La mansión del horror

I didn't go into watching this B horror movie expecting a masterpiece so I was definitely surprised by how good this movie was. The concept is so ridiculous you wouldn't think this movie could be as awesome as it is. You can't take the movie too serious because it does have it's over the top goofy moments at times but that's all part of it's charm really. The make-up/special effects are what make this movie really affective, they are better than most all the horror movies in theaters these days (Why do movie makers think computer animated/simulated monsters are scare?!?! it's beyond me!). Maybe if they saw "Waxwork" they could get it right. Anyway...this surprisingly unique and clever little film is a real treat if you like 80's scary movies like me!!

While walking to the high-school, the teenagers Sarah (Deborah Foreman) and China (Michelle Johnson) are invited by the owner of a wax museum, David Lincoln (David Warner), to a private exhibition at midnight and he tells that they may invite four other friends to come with them. China invites her former boyfriend, the wealth Mark (Zach Galligan), their friend Tony (Dana Ashbrook) and two other schoolmates to come to the museum, but the two last ones give-up.

Mark, China, Sarah and Tony are welcome by a dwarf and they separate in the room during the tour. Soon Tony crosses the security rope of the display and he finds in a cabin trapped with a werewolf. China also crosses the security rope of another display and she finds in a castle with several vampires. Tony and China are killed and become part of the exhibition. Mark and Sarah leave the museum and soon they find that their friends are going missing. Mark goes to the police but Inspector Roberts (Charles McCaughan) does not believe in his words. Mark and Sarah find in the attic of his mansion an old newspaper and they learn a dark secret about David Lincoln. They visit Sir Wilfred (Patrick Macnee), who is a friend of Mark's family, and they learn that David is near to unleash evil on Earth.

"Waxwork" is a funny and gore movie with an absurd story, silly dialogs, but also a cult movie. The Waxwork Museum mysteriously appears in town and soon teenagers, the police inspector and several people disappear in the wax museum, but nobody in the town seems to care. The 80's is a fertile period of horror movies and "Waxwork" is among my favorites. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Passagem" ("The Passage")

Note: On 16 February 2021, I saw this film again.

Not exactly an Academy Award winner here, but this film is just fun. Director Anthony Hickox set out to make a fun horror spoof and he succeeds very well at it. Zach Gallagan once again stars as the almost nerdy unlikely hero. The film pays homage, firmly tongue in cheek, to the classic horror movies of long ago, and David Warner shines as the demented owner/creator of this wax palace of horrors.

Yes the plot is predictable, but who cares? This is a film meant to be fun and it is fun. Patrick MacNee is delightful as always. Johyn Rhys-Davies is sort of wasted in the small role they give him, but is good as ever. Dana Ashbrook could have used a little more screen time but he is at his smart-ass best in this film. All in all just a fun evening. Anyone looking for something more needs to see the original "House of Wax(1953)" with Vincent Price.

Pretty fun horror movie! It's not the newest idea in the world: there'd been a German silent horror anthology movie set in a Waxwork. In that, a man is hired to write stories about some of the characters in the wax museum. In each segment, we see the story played out, and the author, the owner and his daughter appear in the segments as well. In the last segment, they're menaced by Springheel Jack.

In this film, a Waxwork appears in what seems to be a residential neighborhood - strange place to try to do business. It is filled with various death scenes involving werewolves, vampires, zombies, mummies, and so on. Some characters we don't see too much of seem to include the Invisible Man, Jack the Ripper. A group of young people are invited to a party at the Waxwork, and some of them step onto the displays, and find themselves transported into a live action scene where their lives are in danger.

I had a good time watching it. Some of the effects in it are good, as in the vampire one, but the werewolf is one of the worst I've seen. I liked it enough I'll definitely check out the sequel.

The Eighties...what a great, fertile, inventive time that was for horror. When the major studios discovered back in the late Seventies that indie horror flicks were cheap to make or just buy outright and distribute, they started crankin' 'em out...by the DOZENS. Way back when, THE EXORCIST turned the faucet on. The movies that would launch long-term franchises filled the tub. HALLOWEEN. Friday THE 13th. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. And then the tub started spilling over. CHILD'S PLAY. THE HITCHER. THE LOST BOYS. NEAR DARK. FRIGHT NIGHT.

Every company, great and small, started looking for the next EXORCIST, ALIEN, JAWS...the next big thing that would make millions. Enter Vestron Video. Vestron had started out doing some of the first direct-to-video pictures ever made, discovering that the market was HUGE. So big, in fact, that they started a movie division, Vestron Pictures. Their strategy was simple: make good (if not great) genre pics that would put asses in the seats, that they could then distribute through the video arm later on.

One of Vestron Pictures' first releases was a little number called WAXWORK. The plot of the old horror classic MYSTERY IN THE WAX MUSEUM was such a tried and true staple, the studios kept falling back on it again and again, finding fresh ways to retell the story.

WAXWORK took a little different approach from the straight-ahead versions, with a cast and a sensibility for horror that still screams "Me Decade" even today. Check out the victim's list: Zach Galligan (GREMLINS.) Michelle Johnson (BLAME IT ON RIO.) Deborah Foreman (VALLEY GIRL). Dana Ashbrook (TWIN PEAKS). Miles O' Keefe (TARZAN THE APE MAN). Then you throw in vets like David Warner, Patrick McNee, J. Kenneth Campbell, John Rhys-Davies, tap Bob Keen (HELLRAISER) to do make up effects, and you have yourself an Eighties' classic!

Like most films of the period, it starts off with a group of bored, young slacker-types looking for thrills, something...ANYTHING that would be a little more exciting than getting high, getting drunk, getting laid (well, ALMOST more exciting than that), and definitely more of a kick than going to college classes!

They find it, alright - in the form of an invitation to a brand new kind of museum. And this one is not your garden-variety, Madame Tussaud's-wannabe. The wax figurines are so lifelike that the displays seem to draw you in...

Well, okay, they DO draw you in. Here's the kicker: the displays are dedicated to some of the most well-known figures in the history of horror: Dracula. The Wolfman. The Mummy. The Marquis de Sade. Reenactments of their most horrible deeds as they drained blood, hacked and tore off limbs or crushed their helpless victims to death. Seeing the scenes gives patrons the feeling of being in the moment...but if they give in to the compulsion of stepping across the velvet rope around each display, they will find themselves living in that moment...FOR REAL.

And here's the REALLY bad news...if the monsters in each display kill you in the 'waxwork dimension', you become a permanent part of the display...FOREVER. So once that happens, the situation couldn't get worse...could it?

Oh, yeah! The proprietor of the museum has a darker agenda than just dispatching troublesome teens, as our heroes and victims discover with each person who 'disappears' into the museum. And seeing how that plan gets foiled is only part of the giggly, gory fun.

Remember that I mentioned that Bob Keen was the effects guy on this? He got his start as a modeler for movies like STAR WARS, SUPERMAN and ALIEN, cutting his teeth as he worked up to projects like HELLRAISER and THE UNHOLY. But he really served up his calling card with HELLRAISER and with this movie. Gore-wise, this is where the retelling of the Wax Museum story gets more interesting...because thanks to Bob, the visuals go where they never had before.

In a manner that would've made the suits at Universal flinch back in the Thirties, Keen and writer/director Anthony Hickox do away with the "quaint violence" that Famous Monsters used to wreak upon their poor victims. No camera pull-aways here, folks. Where somebody might only threaten to "rip off your head and crap down your neck", these boogeymen take that threat to its most intense extremes. No CGI fakery, either. This was back-in-the-day where almost all the effects were practical, live and in-ya-face...the way we like it!

Okay, so the clothes, the music, the casting and even the acting squarely establish this as what could be considered a "period piece" for horror, I guess. But like his colleagues David Schmoeller, Ted Nicolaou, Stuart Gordon and on occasion Charles Band himself, Hickox knows how to get the action going and keep it that way.

This is one of those gems that might've slipped under your radar, but definitely worth seeking out, hunting down and dragging back home to mount in your DVD library.