PopHorror Let's Get Scared
The story of my love for Waxwork (1988) starts as so many of my stories do: at my hometown video store. It’s a familiar refrain. 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. Horror was king back then, so there was no shortage of films to choose from. For a long time, Waxwork was always the bridesmaid and never the bride. I guess the cover art just didn’t grab us. 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.
The film celebrates 35 years in 2023, and I was happy to take some time to write about it. Does it still hold up three and a half decades later? Watch the trailer, then step into my parlor!
WAXWORK (1988) Synopsis
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. 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. One by one, the students are drawn into the settings as objects of the bloodthirsty creatures. They are now part of the permanent collection.
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).
Here’s a look at the poster art!
The Setup
A 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. Upon their arrival, the group witnesses a series of disturbing wax displays. Each display features a notorious villain or creature and most of them are menacing a hapless victim. 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.
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). Can they put a stop to the madness before the displays are complete and the dark forces become too powerful to stop?
Three Big Reasons I Love Waxwork
1. The Cast
When you really sit down and look at it, it’s pretty miraculous what first-time director Anthony Hickox managed to do with Waxwork. 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. 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. He went after actors like a college recruiter and got them to say yes with his energy and his vision.
Zach Galligan is perfect in this film. 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. Just a top-notch ensemble all around. 
2. The FX
Makeup and FX maestro Bob Keen (Hellraiser, Candyman) had his work cut out for him on Waxwork. 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. By all accounts, he lived there during the shooting, much like Rob Bottin on the set of The Thing. And guess what? It paid off! The creature designs are marvelous, particularly the werewolf. 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. Really nice work!
Trivia: Kane Hodder did stunts on Waxwork and appears, uncredited, as Frankenstein’s monster!
3. The Humor
Waxwork is a ton of fun. There are plenty of laughs, but it’s not slapstick. It’s just a really clever script that’s brought to life by the aforementioned amazing cast. Galligan is a natural, and you can tell Hickox pushed him to get the absolute best comedic performance he could possibly get. The film is peppered with clever dialog bits, which is really impressive when you consider the script was written in just a few days. Patrick Macnee injects some great British humor, while Warner works well as the straight man. The film is effortlessly fun without being goofy, and that’s not easy to pull off. Especially given all the gore and some of the dicier subject matter…like the Marquis de Sade (J. Kenneth Campbell).
If you get a chance, listen to the audio commentary with Zach Galligan and Anthony Hickox. It’s very funny, and as you listen, you can see why this movie is as funny as it is.
Final Thoughts
If you’ve never seen Waxwork, you owe it to yourself to give it a try. It’s a ton of fun, and the production design and the cast are top-notch. If you have seen Waxwork, you would do well to revisit it. It really holds up well, even after 35 years. Hickox went on to do some great stuff, including a Hellraiser sequel, and a werewolf cop film called Full Eclipse. Again, it really is amazing to me that this was his first film.
Vestron Video did a double Blu-ray Collector’s Series release of Waxwork and the 1992 sequel, Waxwork II: Lost In Time, and it’s worth every penny. The behind-the-scenes stuff and the commentaries are gold and must-view material for fans of these films. You can still find copies of the Collector’s Series on Amazon.
At the time of this writing, the film is also streaming free on Tubi and VUDU (with ads). Give it a whirl tonight!
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go revisit the sequel!
