The owner of a local waxwork, which seems to have appeared almost overnight, invites several young folks to take a tour in the evening after observing that their interests have been piqued following a routine passing by. They take up the offer and arrive in the evening, though several of them are easily spooked and leave. After the initial group that stays for the tour seems to vanish, the remaining friends discover a dark secret of the waxwork: by crossing the felt ropes protecting the exhibits themselves, you enter the actual world of the figures, and there may be no escape.
I didn't realize that this is the second film on this list I've reviewed by director Anthony Hickox, the other being the very mediocre Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth. Thankfully, this is a better film, though not without it's flaws either. The concept of Waxwork is actually pretty neat, giving nods to various different horror genres and faces throughout the years in the form of the wax exhibits. The acting is hit or miss, with David Warner and Zach Galligan (not surprisingly) being the best of the bunch. Most of the dialogue for the first 20 minutes or so was agonizing to have to listen to, and I couldn't wait for certain characters to meet their demise, hopefully in nasty fashion. Thankfully, most of them do.
After that initial bad start, the film starts to get a lot better. The costume and makeup work in this is quite good, which includes a pretty neat looking werewolf and a great scene with the Marquis De Sade. It actually traverses quite a bit of the genre pretty well without feeling forced, and the ending scene, which features a large repertoire of different "staples" duking it out with others is just wonderful. I can only hope that maybe this Halloween I can stumble across some random party where maybe they'll unintentionally recreate that battle after a tough bout with Jameson's and Jack Daniels. I wish the film had gotten someone else to do the sound editing though, as the audio mix was just way too damn low for most it's runtime (subtitles for Warner's little butler probably couldn't have hurt either). Maybe that was the fault of the copy Netflix had for streaming, I'm not sure.
This is still a pretty fun one to check out though. Delightfully cheesy, despite a pretty awful start. Plus, David Warner is awesome in almost anything he does.
Tomorrow, I stumble across a random boat and hope the contents of PROTEUS don't fuck with me too much.
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