“Would you like a closer look?”

Justin’s rating: Melt my heart, why don’t ya

Justin’s review: When people recount inventive horror movie franchises, I almost never hear the short-lived, two-part Waxwork series brought up. But it should! Director Anthony Hickox brought a certain style of tongue-in-cheek imagination to these films as well as Hellraiser III and Warlock: The Armageddon, quickly making a name for himself at the turn of the decade. For my money, 1992’s Waxwork II: Lost in Time was his imperfect masterpiece, a rip-roaring adventure through movie genres.

But we should give some due to where Hickox — and this series — began, which was with 1988’s Waxwork. It’s not hard to see the genesis of this idea, because who hasn’t beheld a waxwork figure and got the uncanny valley creeps as they were sure that those almost-but-not-quite characters would come to life? I took my kids to a waxwork museum a year ago, and even though the subject matter was light, they were so thoroughly unnerved that they begged me to leave halfway through.

A mysterious waxwork appears in the middle of a California suburb, and an even more mysterious curator (David Warner) invites a group of four rather spoiled college kids for a private midnight showing. The group is led by Mark (Zach Galligan, Gremlins), who’s trying to impress quiet Sarah (Deborah Foreman, April Fool’s Day, who was replaced by Monika Schnarre in the sequel). Other members of their group include Mark’s ex (an extremely sassy girl named China), and Twin Peaks’ Dana Ashbrook pretty much auditioning for his role as Bobby in David Lynch’s upcoming series. They’re all — save Sarah — a little conceited, which makes them prime victim material.

The “private showing” starts to go off the rails almost immediately, as an odd little person greets them at the door and takes them into this giant mansion — which is really a haunted theme park of dark delights. For, you see, the waxworks here come alive, but only after drawing the viewer into the particular scene. So that’s the hook of this movie — each of the kids get sucked into a different fictional world where death and danger await. Will they survive and make it back? Or will they die and become the next additions to the waxwork scene? (Yes and yes, by the way.)

This approach allows Waxwork to hop between well-known 18 horror scenes, including the killer at summer camp, werewolves at the full moon, a dinner with Dracula (Miles O’Keeffe!), a feeding of a carnivorous plant, a Tinder date with the Marquis de Sade, mummies in Egypt, and a visit to a black-and-white Night of the Living Dead apocalypse.

Waxwork is a creative mess. There’s a pretty great idea here, some impressive visual effects, genre swapping, and a few fairly well-known actors. But it goes off the rails almost immediately, barrels down a cliffside, runs through a small town populated entirely by big-eyed orphans, punches a hole through a nuclear waste facility, and coasts to a halt to become the central icon of Burning Man 1988.

What’s the problem here? It’s clear almost right away that Waxwork can’t get its balance right. Based on any given moment, it might be going for a clumsy scare, some atmospheric dread, a self-aware satire, comedic quips, or out-of-nowhere gore. Viewers aren’t given a cue what this movie is trying to evoke in them, so the end result — as usually happens — is confusion.

It’s especially befuddling that the central mystery of the Waxwork museum isn’t put on the table until late into the movie, which means that up until then, it’s just people stumbling around exploring these familiar worlds. (And even when it is explained, it’s beyond stupid.)

This is why Waxwork II worked much better, because it figured out what it wanted to be — a scifi comedy that poked a lot of fun at horror tropes — and carried that vision with much better confidence. I also think that Zach Galligan’s character here is pretty insufferable, which makes his transformation into a more traditional hero for the second movie a good move.

Yet I’d say that if you wanted to see the sequel (and you should!), it’s probably worthwhile to start with this, mess or no. I respect people who are so overwhelmed by concepts that they want to do them all at once, and so I guess I can forgive Anthony Hickox for going full-bore with his first outing. And it does get absolutely insane by the end once all of the scenes start to break down and the various monsters tromp into our world for a change. It kind of abandons frights for spectacle, and if that’s not a judgment on ’80s slashers, I don’t know what is.

Intermission!

• Nothing like kicking off with swing music… and a guy’s head being shoved into a lit fireplace? And a robbery?
• That is one hugely distracting flower centerpiece.
• “Now drink your milk, you’re late for college.”
• “We’re talking about major body.”
• Mysterious guy likes to appear and disappear
• Don’t think modern college professors would get away with having a swastika flag in their classroom, especially if you’re German and prone to giving Nazi salutes
• “I do what I want, when I want.”
• The “waxworks” have a really hard time holding still
• “All right, who put the acid in my drink? Again? China?”
• The ’80s blamed everything on holograms
• John Rhys-Davies as a werewolf!
• The werewolf casually brushing off his shoulder in a “that didn’t hurt” gesture was kinda funny
• Steak… tartare… I could’ve done without those eating noises
• Hey, you just ate part of your fiancé’s leg. That’s going to put a cramp on your relationship.
• Making a sign of the cross with implements is enough to make Dracula’s head explode
• You can impale vampires by lightly shoving them against wine bottles
• This cop has obviously seen every cop movie ever made
• The crawling Evil Dead 2 hand
• “Kiss me, Sarah!” “Kiss this!”
• “Make my day!” [Dirty Harry blows off a bat’s head]
• If you have to be in a wheelchair, you might as well pimp it out
• Kane Hodder is Frankenstein’s Monster
• A blanket is all the fireproofing you need for an inferno