Waxwork - My Review

Waxwork is a cool film that I'm surprised took me this long to see. It's a horror with comedy elements to it about a evil Waxworks owner who lures people to his exhibit so that his horror themed Waxworks can kill.

2 teenage girls are invited to a private midnight reveal of the evil Waxwork owners exhibition, they go with a bunch of thier friends (including among them one of the actors from the excellant Twin Peaks series, and the beautiful Deborah Foreman). A midget and a giant usher them into the exhibit which features various scenes of horror from pop culture, such as Draculas Castle, an Egyptian Mummy's tomb, the Phantom of the Operas sewer among others. The group split up as they look around the exhibit. One by one they are lured onto the exhibits, each one has a gateway to a dream like dimension depicting what the scenario represented. For example, the first teenager steps onto the Wolfman exhibit which transports him to a woodland where he is attacked by a werewolf and then killed by a hunter with silver bullets. Some of the teenagers leave the exhibit looking for thier missing friends which leads to them via a series of coincidences discovering the secret of the waxworks.

The film is quite good, the alternate realities the teenagers are lured to all have thier distinct style. There is not a lot of explicit violence, but still is entertaining, the best being death via foot stomp (A Mummy crushes a prone mans head into the ground, nice) There is more to the plot than it first seems, and it rattles along nicely.

There is lots of great scenes in the film, the best featuring the beautiful Deborah Foreman. Sarah rejects her friends advances which leads to a tender scene between them and her producing the most dazzling smile I have ever seen. The Waxwork of the Marquais de Sade steals the film character wise. He has a real prescence about him, and draws attention. Not sure who he is (seems to be some bloke who gets off whipping virgin girls, and I guess that's where the term Sadism comes from) but in the film he is hypnotic to watch. The final large fight is just too big for the budget, which shows as a bunch of old men (including one in an armoured wheel chair!) attack the live Waxwork villains (who put up pathetic resistance!).

Zombies feature in one of the scenarios set in a graveyard and black and white, so that's cool! There are pop culture references I noticed to Dirty Harry, Little Shop of Horrors among others. The end credits include thanks to a whole host of famous horror directors (Hooper, Romero, Carpenter et al) There is a sequel I am going to check out, hopefully it will be as entertaining as this film!