Waxwork (1988) / old Negative review

 

March 19, 2007

IMDb user comments

I seemed to really not like this fourteen years ago. I mean I seemingly damn near detested it. Wednesday, 2021, I'm different. But for past context, this was then, not now.

David Lincoln(David Warner)sells his soul to the devil and murders the ancestor of Mark(Zach Galligan)at the beginning by putting his head in the fireplace as it was burning wood. Mark, Sarah(Deborah Foreman), China(Michelle Johnson) & Tony(Dana Ashbrook)decide to got to a Midnight showing of a Waxworks..this is a "museum" whose proprietor is Lincoln who hasn't aged a bit. Each museum exhibit is actually a gateway into another time where the classic monsters of horror await those who enter and are gullible to believe that these creatures can harm them. You have the worst Dracula in the history of cinema in Miles O'Keeffe, horrible werewolf costume representing John Rhys-Davies, J Kenneth Campbell as the Marquis de Sade turned into a cartoon, and the Mummy. Other creatures such as an alien, zombies, and Frankenstein's monster never get their full due because director Hickox can not slow the movie down enough to provide us with any kind of substance to hold a hat on. I swear this film is held together by plywood and string. Poor Patrick Macnee must do with a character called Sir Wilfred who has been planning an attack on Lincoln for sometime.

The film is episodic showing what each character faces as they enter(..or are thrown into)each exhibit. There's plenty of gore and the lovely Deborah Foreman is probably enough to give this film a go. Obviously lovers of the classic Universal horrors might find some worth in this drivel, but I have a feeling they will find the make-up work of these creatures as laughable to the point of disrespect.

The whole film ends with Wilfred's unit of "soldiers" doing battle with the monsters once they are released from their "cages" after the museum is provided with enough souls by those who venture into the other world. It's a mess of bodies and violence that can become unbearable.