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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.

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.

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.

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.

There is something about episodic horror movies that I love. Maybe it harkens back to my youth, when I devoured the EC Horror Comics reprints. Something about each individual character having his or her own interesting death always has been a kick ass idea to me. This movie is great. Each character faces his/her own nasty (extremely gory) death scene in different "exhibits" in the wax museum. A darn good time and some seriously great gore FX! Loved it. 8/10

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.

"Waxwork" is a horror movie that sounds much better than it is.

I mean, how could it miss? It manages to combine zombies, mummies, the Marquis de Sade, Jon Irenicus, vampires, and according to Wikipedia, a bunch of other things I didn't notice and don't remember seeing, such as a talking venus fly trap.

That's the problem.

Maybe they just tried to jam too much stuff into one movie. It doesn't help that the central premise of a wax museum which teleports people into horror movies (or something?) doesn't make sense.

Nothing in it connected with me on any level. I wasn't entertained.

There are some asides that are quite boring and add nothing to the movie, like when a kid goes and gets a cop to investigate the wax museum. I confess I stopped paying attention there.

I tried to get back into it but it just wasn't interesting.

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!!

Wax figures always seem to get the least appreciation when it comes to three dimensional art. Unfortunately, the reason for that is their eerie presence and synthetic likeliness to that it was based on. It's also because of these traits that they've been best used in horror pictures starting with films like Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), House of Wax (1953), Nightmare in Wax (1969) and Terror in the Wax Museum (1973). All of which had the same idea but only the original and remake are known the best. After that, feature length films disappeared focusing on this concept...until this film came along. Thankfully this movie does something unique with the premise instead of rehashing for another round of familiarities. However, the way the premise is used tends to make it more camp than anything else.

Written and directed Anthony Hickox, who would later direct Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992), makes his debut with this feature. Sometimes when doing more than one task the end result is not the desired outcome, but here it fairs out okay. The story is about Mark Loftmore (Zach Galligan), China (Michelle Johnson), Sarah (Deborah Foreman) and some other friends who get invited to a mysterious waxwork building headed by a nameless man (David Warner). Little do they or other strangers know that behind the displays are parallel dimensions where people can be transported and trapped. As mentioned before, it's a twist on the classic story, just this time it's not a crazed psychopath going around killing people off the streets. There's a little more fantasy involved here.

Sadly, this still doesn't remove the campy experience viewers may feel. There's a couple reasons for this. First, the main characters themselves lack any relatable charm. Zach Galligan best known from Gremlins (1984) plays what seems like a character who wants to grow up, yet he still cares about who China (his ex) sleeps with. Michelle Johnson known for also later playing in Dr. Giggles (1992) is okay but again her character seems conflicted in motivation. In fact, so does the character of Sarah. There's too much flip flopping. Nevertheless, the actors perform well with what they have. And despite the main characters not feeling strong enough, they are well supported by other veteran actors like David Warner better known from Tron (1982), Joe Baker who'd voice Lon in Disney's Pocahontas (1995), Patrick Macnee who had roles in The Howling (1981) and A View to a Kill (1985) and even a cameo from John Rhys-Davies.

Two other aspects that play against the experience of this film are the rules explained in the story. While there is a moment where a key part is explained, there is another scene where another variation to the proposed rule is countered. Some consistency or at least clarity would've been good. The other issue is just the plot itself and the antagonist's motivation. In all honesty, it's a rather vague and preposterous plot why this whole situation even occurs. This is why the experience of watching this film feels campy. It's just a ridiculous idea. The effects in this film are credible for 1988. There's a good volume of blood and gore to be had even though the tone does not convey serious horror. Working on those effects was Bob Keen, the same guy behind movies like Superman (1978), Alien (1979), Highlander (1986) and Hellraiser (1987).

Behind the camera for this film was Gerry Lively, who also worked on Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992) and even Friday (1995). The scenes shot by Lively are decent and show competence in their presentation. The best shot belongs to the waxwork building. Finally, composing the film score to this feature was Roger Bellon. Surprisingly, it is an interesting work that has gotten an album release. Bellon has a number of themes that occur throughout the run time and are memorable in their own way. The listening experience is very dated though by the instruments used. Almost anyone could tell it came from the 80s from certain tracks. For Bellon, this might be the work he's most remembered for because much of the rest of his filmography is in the TV Movie realm where few scores get publications.

This movie puts an interesting spin on the old wax museum tale from past films. While the main characters feel inconsistent at times and the plot is just silly, it does provide mild fun. The camerawork is decent, the music is composed well and the supporting cast contain some big names.

1st watched 7/12/2009 - 3 out of 10 (Dir-Anthony Hickox): Lame and silly attempt to spoof horror movies in this story about a possessed wax museum visited by brainless teenagers. A couple of them get swept into the exhibits and the story that revolves around the exhibits, and then they get killed and become permanent parts of it. This is the basic storyline but they add a "rule the world" theme concocted by the leader of the museum. He believes that once each exhibit has had it's chance to kill they will all come to life and conquer all !! Mu ha ha!! The movie has a campiness that makes you think initially it will be a comedy but it really just turns into a slow moving horror movie. The exhibits include the werewolf, a vampire, the Marquis de sade and an alien that isn't really explored. This is where the movie tries to pay tribute to these type of movies but fails. At least the movie didn't turn out to be a kill all teens slasher movie and they tried a different style in the storytelling to put away the worthless teenagers but it still doesn't really work as an interesting movie.

This is about an eerie waxwork museum run by a strange man (played by David Warner--so you KNOW he's VERY strange :)). Mark (Zach Galligan), his girlfriend China (Michelle Johnson) and best friends Tony (Dana Ashbrook) and Sarah (Deborah Foreman) go check it out. Tony is drawn into a waxwork and gets killed by the wolf man; China gets drawn into another and is killed by Dracula. Mark and Sarah don't see it happen but realize something is going on. They go to the police for help but the police officer is ALSO pulled into a waxwork and killed by a mummy. Then Sarah gets pulled in to face the Marquis de Sade and Mark is pulled in to face the living dead...

As you can tell this is a VERY strange movie. It's well-directed, beautifully atmospheric with some gorgeous sets and a wonderful music score. There's also a neat, truly scary black & white sequence. And there's TONS of blood and gore. But I didn't really like it. The script is silly (especially in the explanation of what's going on); this is actually a horror comedy--but the comedy is painfully unfunny and the horror too explicit to laugh at; the acting is TERRIBLE (Galligan is the worst offender) and they cast Miles O'Keeffe as Dracula!!!! Even worse his voice is dubbed--and looks it. Basically the violence, gore, special effects, score and settings are great--everything else blows. It's really too bad--this film does have potential but it doesn't have the talent to carry it out.

I saw two versions of this--the R rated and the unrated. The R rated is bloody but the unrated is just unbelievable. There's a LOT more blood and violence (especially in the Dracula sequence). There is a sequence where blood is literally covering the walls! If you really want to see this the unrated is the one to see.

Waxwork is written and directed by Anthony Hickox. It stars Zach Galligan, Deborah Foreman, Michelle Johnson, David Warner, Dana Ashbrook, Miles O'Keefe, Patrick Macnee and John Rhys-Davies. Music is by Roger Bellon and cinematography by Gerry Lively.

A sort of portmanteau horror film made on a TV standard budget. Plot in simple terms has a bunch of pretty young adults unwisely accept an invite to visit the mysterious new wax museum that has suddenly appeared in town: At midnight! What follows is a number of stories that find members of the group magically transported into the realm of an exhibit, such as werewolf, vampire etc, and end up as part of the exhibit themselves. Can the hero in waiting save the day?

It's a fun homage of a movie, playing very much firmly with tongue in cheek. The presence of some horror stalwarts in the cast is reassuring, and the effects work isn't half bad. Some of the acting is poor from the younger cast members, and while it's not hard to forgive a low budgeted movie its failings, it's still annoying that the actors playing the wax models can't keep still, while the set nearly falls down at one point. The photography is also too cloudy at times, Gerry Lively's filters straining for colour ambiance.

Still, it's a decent time filler that's made with love by a horror fan for horror fans. 5/10

Fun, funny, silly, stupid, and sometimes tasteless, 'Waxwork' gets plenty of kicks out of its nonsense story and it's simple shocks.

Honourable mentions to veterans David Warner and Patrick McNee who get into the spirit of things and a game cast of younger actors who scream and sprint with aplomb.

If you like 80's films or horror comedy then I strongly recommend 'Waxwork'. Don't take it seriously, just appreciate the mild vulgarity with relish!

I rate a strong 5/10 as it stands; and a superior cast of younger actors and tighter directing for the action scenes would probably render 'Waxwork' a very valuable genre classic. As it is there is much to enjoy if this sounds like your kind of flick!