261 Days of Horror, Day 12: Waxwork
Jan. 16th, 2007 06:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiWaxwork. 1988. Written and directed by Anthony Hickox. Distributed by Vestron originally, and by Lion's Gate on DVD.
I've seen more than a few folks question Zach Galligan's lack of success on the big screen (or even the small one, come to think of it). Given his starring role in one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time (Gremlins), as well as its sequel, you'd think he'd have at least achieved the intermittent success of a Judd Nelson, or the tv-comeback-after-fading-away success of Kiefer Sutherland or Anthony Michael Hall.
Alas, he's just faded away into C-movie hell.
But what's really sad is that even the folks who remember him fondly from Gremlins often forget his other great '80s horror movie role. I'm talking, of course, about his turn as the lead in Waxwork, the first of Galligan's four pairings with director Anthony Hickox. The first movie features a stellar cast, and is still infinitely more fun than certain other recent horror movies featuring wax museums.
The movie opens with a brutal murder. In an old house, as swing music plays, a man is beaten and thrown into the fireplace, where he dies as his assailant pillages the house. We get the opening credits over a scene of the fireplace, and then pan back into the same house in the present day, where we meet college student Mark Loftmore (Galligan) and his mother (played by the scene-stealing Jennifer Bassey) breakfasting at opposite ends of a long table. Mark's reading a comic book, and his mother has the local newspaper. Mrs. Loftmore explains to her son that he's not to socialize with the servants, as "that sort of thing leads to anarchy," and that, "one has to keep the distance between them and us."
When she later expresses shock that two more people have disappeared, Mark asks if they were "uses or thems." It was at about that moment that I knew I was a fan of the hero of this movie.
After Mark gets his morning coffee (which he has to sneak, as his mother believes caffeine is unhealthy) and cigarette* from his butler, we cut to China (Blame it on Rio's Michelle Johnson) and Sarah (Valley Girl's Deborah Foreman) walking along and chatting about Mark (China's ex). As they're chatting about China's taste in men (wealthy and hot), they look up and spot a Waxwork on their residential street that they've never seen before. As they wonder about it, they look up again, and there's an Unexpected David Warner. In purple!
Unexpected David Warner apologizes for startling them, and then offers them the opportunity to bring up to six friends (but no more) to a "private showing" at the museum at Midnight. Since China has now decided that her ideal man is Unexpected David Warner in Purple, it seems likely they'll show up. As the girls walk away, they look back, and Unexpected David Warner has Unexpectedly disappeared.
This is not a movie meant to be taken seriously, by the way.
Over the next few scenes, we meet the other members of the group (Gemma, James, Jonathan, and Tony), and get some great scenes involving a college lecturer and a football practice that are too funny to dilute by describing them. We also get enough exposition to learn that Mark is seriously pining for China, and that she's completely not good enough for him. China and Sarah do invite the rest of their gang (whose membership totals exactly six), and although everyone agrees to go at first, James and Gemma wimp out before going inside.
At midnight, the door to the Waxwork is opened by Hans, a miniscule servant (played by Michu Meszaros, former "shortest man in the world"), who comically bosses around a silent, Lurch-like servant named Junior. After a few more minutes of banter between the four heroes, the inner doors mysteriously open, and the Waxwork is open!
And now the real fun begins.
Our heroes enter, and eventually wander their separate ways, taking in all the displays. Tony, trying to light a cigarette, accidentally drops his lighter over the side of a display, steps over the rope, and finds himself in a dark forest, with a wig and lumberjack clothing. After a few minutes of trying to work things out (Tony rules out acid in his drink and holograms before settling on hypnosis), he approaches the lone shack, where a man (played by John Rhys-Davies) seems to recognize him (calling him "Jack"), and cautions him to run away. Tony decides to go outside and get some firewood (since it's freezing inside the cabin), and gripes to the invisible "hypnotists" about the fantasy he's in.
While he's gathering wood, our cabin-dweller is feeling the effects of a full moon, and by the time Tony returns, he finds a full-fledged werewolf waiting for him. We get a few moments of werewolf-cam (think Evil Dead), as Tony tries to get away, but eventually, Tony gets bitten in the arm. Just then, a werewolf hunter and his assistant enter the house. While the former is attempting to load his rifle, the latter attempts to distract the werewolf by breaking a chair over it. The werewolf grabs the assistant and tears into his forehead, eventually ripping his entire body in half. The hunter has his gun loaded, however, and shoots the werewolf, who falls back into his chair.
Alas, poor Tony by this point has started to wolf out, so the hunter loads his rifle and shoots Tony with a silver bullet as well. We then fade back to the Waxwork, where Tony's body (complete with wig and outfit) is now a part of the display, in a previously-empty corner.
We cut to China, who is impressed with the Dracula exhibit. Even as she asks what the crouching Dracula is up to, the red guard rope drops, so she steps over the edge, and into a classic old castle (and needless to say, she's wearing a proper old dinner gown). She gets semi-hypnotized by Count Dracula and meekly sits down at his dinner party. There are a few lines of dialogue about her fiancé (who was suddenly called away) and the raw meat she's about to eat ("It's been a while since I've had steak tartare"), followed by the dinner itself, at which Dracula, his son, and the assorted others slurp and chomp on bloody meat.
The slurping and chomping is intentionally funny. The chewing of lines by Dracula (Miles O'Keefe), however, might or might not be.
After the dinner, China is escorted by the butler to her bedroom, where she mutters that this is the strangest dream she's ever had. Soon, Dracula's son Stephan enters, and she thinks he's trying to seduce her. When she cautions him that he's going too fast, he bares his fangs, and she quickly realizes what's going on and dodges, causing Stephen to bite a statue.
China runs away, and ends up in the basement, where she encounters Charles, her fiance in this world. He's strapped to a table, and when she turns the gaslights on, she sees that his leg has been chewed to the bone. She declares that this is all just a game, and that vampires aren't real, but Stephan soon bursts into the room to disprove this. A short fight ensues, and when stabbing Stephan in the gut does no good, China finally puts two knifes together and forms a cross. Touching and holding it to Stephan's head leads to a Scanner-like brain explosion.
Even as his leg is wounded and he's splattered in blood, the resilient Charles tells her to break the chair to make some stakes, and she does so just as four of Dracula's wives break into the room. One goes for Charles, but the other three have China cornered. Somehow, she finds it in her to stake all of them (leading to copious amounts of blood spatter), and, after killing Charles's attacker, runs away when she realizes that he's been turned. Alas, before she can get out, Dracula himself finds her, hypnotizes her, and bites into her, and we cut back to the original waxwork, only with China now in Dracula's arms.
Sarah, meanwhile, has almost been sucked into an exhibit of the Marquis de Sade, but Mark has gotten frustrated over the disappearance of their friends. Outside, Hans claims that the other two have run off looking very snuggly (which only upsets Mark even more). As Mark and Sarah leave the museum, we see China's himbo boytoy Jonathan find his way to the Waxwork, where he searches for China to see if she's up for a booty call. Alas, he instead runs into Unexpected David Warner, who guides him to the Phantom of the Opera exhibit. No more than a few seconds after being pushed in, we see Jonathan's body in the exhibit.
We get some more character development (Sarah and Mark becoming closer), more humor (Mark had his South American maid write his paper on dictators, much to her frustration***), and more plot (Mark discovers that his friends are still missing). Eventually Mark calls a police inspector, who goes to the Waxwork, and is greeted by David Warner (who answers the door normally, so he can't exactly be called Unexpected this time). Warner (whose character is actually named Mr. Lincoln) claims that the museum was closed last night, but the inspector does take a quick look around. Lincoln almost pushes him into the mummy tableau, but the inspector ends up leaving before this can happen, and he tells Mark that there's nothing he can do for now.
Mark, however, recognizes Lincoln, and grabs Sarah to help him do some research amongst old family newspapers. Turns out that Mark's grandfather was the man murdered in the opening scene, and the only suspect was Mr. Lincoln.
Meanwhile, the police inspector, like movie cops everywhere, has managed to make a brilliant connection (remembering that some of those wax people look like some of the folks who have gone missing recently) and a stupid decision (to break into the museum with no backup or warrant, and with only his idiot partner aware that he even went in). He investigates the Dracula scene (which doesn't take him to another world), and cuts a chunk of wax out of China, finding something red and nasty-looking beneath that wax.
He wanders around some more, but makes the mistake of investigating the Mummy exhibit. Sure enough, he's now looking like an Indiana Jones reject as a professor opens up the mummy's sarcophagus, releasing the curse. The mummy gives us a pair of nice deaths -- crushing a guard's head into the ground with his foot and then, after the professor impales him with a spear, grabbing the prof and hugging him so that the spear impales the attacker. The inspector shoots at the mummy, but to no avail, and both he and the obligatory scantily-clad woman at the tomb are thrown into the sarcophagus and sealed inside.
Meanwhile, the idiot partner of that cop, being (naturally) an idiot, goes in after his partner without radioing in. Junior sees him and snaps his neck. When Mr. Lincoln sees this, he chews out Junior, letting us know that he still needed two more people for his displays. Poor Junior starts crying, and Mr. Lincoln comforts him, even as we cut to Mark and Sarah.
Our heroes are visiting Sir Wilfred (played by Patrick Macnee), an old friend of Mark's grandfather who specializes in providing mid-film exposition. He explains that he and Grandpa were collectors of occult items, including some that belonged to the eighteen most evil men in history (18=6+6+6=666=EVIL). If Mr. Lincoln traps eighteen souls in his exhibits, it'll mean the end of the world. Our heroes run off to stop it by burning down the unused exhibits, and WIlfred makes a mysterious phone call and tells someone that "it has begun."
Our heroes sneak into the museum, but while Brian is busy trying to burn stuff down, Sarah once again gets entranced by the Marquis de Sade exhibit. This time, she doesn't get distracted, and wanders through the portal, where the Marquis is pleased to see that he has a new (and very willing) virgin to play with.
By the time Mark realizes that Sarah has gone, our favorite midget/giant combo, Hans and Junior, have pushed him into the zombie tableau. Which just happens to be black and white in tribute to a certain Romero flick. After fighting off one zombie (and impaling the severed zombie hand that remained on the top of a fence), he runs through the gate and encounters the portal out. He jumps through it, and is chased by Junior until he enters the Marquis de Sade display. Dashing through, he makes it to Sarah's side, but she doesn't want to leave. When the Marquis threatens him, Mark realizes that since he's not a part of the proper "story," the Marquis can't hurt him. His gamble pays off, and he's able to drag Sarah (reluctantly) out through the portal.
Upon which, they're grabbed by Mr. Lincoln and Junior, who cover their mouths and pull them off to the side just as James and Gemma enter. Turns out that Hans called them and said their friends were at the Waxwork. Each is lured into an exhibit, and soon enough, the Marquis and the zombies have new victims.
Which means, of course, that the bad guys have apparently won.
Sure enough, the exhibits start coming alive, and dozens of monsters (including Sarah and Mark's friends) start wandering into the museum. We have aliens, monsters, murderers, demons, and other fun beasts. And just when it looks like Mark and Sarah are going to be their first victims. . .
In wheels Unexpected Patrick Macnee! With an army of old people! And Mark's butler! And we learn that actually, the world doesn't end if they're all brought to life. It ends if they're brought to life and escape from the Waxwork.
An epic battle ensues, with some random old folks and lots of monsters dying. We see James get killed again by an oldie. Sarah kills Jonathan, Mark's Butler saves his master from the wiles (and fangs) of Vampire China, and Mark promptly kills Whip Girl Gemma****. Alas, the poor butler gets killed by Junior before Mark can help him. Dracula actually gets killed by one of the extras, as he tries to escape in bat form, is grabbed, and has his entire bat body blown away by a gun blast. Oh, and Sarah takes tiny little Hans and feeds him to a plant that suspiciously resembles Audrey 2. Amidst the chaos, the fire gets started, and Mark and the Marquis end up fighting in the staff room.
The Marquis toys with Mark, disarming him time and again and giving him his sword back. When he's finally ready to administer the fatal blow, he's felled by an axe to the back from Deus Ex Sarah. Both of them are soon about to be blown away by Lincoln, but they're saved by Unexpected Deus Ex Patrick Macnee. Our master of exposition shoots Lincoln, who falls into a pit of boiling wax.
Alas, the fire has spread too much for Macnee's Sir Wilfred to escape, and he ends up getting his head ripped off by a werewolf, anyway. Our two heroes are the only survivors, and they hug and walk away. As the camera pans into the wreckage, the severed zombie hand, looking suspiciously like a certain member of The Addams Family, crawls out. Oh noes!
At its heart, Waxwork is nothing more than the chance to play with a bunch of fun set pieces. But director Hickox saw the opportunity to do something more, and tossed in over-the-top humor in the real world to balance some of the effective gore. The effects are far from perfect, but they're still pretty damned good (with the werewolf being the arguable weak link). Alas the current DVD release is not only fullscreen, but also bowdlerized. It's still got some good gore effects, but it's missing a little bit from the initial release.
The cast is also something to marvel at. David Warner makes anything better, of course. Throw in Patrick Macnee, John Rhys-Davies, and even the so-bad-he's-good Miles O'Keefe, and the small roles are all worth keeping an eye on. Galligan was always an underappreciated actor, and he shows his comic timing and his acting chops here. His co-star, Deborah Foreman, is another actress who should have had more of a career (although she does have the lead in a movie I'll be reviewing this April). She shifts from innocence to hedonism to heroism with ease throughout this movie, and one wishes she'd had more great roles (she's now become a yoga instructor. Seriously*****
This is another minor little '80s classic. The quirky humor likely turned off some folks (there are scenes that look like they were meant for Better off Dead), and the horror itself probably kept others away. But anyone who likes that mix, as well as tons of visual tributes to classic horror films, will have a blast with this movie. It's one of the few films I was willing to buy in a fullscreen version (since there's no other DVD release to date), and I've never regretted it.
*This was filmed back in the '80s, when heroes were allowed to smoke**.
**And yeah, I hate smoking. But the idea that the hero can't smoke, or that all folks who smoke are evil/bad, is about as silly as the idea that tobacco companies had no idea that their products were lethal.
***Actual lines from the paper (titled The Trouble with Dictators): I think dictators are the bad people. They have the shouting voices and the small mustaches.
****Being whipped to death by the Marquis de Sade apparently turns you into a whip-wielding killer. Because sadism spreads like vampirism or lycanthropy, I guess.
*****And Zach has become a blogger.
I've seen more than a few folks question Zach Galligan's lack of success on the big screen (or even the small one, come to think of it). Given his starring role in one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time (Gremlins), as well as its sequel, you'd think he'd have at least achieved the intermittent success of a Judd Nelson, or the tv-comeback-after-fading-away success of Kiefer Sutherland or Anthony Michael Hall.
Alas, he's just faded away into C-movie hell.
But what's really sad is that even the folks who remember him fondly from Gremlins often forget his other great '80s horror movie role. I'm talking, of course, about his turn as the lead in Waxwork, the first of Galligan's four pairings with director Anthony Hickox. The first movie features a stellar cast, and is still infinitely more fun than certain other recent horror movies featuring wax museums.
The movie opens with a brutal murder. In an old house, as swing music plays, a man is beaten and thrown into the fireplace, where he dies as his assailant pillages the house. We get the opening credits over a scene of the fireplace, and then pan back into the same house in the present day, where we meet college student Mark Loftmore (Galligan) and his mother (played by the scene-stealing Jennifer Bassey) breakfasting at opposite ends of a long table. Mark's reading a comic book, and his mother has the local newspaper. Mrs. Loftmore explains to her son that he's not to socialize with the servants, as "that sort of thing leads to anarchy," and that, "one has to keep the distance between them and us."
When she later expresses shock that two more people have disappeared, Mark asks if they were "uses or thems." It was at about that moment that I knew I was a fan of the hero of this movie.
After Mark gets his morning coffee (which he has to sneak, as his mother believes caffeine is unhealthy) and cigarette* from his butler, we cut to China (Blame it on Rio's Michelle Johnson) and Sarah (Valley Girl's Deborah Foreman) walking along and chatting about Mark (China's ex). As they're chatting about China's taste in men (wealthy and hot), they look up and spot a Waxwork on their residential street that they've never seen before. As they wonder about it, they look up again, and there's an Unexpected David Warner. In purple!
Unexpected David Warner apologizes for startling them, and then offers them the opportunity to bring up to six friends (but no more) to a "private showing" at the museum at Midnight. Since China has now decided that her ideal man is Unexpected David Warner in Purple, it seems likely they'll show up. As the girls walk away, they look back, and Unexpected David Warner has Unexpectedly disappeared.
This is not a movie meant to be taken seriously, by the way.
Over the next few scenes, we meet the other members of the group (Gemma, James, Jonathan, and Tony), and get some great scenes involving a college lecturer and a football practice that are too funny to dilute by describing them. We also get enough exposition to learn that Mark is seriously pining for China, and that she's completely not good enough for him. China and Sarah do invite the rest of their gang (whose membership totals exactly six), and although everyone agrees to go at first, James and Gemma wimp out before going inside.
At midnight, the door to the Waxwork is opened by Hans, a miniscule servant (played by Michu Meszaros, former "shortest man in the world"), who comically bosses around a silent, Lurch-like servant named Junior. After a few more minutes of banter between the four heroes, the inner doors mysteriously open, and the Waxwork is open!
And now the real fun begins.
Our heroes enter, and eventually wander their separate ways, taking in all the displays. Tony, trying to light a cigarette, accidentally drops his lighter over the side of a display, steps over the rope, and finds himself in a dark forest, with a wig and lumberjack clothing. After a few minutes of trying to work things out (Tony rules out acid in his drink and holograms before settling on hypnosis), he approaches the lone shack, where a man (played by John Rhys-Davies) seems to recognize him (calling him "Jack"), and cautions him to run away. Tony decides to go outside and get some firewood (since it's freezing inside the cabin), and gripes to the invisible "hypnotists" about the fantasy he's in.
While he's gathering wood, our cabin-dweller is feeling the effects of a full moon, and by the time Tony returns, he finds a full-fledged werewolf waiting for him. We get a few moments of werewolf-cam (think Evil Dead), as Tony tries to get away, but eventually, Tony gets bitten in the arm. Just then, a werewolf hunter and his assistant enter the house. While the former is attempting to load his rifle, the latter attempts to distract the werewolf by breaking a chair over it. The werewolf grabs the assistant and tears into his forehead, eventually ripping his entire body in half. The hunter has his gun loaded, however, and shoots the werewolf, who falls back into his chair.
Alas, poor Tony by this point has started to wolf out, so the hunter loads his rifle and shoots Tony with a silver bullet as well. We then fade back to the Waxwork, where Tony's body (complete with wig and outfit) is now a part of the display, in a previously-empty corner.
We cut to China, who is impressed with the Dracula exhibit. Even as she asks what the crouching Dracula is up to, the red guard rope drops, so she steps over the edge, and into a classic old castle (and needless to say, she's wearing a proper old dinner gown). She gets semi-hypnotized by Count Dracula and meekly sits down at his dinner party. There are a few lines of dialogue about her fiancé (who was suddenly called away) and the raw meat she's about to eat ("It's been a while since I've had steak tartare"), followed by the dinner itself, at which Dracula, his son, and the assorted others slurp and chomp on bloody meat.
The slurping and chomping is intentionally funny. The chewing of lines by Dracula (Miles O'Keefe), however, might or might not be.
After the dinner, China is escorted by the butler to her bedroom, where she mutters that this is the strangest dream she's ever had. Soon, Dracula's son Stephan enters, and she thinks he's trying to seduce her. When she cautions him that he's going too fast, he bares his fangs, and she quickly realizes what's going on and dodges, causing Stephen to bite a statue.
China runs away, and ends up in the basement, where she encounters Charles, her fiance in this world. He's strapped to a table, and when she turns the gaslights on, she sees that his leg has been chewed to the bone. She declares that this is all just a game, and that vampires aren't real, but Stephan soon bursts into the room to disprove this. A short fight ensues, and when stabbing Stephan in the gut does no good, China finally puts two knifes together and forms a cross. Touching and holding it to Stephan's head leads to a Scanner-like brain explosion.
Even as his leg is wounded and he's splattered in blood, the resilient Charles tells her to break the chair to make some stakes, and she does so just as four of Dracula's wives break into the room. One goes for Charles, but the other three have China cornered. Somehow, she finds it in her to stake all of them (leading to copious amounts of blood spatter), and, after killing Charles's attacker, runs away when she realizes that he's been turned. Alas, before she can get out, Dracula himself finds her, hypnotizes her, and bites into her, and we cut back to the original waxwork, only with China now in Dracula's arms.
Sarah, meanwhile, has almost been sucked into an exhibit of the Marquis de Sade, but Mark has gotten frustrated over the disappearance of their friends. Outside, Hans claims that the other two have run off looking very snuggly (which only upsets Mark even more). As Mark and Sarah leave the museum, we see China's himbo boytoy Jonathan find his way to the Waxwork, where he searches for China to see if she's up for a booty call. Alas, he instead runs into Unexpected David Warner, who guides him to the Phantom of the Opera exhibit. No more than a few seconds after being pushed in, we see Jonathan's body in the exhibit.
We get some more character development (Sarah and Mark becoming closer), more humor (Mark had his South American maid write his paper on dictators, much to her frustration***), and more plot (Mark discovers that his friends are still missing). Eventually Mark calls a police inspector, who goes to the Waxwork, and is greeted by David Warner (who answers the door normally, so he can't exactly be called Unexpected this time). Warner (whose character is actually named Mr. Lincoln) claims that the museum was closed last night, but the inspector does take a quick look around. Lincoln almost pushes him into the mummy tableau, but the inspector ends up leaving before this can happen, and he tells Mark that there's nothing he can do for now.
Mark, however, recognizes Lincoln, and grabs Sarah to help him do some research amongst old family newspapers. Turns out that Mark's grandfather was the man murdered in the opening scene, and the only suspect was Mr. Lincoln.
Meanwhile, the police inspector, like movie cops everywhere, has managed to make a brilliant connection (remembering that some of those wax people look like some of the folks who have gone missing recently) and a stupid decision (to break into the museum with no backup or warrant, and with only his idiot partner aware that he even went in). He investigates the Dracula scene (which doesn't take him to another world), and cuts a chunk of wax out of China, finding something red and nasty-looking beneath that wax.
He wanders around some more, but makes the mistake of investigating the Mummy exhibit. Sure enough, he's now looking like an Indiana Jones reject as a professor opens up the mummy's sarcophagus, releasing the curse. The mummy gives us a pair of nice deaths -- crushing a guard's head into the ground with his foot and then, after the professor impales him with a spear, grabbing the prof and hugging him so that the spear impales the attacker. The inspector shoots at the mummy, but to no avail, and both he and the obligatory scantily-clad woman at the tomb are thrown into the sarcophagus and sealed inside.
Meanwhile, the idiot partner of that cop, being (naturally) an idiot, goes in after his partner without radioing in. Junior sees him and snaps his neck. When Mr. Lincoln sees this, he chews out Junior, letting us know that he still needed two more people for his displays. Poor Junior starts crying, and Mr. Lincoln comforts him, even as we cut to Mark and Sarah.
Our heroes are visiting Sir Wilfred (played by Patrick Macnee), an old friend of Mark's grandfather who specializes in providing mid-film exposition. He explains that he and Grandpa were collectors of occult items, including some that belonged to the eighteen most evil men in history (18=6+6+6=666=EVIL). If Mr. Lincoln traps eighteen souls in his exhibits, it'll mean the end of the world. Our heroes run off to stop it by burning down the unused exhibits, and WIlfred makes a mysterious phone call and tells someone that "it has begun."
Our heroes sneak into the museum, but while Brian is busy trying to burn stuff down, Sarah once again gets entranced by the Marquis de Sade exhibit. This time, she doesn't get distracted, and wanders through the portal, where the Marquis is pleased to see that he has a new (and very willing) virgin to play with.
By the time Mark realizes that Sarah has gone, our favorite midget/giant combo, Hans and Junior, have pushed him into the zombie tableau. Which just happens to be black and white in tribute to a certain Romero flick. After fighting off one zombie (and impaling the severed zombie hand that remained on the top of a fence), he runs through the gate and encounters the portal out. He jumps through it, and is chased by Junior until he enters the Marquis de Sade display. Dashing through, he makes it to Sarah's side, but she doesn't want to leave. When the Marquis threatens him, Mark realizes that since he's not a part of the proper "story," the Marquis can't hurt him. His gamble pays off, and he's able to drag Sarah (reluctantly) out through the portal.
Upon which, they're grabbed by Mr. Lincoln and Junior, who cover their mouths and pull them off to the side just as James and Gemma enter. Turns out that Hans called them and said their friends were at the Waxwork. Each is lured into an exhibit, and soon enough, the Marquis and the zombies have new victims.
Which means, of course, that the bad guys have apparently won.
Sure enough, the exhibits start coming alive, and dozens of monsters (including Sarah and Mark's friends) start wandering into the museum. We have aliens, monsters, murderers, demons, and other fun beasts. And just when it looks like Mark and Sarah are going to be their first victims. . .
In wheels Unexpected Patrick Macnee! With an army of old people! And Mark's butler! And we learn that actually, the world doesn't end if they're all brought to life. It ends if they're brought to life and escape from the Waxwork.
An epic battle ensues, with some random old folks and lots of monsters dying. We see James get killed again by an oldie. Sarah kills Jonathan, Mark's Butler saves his master from the wiles (and fangs) of Vampire China, and Mark promptly kills Whip Girl Gemma****. Alas, the poor butler gets killed by Junior before Mark can help him. Dracula actually gets killed by one of the extras, as he tries to escape in bat form, is grabbed, and has his entire bat body blown away by a gun blast. Oh, and Sarah takes tiny little Hans and feeds him to a plant that suspiciously resembles Audrey 2. Amidst the chaos, the fire gets started, and Mark and the Marquis end up fighting in the staff room.
The Marquis toys with Mark, disarming him time and again and giving him his sword back. When he's finally ready to administer the fatal blow, he's felled by an axe to the back from Deus Ex Sarah. Both of them are soon about to be blown away by Lincoln, but they're saved by Unexpected Deus Ex Patrick Macnee. Our master of exposition shoots Lincoln, who falls into a pit of boiling wax.
Alas, the fire has spread too much for Macnee's Sir Wilfred to escape, and he ends up getting his head ripped off by a werewolf, anyway. Our two heroes are the only survivors, and they hug and walk away. As the camera pans into the wreckage, the severed zombie hand, looking suspiciously like a certain member of The Addams Family, crawls out. Oh noes!
At its heart, Waxwork is nothing more than the chance to play with a bunch of fun set pieces. But director Hickox saw the opportunity to do something more, and tossed in over-the-top humor in the real world to balance some of the effective gore. The effects are far from perfect, but they're still pretty damned good (with the werewolf being the arguable weak link). Alas the current DVD release is not only fullscreen, but also bowdlerized. It's still got some good gore effects, but it's missing a little bit from the initial release.
The cast is also something to marvel at. David Warner makes anything better, of course. Throw in Patrick Macnee, John Rhys-Davies, and even the so-bad-he's-good Miles O'Keefe, and the small roles are all worth keeping an eye on. Galligan was always an underappreciated actor, and he shows his comic timing and his acting chops here. His co-star, Deborah Foreman, is another actress who should have had more of a career (although she does have the lead in a movie I'll be reviewing this April). She shifts from innocence to hedonism to heroism with ease throughout this movie, and one wishes she'd had more great roles (she's now become a yoga instructor. Seriously*****
This is another minor little '80s classic. The quirky humor likely turned off some folks (there are scenes that look like they were meant for Better off Dead), and the horror itself probably kept others away. But anyone who likes that mix, as well as tons of visual tributes to classic horror films, will have a blast with this movie. It's one of the few films I was willing to buy in a fullscreen version (since there's no other DVD release to date), and I've never regretted it.
*This was filmed back in the '80s, when heroes were allowed to smoke**.
**And yeah, I hate smoking. But the idea that the hero can't smoke, or that all folks who smoke are evil/bad, is about as silly as the idea that tobacco companies had no idea that their products were lethal.
***Actual lines from the paper (titled The Trouble with Dictators): I think dictators are the bad people. They have the shouting voices and the small mustaches.
****Being whipped to death by the Marquis de Sade apparently turns you into a whip-wielding killer. Because sadism spreads like vampirism or lycanthropy, I guess.
*****And Zach has become a blogger.
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Date: 2007-01-17 12:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-17 12:16 am (UTC)You mean we're not?
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Date: 2007-01-17 12:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-17 12:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 03:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-17 12:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 03:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-17 02:24 am (UTC)I never thought crappy horror movies could be so inspiring.
Thank you. I full intend to keep reading. So try not to get run over or struck by lightning or anything, at least not until next year.
-Me
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 03:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-17 02:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 03:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-17 03:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 03:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-17 05:57 am (UTC)The bowdlerization in the TV version was so bad that the last 15 minutes became completely incoherent as it lept around to avoid the violence. How it justified keeping the DeSade scene while eviscerating the ending was always mind-boggling to me.
Secondly... what were the 18 sets? I kept trying to total 'em up during the movie and especially in the finish, but kept coming up with either way too many or way too few, depending on how I counted 'em. Could never justify buying the flick since I'd seen it so many times on TV... but not knowing what the list was just bugged me.
Loved the flick though, on a couple levels. It really is a great fun idea, and even as a kid the scene chewing was obvious to me...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 03:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-17 07:39 am (UTC)