![]() The film is peppered with clever dialog bits, which is really impressive when you consider the script was written in just a few days. Galligan is a natural, and you can tell Hickox pushed him to get the absolute best comedic performance he could possibly get. It’s just a really clever script that’s brought to life by the aforementioned amazing cast. There are plenty of laughs, but it’s not slapstick. Trivia: Kane Hodder did stunts on Waxwork and appears, uncredited, as Frankenstein’s monster! The way the wolf dispatches one of his victims here is something you won’t soon forget, and it still holds up today! Another fantastic effect is the missing leg in the vampire vignette. And guess what? It paid off! The creature designs are marvelous, particularly the werewolf. By all accounts, he lived there during the shooting, much like Rob Bottin on the set of The Thing. With a shooting schedule of just six or seven weeks, Keen was tasked with essentially recreating the entire Universal Monsters catalog of creatures, in addition to zombies, a crawling hand, a giant plant, and countless other props and FX. Makeup and FX maestro Bob Keen ( Hellraiser, Candyman) had his work cut out for him on Waxwork. He’s young and the director wanted “the guy from Gremlins.” This was his approach with John Rhys-Davies as well: “I need the Raiders of the Lost Ark guy!” Deborah Foreman is always amazing, and you really can’t say enough about the rest of the British cast led by David Warner and Patrick Macnee. He went after actors like a college recruiter and got them to say yes with his energy and his vision. He took $3 million dollars and a vision and managed to assemble an incredible cast (with the help of a top-notch casting director) for this film. Here you’ve got a young kid who wrote a script in three days, shopped it around, and got a seemingly endless series of NOs before Vestron finally said yes. When you really sit down and look at it, it’s pretty miraculous what first-time director Anthony Hickox managed to do with Waxwork. Can they put a stop to the madness before the displays are complete and the dark forces become too powerful to stop? Mark (Zach Galligan) and Sarah (Deborah Foreman) survive their first encounter at the museum and set out on a mission to expose the mysterious owner (David Warner) and rescue their friends before each display claims a victim. The duo enlists the help of a detective and Mark’s quirky uncle (Patrick Macnee). The students get more than they bargained for when they get a little too close and find themselves trapped inside the displays with the nefarious villains. Each display features a notorious villain or creature and most of them are menacing a hapless victim. Upon their arrival, the group witnesses a series of disturbing wax displays. Gremlins star Zach Galligan co-stars in this comedy of terrors with Deborah Foreman ( April Fool’s Day (1986), Miles O’Keefe ( Tarzan), Michelle Johnson ( Blame It On Rio), John Rhys-Davies ( Raiders of the Lost Ark), and David Warner ( Titanic).Ī group of rich high school students gets invited to a midnight gallery showing at a mysterious wax museum that seemingly appeared out of nowhere in their suburban town. They are now part of the permanent collection. One by one, the students are drawn into the settings as objects of the bloodthirsty creatures. Each display is perfectly grotesque, yet each is missing one thing…a victim! Admission to the Waxwork was free, but now they may pay with their lives. Inside a mysterious wax museum, a group of teenagers are aghast at the hauntingly lifelike wax displays of Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy and other charter members of the horror Hall of Fame. Does it still hold up three and a half decades later? Watch the trailer, then step into my parlor! The film celebrates 35 years in 2023, and I was happy to take some time to write about it. Eventually, though, it made its way home and, with Doritos and Pepsi in hand, we popped the tape in the VCR and went on a journey from small-town America into the depths of the mysterious wax museum. ![]() I guess the cover art just didn’t grab us. For a long time, Waxwork was always the bridesmaid and never the bride. Horror was king back then, so there was no shortage of films to choose from. ![]() Back in the mid to late ’80s, my good friend John and I frequently walked down to the local theater, which also rented out VHS tapes, to look for horror movies to watch on the weekend. The story of my love for Waxwork (1988) starts as so many of my stories do: at my hometown video store.
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