Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Night of Terror #10: Waxwork

Hello fright fans! Today we have another terrifying guest review from my friend who requested she be billed by her hacker alias "false_rumors." You can read more about her hacking adventures on her personal hacking web-journal here. Now, here she is on a movie I had never heard of before today - Waxwork:

Nestled near the top of my list of Favorite Terrible Films, you’ll find Waxwork, the 1988 directorial
debut of Anthony Hickox who went on to direct such gems as Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, Warlock: The Armageddon, and something called Jill The Ripper, among other films you’ve never, ever heard of. Do not confuse this Waxwork with any other movies in the horror sub-genre involving wax figures, and especially do not confuse it with the German silent film Waxworks, as our fearless leader Joe did.

No, no. This Waxwork stars Zach Galligan (Billy from Gremlins!) and Deborah Foreman (the Valley Girl from Valley Girl!) as two high school students (lol) who, along with some of their generic friends (one of them is Bobby from Twin Peaks!), get invited to the midnight opening of a mysterious new waxworks run by David Warner. Check out David Warner’s IMDb page because he has literally been playing creepy dudes forever, in tons of movies you’ve seen.

DUH, this is of course no ordinary waxworks. All the exhibits portray scenes of famous horror movie
denizens, such as the Phantom of the Opera, vampires, werewolves, and the Marquis de Sade.

Yes. You read that correctly. The Marquis de Sade is arguably the main evil wax figure in this movie.
What even.

ANYWAYS, one by one, the kids become fascinated with a particular scene and for a variety of reasons like “Oops, I dropped my lighter on the other side of the rope partition”, they walk into the exhibit that struck their fancy. BOOM! CRAZY BLUE LIGHT AND HOLY SHIT now they’re actually IN the scene being portrayed.

I won’t go into why the scenes come to life because I don’t want to spoil anything, and by spoil anything I mean I couldn’t explain the absurdity if I wanted to, but let’s just say I’m pretty sure it involves a plot to take over the world with history’s greatest villains or something.

For all its utter stupidity, there’s at least one legitimately disturbing scene when China (a character’s
name!) enters the vampire’s lair. You’ll never be able to hear “steak tartare” without thinking of it and if you’re like me, you won’t be able to say it without imitating the way the vampire says it. Not that I have very many chances to say “steak tartare”.

One last bit: When I saw Cabin in the Woods, I thought of this movie for a very specific reason.

It’s streaming on Netflix if you want to see what I mean, or if you want to see what happens when
someone puts the Marquis de Sade in a campy horror movie from the 80’s. Trust me, you do.

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