La mansión del horror

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.

Waxwork is another VHS cover classic from 1988, now available for free on Tubi. Directed by Anthony Hickox (Waxwork 2, Hellraiser 3, and Warlock), the story is fairly straightforward: a group of high school friends discover a new waxworks exhibit in town and decide to schedule a private tour. But when the exhibits start coming to life, they quickly realize there's more to them than they bargained for.

The special effects are fantastic for the time, and the cast brings a strong sense of 80s nostalgia. Notable performances include Zach Galligan (Gremlins), Michelle Johnson (who stars in one of my favorite Tales from the Crypt episodes), Deborah Foreman (April Fool's Day), David Warner (Tron), and Michu (ALF).

While the movie isn't perfect, it's a lot of fun, well thought out, and put together nicely. I strongly recommend it to fans of horror. I'd rate it a 7/10.

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.

Admittedly I barely got through the latter half of this, before temptation dared me to sit it out to the end. Darned it. Definitely not Galligan's, Johnson's, Foreman's or even Warner's better work. But I blame that on the bad scripting, the horrible directing, the rather lazy production technique. And Lord knows, I have long respected and admired David Warner's work. Gifted villain is he, especially opposite his classic Jack the Ripper icon, opposite Malcolm McDowell in 'Time after time'. And certainly, one of the finer, solid English talents of our century. Thankfully his talent wasn't entirely wasted in this. He was allotted some grandeur evil moments; similar to the setup of Vincent Price's classic 'House of Wax'. Most inevitably, a few of the latter scenes curiously depicted those classic scenes,like the vat room and the staircase.

This film certainly started out decently, but some of the pacing was a tad slow. By the time the kids actually step inside the 'wax museum', and then walk around the exhibits, much just turns goofy or mindless from thereon. Eventually action becomes rather boorish. The special effects are mediocre if that, most of the period actors can barely act a wink, and the editing is just awful. Several of the slasher-gore action shots get goofy or make zero sense (or out of sequence), and the ending 'battle' scene between the 'monsters' and the good guys is laughable.

Perhaps this was intended to be a teen suspense comedy-drama. And it almost held the same quality humor as the Evil-dead series. However, with the awkward pacing, much of the intended visual effects fell either flat or victim to bad editing.

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.