Part of what made the 1980s a magical decade for horror movies was that it was the golden age of special effects. Practical techniques had not yet been replaced by computer-generated effects that actors would often struggle to pretend were there. There was another factor of the 1980s that made it special for the genre. It was also a decade in which home video exploded on the market. In the age of streaming, it might be difficult to recall the impact of the VCR on the entertainment industry, especially if you weren’t alive to experience it. The reason this was so important was that many smaller or even independent filmmakers were able to take their ideas and get them published. Film companies were willing to take more risks and fund these little ventures hoping to make their money back later in the home if they failed at the box office. It’s why John Carpenter’s The Thing has grown beyond a cult following, after all.

Why do I mention this? There are bound to be countless other movies I’ll be talking about under the Arcane Visions banner for this very reason, even some I’ve mentioned in the past. Today, I’ll be going over a movie called Waxwork which is very clearly a movie that had a cool idea, lacked much funding, but still managed to come across as a competent horror film with some entertaining cheese that we simply would not see today.

Plot

A group of kids who are attending college (one that seems a lot more like a high school student in how the script presents them) come across a new building that seemingly sprouted up out of the ground overnight. It’s a waxwork, something that most kids born after the year 2000 would mock as the most boring form of entertainment, but college kids in the 1980s apparently loved them. It’s an exhibition room where a crafter of wax sculptures can display their talent or even tell a story through still, life-sized dioramas. If you’ve seen the House of Wax movies, you should be familiar with this form of art and how it’s been prevalent in the horror genre for a long time.

Before I digress too much like I usually do, the sculptures of Waxwork are quite different than those of other wax house horror movies. They’re not just simple sculptures, nor are they merely people encased in wax. It turns out, the dioramas are actually magical in some way. If a person steps beyond the velvet rope onto the sculpture’s platform, they’re transported to the fantasy it’s portraying and the horrors within. For example, one unfortunate fool steps onto one that is portraying an excavation in Egypt, and they are suddenly changed from a regular person in the 1980s to an archeologist of the 1910s who comes face to face with a murderous mummy. Upon their unfortunate death, they physically become part of the diorama as another lifeless wax sculpture. As the story progresses more is disclosed about the waxworks and their purpose, as well as how the magic all seems to function.

What Makes it Special?

There are a couple of things about Waxwork that I think make it stand out. For one, the premise itself is not a bad one. The idea of having an evil wax exhibit transport people to fantasy worlds where they can encounter vampires, werewolves, mummies, etc. has a lot of potential. It’s essentially a horror greatest hits album in the form of a movie. It’s an easy way to ensure you get all the classic monsters in a film together without stealing the show from one another or the plot.

The plot itself gets a bit too big for its britches when it explains how all the magical exhibits work and sets up for a finale it couldn’t possibly achieve on its small budget. So while the special effects look pretty good for the cheaply made movie, you can also tell when the production ran out of money. It’s charming in its own way, but I certainly wonder how things would have changed if the movie was remade today with a more substantial budget. That being said, the climax is still entertaining as all these horror monsters collide against a random army of people trying to destroy the waxwork. There’s a sword battle, explosions, and werewolves ripping people’s heads off as they say very British-sounding phrases of surprise. It’s extremely dumb but entertaining.

The somewhat goofy humor doesn’t wait till the end. Some of the characters, as they get sucked into the various exhibits, have some of their own entertaining lines as they react with disbelief to what is happening. Since they’re all supposed to be young 20-somethings from the 1980s, interacting with people who are in a vastly different world creates that automatic clash in tone that can be quite funny. When one gets chased around by a werewolf in a first-person perspective, it’s pretty entertaining. Likewise, I also laugh a lot when a vampire is chasing the blonde and constantly lunging at her over a poor victim who is missing part of his leg because he’s constantly screaming from the vampire coming in contact with his exposed wounds.

What makes Waxwork special is the cheeky humor behind the horror and the charm of the low-budget entertainment. It’s not going to rock your socks off with crazy special effects, brilliant acting, or wildly inventive camera angles. It’s just going to tell something that would equate (and perhaps has already) to a Twilight Zone episode or Goosebumps book. Waxwork is predictable, but fun in how the story progresses and things are resolved. As soon as it’s revealed that the wax dioramas can magically pull in people, it makes you curious as to which monster or story will be presented next. As a horror fan, you get to see all the classic Universal monsters in the style of a cheap and campy horror movie from the eighties.

Pros

Interesting premise
Decent effects
Funny in some of its ridiculous moments
Features a lot of classic monsters
Climax is pretty bonkers

Cons

Takes a little while to get going
Characters are dull

TL;DR

I don’t think Waxwork is either scary or particularly well done as some horror gem that never received the attention it deserved. I do, however, believe that it has a fair amount of personality that you can appreciate if you come to it with an open mind. It’s an occasionally goofy horror movie that happens to have some gory effects that were synonymous with the decade, featuring some classic horror monsters all in one place. I doubt it will make you rethink the genre, but I think Waxwork manages to be an entertaining little horror film with a lot of charm.

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