The bulk of my experience with horror as a kid can be summed up by all of the unreasonably disconcerting VHS covers I nervously studied while passing by them in the video store. The promise of those covers was often far more terrifying in my imagination than anything held within the confines of those black plastic tapes could ever deliver. But still the conflated power of those images was all it took to plant the seeds of fear.
Like hearing an inside joke that I didn’t quite have the context for, the genre came off as alienating. Strange. Dangerous.
As it was, I grew up terrified of movies I had never seen— Hell, of movies I knew almost nothing about. The cover to Tourist Trap (1979) haunted me for years with its open mouthed, white face holding the camera with a terrified woman in its sights. And the grinning, cobweb stricken skeleton which gleefully adorned the Creepshow (1982) box chilled me to my core, despite its claim of providing “The Most Fun You’ll Ever Have BEING Scared!”
And then there was the cover to Waxwork (1988): a man of short stature dressed to the nines, gesturing me in to a room which sat between two white pillars, containing… faces. Melting, maliciously grinning, sharp toothed, crazed and utterly disturbed visages of the most monstrous people. A living collage of nightmares waiting for me to pick up the box, take it home and put the tape into my VCR so that they might invade.
Being a “W” title, the cassette was found in the very last shelf in my local Family Video which faced a window, close to the Kid’s Section and adjacent to the front double doors. Every day that I visited the store I saw it, its fading purple letters bathed in sunlight, taunting me, daring me to pick it up. Of course I never did, sometimes hurrying past and pretending not to look, as if the cover itself was somehow aware of my actions.
While I managed to avoid watching the title as a kid, I held onto that image somewhere in the back of my mind. I harboured a trepidation that kept it at arm’s length, even later when I started to delve into the genre. I recall flipping through titles at the local Circuit City and pausing on the Waxwork 1 & 2 double feature DVD before moving on to something else, avoiding that unsettling feeling which arose within me just at a mere glimpse of the cover. It would be years beyond that before I finally mustered the courage to put the movie in and give it a chance.
Imagine my surprise when I finally did.
I had never considered the tagline on the VHS. I’m not even sure I read the all caps words printed on the box: “STOP ON BY AND GIVE THE AFTERLIFE A TRY” and “MORE FUN THAN A BARREL OF MUMMIES.” This was not a movie intending to scare, not really, this was a movie attempting to celebrate those things which make up the collective power of the genre. It became immediately apparent that Waxwork was a “Greatest Hits” and, as such, was a lot of fun.
The broad grin that was plastered across my face throughout that initial viewing had as much to do with the film as it did my lifelong assumptions about it. And, yet, I can’t imagine a more perfect culmination for my experience with it. As with all of my favorite horror movies, it taught me something valuable: horror’s most incredible creations will always have the ability to be palpably terrifying and, simultaneously, campy fun.
The film is constructed of a series of climactic moments, plucked out of the vaguely familiar third acts of so many monster movies, providing classic monsters with their “payoff” moments. A group of hapless teenagers stumble in and out of these vignettes, meeting their ends in surprisingly gruesome ways. Accompanying all of this is an appropriate level of fear, disgust and humour given the over-the-top sensibilities of the surrounding story which concerns a madman wax museum curator hellbent on bringing about the end of times.
The film’s ability to balance these extreme tonal shifts, showcase astounding practical effects and satisfy character arcs by way of peripheral storylines that have nothing to do with the characters’ in-story motivations is what makes it so unique. Although apparent throughout the whole of the film, this strength was most sharply realized in the second horror vignette concerning vampires. In it, a girl named China finds herself possessing the life of an altogether different woman, in a different time, at the mercy of the bloodsucking fiends. And once she stumbles into their white, pristine basement lair and discovers her fiancé’s mangled form, she finds herself facing a choice: fight or be consumed.
The fight is deadly serious, gory and, somehow, fun, while delivering the sort of celebratory horror moment that fans of the genre adore. Anthony Hickox’s script is plainly worded and as descriptive as it needs to be while his direction carries his ideas through into a scene that’s quickly paced, appropriately intense and uproariously bloody. Above all, putting my lifetime assumptions about the box art aside, it more than delivers on the artwork’s promise: “The Most Fun You’ll Ever Have BEING Scared!”
THE SCENE
China makes her way into the basement and discovers a man. One his legs has been devoured to the bone and he claims to be her fiancé. He warns her about the vampires. Stephan enters and attacks. China bests him with a crucifix made from two knives put together. The female vampires enter and China battles them, breaking a chair to make stakes and pushing one of the creatures into a row of champaign bottles, impaling her. She stakes the others and then finds that her fiancé has also become a vampire. She escapes the room. Back in the dining room she hears fluttering wings and encounters the Count. China succumbs, staring into his eyes and falling under his spell. She approaches him, presenting her neck and he takes her gently, drinking her blood. That’s when the moment again becomes part of the wax display, China frozen in time beneath the Count’s oncoming fangs.
THE SCRIPT
THE SCREEN
CHINA runs out of the room, down the hallway, back into the dining room, and finally through a door leading into a white ceramic tiled room.
The scene follows suit without deviation, as it does for most of the scene with the exception of a few flourishes. The description is economic, providing the essentials and allowing the actors, blocking and editing to do the rest.
The white aesthetic is immediately apparent: from the white tiled walls, to the white staircase, to China’s pale skin set against her glistening white dress, there is an overt, unspoiled purity apparent from the moment the scene begins. Even the name “China” suggests something frail, breakable and valuable in its preciousness (something that stands in stark contrast to what the film has revealed about her character thus far). The first delineation from the clean surroundings is a quick cut to a man laid out on a table following a bit of offscreen dialogue offscreen introducing China’s supposed fiancé.
The medium-wide shot is quick and shaded, although it is clearly visible that the man’s leg has been mutilated. In the darkness, the blood is near black and the extent of the damage is difficult to discern. The view cuts back to China as she fumbles to turn on the light. The dialogue in the script plays out exactly as written as the view cuts quickly back and forth between China and the incapacitated Charles, who’s shouting:
“Don’t turn it on! I don’t want you to see me like this.”
When China finally sees him in full view, the image holds on her. China cries out in disgust, her expression devastated at what the viewer already knows is a gruesome display. The subtext of her dismay is only insinuated in the film, but made explicit in the script:
His LOWER LEFT LEG has been chewed away, most likely as the steak tartar.
The discovery that the raw meat she had consumed in the scene prior was actually the leg of the poor man before her, to whom she is also apparently engaged, informs her revulsion as well as her eventual resolve. Finally, the viewer sees Charles in full light: his left leg has been stripped to the bone, dark, blackened and chunky flesh the only connection remaining to his upper thigh. Beside his leg lies a large, bloody cleaver and beside that several more knives along with a bowl filled with chunks of bloody meat.
The image cuts to a medium shot of China as she finally makes her way down the stairs. She shouts the lines from the script as she approaches the table, her fiancé Charles coming into view as the camera moves with her. The flow of the shot coupled with her words tracks her denial regarding the situation as she physically comes face to face with the proof that it’s really happening:
“It’s all a game! The waxwork. A game. It isn’t real. It’s all just a sick stupid game!”
China’s interrupted by Charles’ screaming. The image then cuts to a close up of a rat gnawing on what little flesh still clings to Charles’ exposed bone: A rat has taken a liking to CHARLES leg. A series of quick cuts in rapid succession take the viewer from the rat, to Charles and then to China as she quickly brushes the creature away. The editing is manic but clear, allowing for the action to feel urgent and for no single effect, no matter how small (like a stuffed rat, for instance), to overstay its welcome or lose its worth.
The next portion of the scene follows the script closely. Charles provides a brief exposition dump, falling in line with the sort of classic, vampire narrative the scene is attempting to inhabit. This stays true right down to the doors suddenly bursting open the moment Charles explains: “And they can only be killed by a crucifix, wood through their heart, or decapitation!”
The script provides no Action Description when the vampire Stephan first enters the room, only the dialogue exchange between the characters. The shot is a wide, all three characters visible in the white room— even Stephan’s shirt is white. Stephan approaches and China backs up, the only thing separating them being the table where Charles is chained. Stephan, sensing China’s fear, ratchets up the ridiculousness of the grotesquery with the line: “First, the h’our dourve.”
Again, the editing tells the story here as the view cuts from Stephan to the leg and back to Stephan, the moment of impact marked by the squelching sound of tearing flesh and Charles’ resumed screaming. The screenplay is one more explicit in its intentions:
STEPHAN peels a chunk of skin off of CHARLES leg.
The only addition to the script here is the final moment which finds Stephan licking the blood off of his fingers. A simple touch, but a shivering one that amplifies the absurd grossness and once more calls back to the unfortunate meal that China had recently ingested. The image again cuts back to the wide shot of all three just as Stephan finally makes his move:
STEPHAN leans over CHARLES and tries to grab CHINA.
China darts back and forth on the other side of the table while Stephan reaches for her. The moment is suddenly a bit lighter in tone, almost broadly comical in the ease and simplicity which China is outmaneuvering her attacker. Finally, the dodging culminates in a practically slapstick moment, the whole sequence of which is depicted in the screenplay by way of the line:
The two continue running from end to end of the table until finally STEPHAN falls on top of CHARLES leg, causing CHARLES to scream madly.
A loud, crunching sound resounds as Stephan falls against Charles’ bare bone, the vampire desperately reaching forward to China who continues to evade his grasp. Continuity gets pushed aside in lieu of the immediacy of the scene as Stephan is standing adjacent to the table in the next shot, poised to intercept China.
Quick edits of close up motions allow the following sequence of events to occur in a believable and meaningful way:
CHINA picks up a Carving knife and PLUNGES it into STEPHAN’s chest. STEPHAN pulls it out and STABS it into CHARLES’ good leg.
While the viewer never sees the knife going into Charles’ leg, the downward swipe of Stephan’s hand, the fleshy thud and Charles’ screams create a visceral image that never has to appear onscreen. China, her determination mounting, reacts by grabbing a second knife and pulling the one from Charles’ leg. Her fiancé fails to scream this time, perhaps because now the heroine has the upper hand and such is the nature of this type of scene.
As scripted, China makes a cross out of them. A close up of Charles again offers the appropriate exposition as he shouts: “Touch his head! Touch his head!” China fills the frame, the makeshift knife-cross in the foreground and her strong-willed, weathered face pressing onward. The power shifts in this moment as the subsequent close up depicts a fearful Stephan, backing away. The edit continues to shift between the three in the scene, Stephan’s mouth smoking and his face distorting as he crumples to the floor under the touch of the knives.
In the script, the result is far more simply described: STEPHEN in turn, howls in pain and ultimately, his HEAD explodes. His head does explode onscreen, sending blood and viscera spraying all over both China and Charles as well as the pristine, white space. The next time we see a wide shot of the room, the place is scarcely recognizable, splattered with blood which leaks in long streaks down the white tile walls. China too is a red shadow of her former self, a lost look under the dripping, wet blood.
From there, the action picks up significantly. The film continues to follow the screenplay, Charles again offering valuable expository direction (“Break the chair. You can use it’s legs as stakes!”). Perfectly timed to China’s further preparation: the doors burst open and the female vampires enter. The Action Description describes China’s fight with the female crew of vampires beat by beat, however lacking the over-the-top sense of gratuity on display in the battle.
As CHINA wields the stake as a sword, the editing again adopts a fast paced nature, comprised of close up shots of snarling vampires, China’s steely resolve and Charles’ terrified visage. When China drives the stake into the heart of two of them, the fast interchanging shots of blood spurting, stakes flying and vampires hissing feels more like a montage than a real-time sequence. Then, when One of them is knocked back towards the wall of champagne, where the bottles pierce her body, the scene adopts a more linear method once more, pausing to showcase the liquid pouring from the bottles protruding from the vampire’s chest and thoroughly dousing China.
Her resolve fully realized, China stabs the last remaining vampire (the one on CHARLES) in the back, only to find that her lifeline to essential information is wearing a new set of fangs. She exits the now red room and returns to the wide, open dining hall. The screenplay fails to call attention to it, but China’s dress appears red in the dim light, as if it were its original color. She stumbles through the gothic space, her face sweaty and her skin deathly pale, cleansed due to the erupting champaign.
She turns to discover the COUNT.
Her face slowly enters the blue moonlight but is quickly shadowed by a new presence. The Count appears in a close up shot, handsome and in control. His voice is smooth and silky as he asks:
“Going somewhere my beauty?”
The shot is suddenly wide, the Count at one end of the frame and China at the other. She pauses and the fear, trepidation and disgust that had only seconds before been driving her is washed away. Her expression turns desirous. She exposes her bare, glistening neck. The Count waits, moving his cape aside but otherwise still. The sensual tension between them mounts as the view continues to cut between close ups of each, China moving ever closer.
The COUNT takes her in his arms and leans her down on the stairs, baring his fangs.
They come together, bathed in soft, blue moonlight. China closes her eyes, offering her neck to the Count. Her breathing intensifies. The editing again offers a multitude of cuts, however they seem less sporadic. Despite the visual interruptions, there is a fluidity to the way the Count turns China around and lays her on the stone steps. His breathing too intensifies as he bares his fangs and connects with her skin. China moans, at first in pain but then… in ecstasy.
The COUNT sinks his teeth in and we are moved out of the exhibit.
Direct and plain, the text describes exactly what the viewer sees onscreen, but, still, from the words on the page it would be difficult to discern the ultimate climax of the moment as, together, the two onscreen give in to their carnal desires.
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
I spent the bulk of my young life terrified of the horrors that the cover to Waxwork suggested. My uninitiated imagination saw the doorway as an entryway to fear as opposed to a gateway that led to all of those things that make horror so wonderfully exciting. I may not have been in on the joke when I was younger, but that made the punchline all the funnier when I finally understood the pitch.
Waxwork is a film honoring all the horror that had come before it with a wink, a nod and a bloody cleaver to the chest. It revels in the fun of fear and disgust, diving in and out of classic scenarios with an ease reflecting on the universal understanding that all horror fans share of how the genre works. And little represents this more than the scene in the Count’s white basement lair.
“At that time,” Editor Christopher Cibelli recalled on the feature “Waxwork Chronicles: Museums & Portals” found on the previously mentioned blu-ray disc, “Tony said we used more blood than any movie ever had used on a day of shooting.” He continued talking about the sequence, laughing about the censor’s issues with the suggested cannibalism when Stephan eats a bit of Charles leg: “[it was] really just watermelon!”
In the commentary, Anthony Hickox describes just this sequence alone’s many influences, saying it was “more Hammer than anything” and admitting that China’s appearance at the end of the scene “was all Carrie”. The director also talks about having wanted to go “totally slapstick” and even a bit “[Monty] Python”. Waxwork was an amalgam of Hickox’s influences and, whether looking at the mutilated leg or overtly silly chase around the table, they all came to striking life in this scene.
I remember putting the disc in the tray and finally pressing play on Waxwork. I had learned a bit about horror by then, had delved into the genre and discovered my love for it. My fear quickly turned to pleasure as the purple suited, Willy-Wonka-esque curator invited the two female protagonists to his midnight Waxwork museum and my enjoyment only rose from there. My assumptions about the film had come from a place outside of genre entertainment, outside of the perspective one might benefit from when attempting to appreciate the motivations behind Waxwork…
Again, as Zach Galligan put it: “you’re either in on the joke or you’re not.”
How else could you enter a story at its end, as its protagonist and simply pick up and see it through to its conclusion— not just through the lens of China in this scene, but through the viewer’s throughout every cut away horror scenario? It works because that’s how the genre-minded fan works and to be in on such a concept, well, is to truly appreciate the joke.
Still, Hickox’s vision was undeniable and his execution worked incredibly well given the impressive effects work of the team surrounding effects designers Bob Keen and Steve Hardie. According to the commentary, rather than wallowing in censor and budgetary constraints, Hickox went “frame by frame” and then “back to the censors”. He and Christopher Cibelli utilized tight editing and sound to create visceral scares and conjure grotesque imagery. He knew what was important and what needed to be onscreen.
There’s little evidence better than the simple, striking aesthetic of the scene in the basement. In the commentary, Anthony Hickox said he dictated that, “the room has to be totally white— no other color.”
After a pause, he continued, “so the blood would stand out.”
Now that’s a man whose vision I can respect.
In the end, I’m not sure if the director had any say over what the VHS box art to his movie looked like (in fact, I’d wager he definitely did not), but I’m sure he’d get a kick out of my lifelong fear of what it depicted. But that’s what happens when you grow up: the things that scared you become the things that inform you. Still, a part of me laments that there isn’t some kid out there right now, walking into a Family Video and eyeing the sun-faded copy of Waxwork aging on the bottom shelf, forcing himself to look away as he or she wonders somewhere in the back of their mind:
Should I pick it up…?
Unaware that if they only looked closer, the tagline would give them a much better idea of the sort of fun that they’d be in for. A simple nine word invitation that sums up the film’s exploits better than anything I could write here, including the scene in the vampire’s basement:
STOP ON BY AND GIVE THE AFTERLIFE A TRY.
Seems reasonable enough to me.
Waxwork (1988): Written by Anthony Hickox & Directed by Anthony Hickox
