes the cake of being the most poorly made effect in the whole movie), but something seems to have survived... of course it has, otherwise we wouldn't have gotten the sequel four years later!
I'm returning to the 80's with this little gem. "Waxwork" was again one of those favorite movies of mine back in my teens, even though I usually craved more blood and gore in my movies than this one delivers (well, there are some great looking gore effects in this one though) it does deliver a buttload of popcorn movie horror fun and that's more than enough to make me a happy dude. I suspect that one of the reasons I loved this flick was the call back to the old universal horrors in some of the waxwork displays (and short vignettes) in this movie... here we've got a mummy, a vampire, frankenstein's monster, a werewolf and even the invisible man. It's not an anthology movie, but at times sure feels like one and having grown up on the Amicus anthology movies I love that as well. Makes an interesting movie with lots of different horror action.
It's a very 80's movie, some of the "comedy" (it is a horror comedy after all) feels extremely dated and, like I said, very 80's. And we also have some actors who, to me at least, are best remembered for their movies done in that decade, like Zach Galligan who did Gremlins four years before this flick. And we of course get "Sallah" himself (John Rhys-Davies) as a werewolf (although nowadays I should probably call him "Gimli", but he's always gonna be "Sallah" to me). Another thing that screams the 80's to me are the special effects, and this is a thing I like, it's the real deal with rubber masks and prosthetics. No bad looking CGI in sight, which can be explained by it not being around that much back in 1988 of course. I don't hate CGI effects, it's just that I like the "real thing" a lot more, maybe I'm just an old fart yapping on about how everything was so much better "back in my day".
Who the hell would place a wax museum (or "waxwork") in the suburbs? Well, David Lincoln (David Warner) apparently... The two "teenage" (and I use that word very lightly here) girls Sarah (Deborah Foreman) and China (Michelle Johnson) manage to get themselves and "no more than four" friends invited to visit the local wax museum by the owner, Mr. Lincoln. They invite Mark (Zach Galligan), Tony (Dana Ashbrook) and two more and later that evening head over to look at the dummies (the ones made of wax that is...). The two friends I didn't even bother to name get scared and decides to not do this and then there were only four...
The gang are left alone to wander the place and all end up in front of different displays. The first one to do something stupid is Tony who manages to drop his lighter into one of the displays and when he stumbles across the rope surrounding the display he is immediately transported into a real version of the display where he ends up meeting a werewolf, get bitten by it and then killed by a werewolf hunter. And at the moment of his death he appears as a wax dummy in the display where there were none before. China also manages to disappear into one of the displays (this time a vampire one) where she get to experience if human meat really tastes like chicken before she also dies (and becomes part of the display). Mark and Sarah notices that Tony and China are gone, but are told they left early. (And the prize to the person to over use the word "display" in one and the same paragraph goes to... me! holy shit, maybe I should have used the word "exhibit" now and then, huh?)
Mark doesn't believe that whole "left early" thing and get the police to visit the wax museum, but of course they don't find anything weird with the place and leave. The cop get second thoughts though and returns to do some actual cop work (although, not believing teenagers' stories seems to be actual cop work in horror movies), but ends up getting killed by a mummy (the egyptian and bandaged kind). With the help of a friend of Mark's grandfather we learn that David Lincoln sold his soul to the devil and created the wax figures of the world's most evil people to help him bring an end to the world... all he needs are victims for all of his displays and the wax figures will come to life and help him with that end of the world business.
Mark and Sarah returns later that night to burn the wax museum down, but Sarah manages to enter the display of Marquis de Sade. Apparently this mousy little girl don't mind getting whipped at all, hell... she gets off of it! But like the stick in the mud that Mark is he "rescues" her as he have found the trick to not getting killed in these displays. It doesn't matter though as they both get captured and two others (the two who were too scared from the beginning of the film) take their places as victims. And now all of the wax figures come to life... good thing that friend of Mark's grandfather has his own little army to deal with these guys as they turn up at the right moment and one of those truly silly looking low budget fights erupt. It all ends up in the wax museum being burned to the ground (and the effect of the house burning takes the cake of being the most poorly made effect in the whole movie), but something seems to have survived... of course it has, otherwise we wouldn't have gotten the sequel four years later!
This flick feels like an episode of "Tales from the Crypt", but with more gore (although apparently not as much as first intended as they trimmed some of it before releasing the film). Maybe it's the tounge-in-cheek vibe the movie has, or the fact that there are some recognizable faces in the cast (people who were quite well known when this movie was made and not people who starred in a horror flick early in their careers), but it does feel quite a lot like an episode of that TV show. And, as I said in the "I, Madman" review, that's a good thing as that TV show was damn great. Just like "Tales from the Crypt" this movie mixes the "horror" with the "laughs" and the end result is a pure fun 80's horror comedy.
The same director returned to the world of "Waxwork" a couple of years later with a sequel ("Waxwork II: Lost in Time"), but that one isn't even close to the first one (but it has Bruce Campell in it at least). I will come back to that one later on though as it's on my "to rewatch" list... but, it'll probably take quite a long time before I re-enter the world of "Waxwork" as that list is really long at the moment. Not that I'm complaining... ;-)
The same director returned to the world of "Waxwork" a couple of years later with a sequel ("Waxwork II: Lost in Time"), but that one isn't even close to the first one (but it has Bruce Campell in it at least). I will come back to that one later on though as it's on my "to rewatch" list... but, it'll probably take quite a long time before I re-enter the world of "Waxwork" as that list is really long at the moment. Not that I'm complaining... ;-)
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