#Waxworks tv tropes movie
#Waxworks tv tropes full
#Waxworks tv tropes trial

(I am told, though am not convinced, that a character named Scarabis and played by Alexander Godunov is important.) In a recurring joke, Mark delivers expository dialogue that only adds to our confusion: a tossed-off reference to the Loch Ness Monster is par for the course. By the end of the film I had no idea what was happening, what Mark was doing or had just done, who the villain really was or how they were supposed to get home. Here Hickox’s direction has improved since his rough debut, though his script is a drunken mess, which I don’t mean as a criticism. A better title might have been Waxwork II: Lost in Other Movies.īruce Campbell as the leader of a paranormal investigation that goes very badly. They pass through the mystical door into – well, a Hammer Frankenstein movie, which is where it becomes clear that the title of the film is a misnomer. He instructs Mark and an out-on-bail Sarah to seek out a time portal lurking behind a looking-glass in his home, which can be opened by moving pieces on an Alice in Wonderland chessboard.

Macnee returns in a cameo, having apparently recorded his final words in that short period between learning from Mark of the magical waxworks and getting killed inside (the man thinks ahead).

#Waxworks tv tropes trial

The story then swings into a murder trial where her only hope is for Galligan’s Mark to prove that sinister supernatural forces are bent against her. A severed hand stows away to Sarah’s home, where it murders her abusive stepfather (George “Buck” Flower) in a very Evil Dead II manner. I could not actually tell you what the plot is, apart from this: the film picks up from the final minutes of the original, despite the fact that Sarah is now played by supermodel Monika Schnarre instead of Foreman (whose off-screen romance with Hickox had ended).

#Waxworks tv tropes movie

In the end credits Hickox dedicated the film to his heroes: Joe Dante, John Landis, John Carpenter, Dario Argento, George Romero, and Steven Spielberg – somewhat redundantly, given how overt those references are.įollowing the underrated Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989), Hickox reunited with Galligan for Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992), a film where his many movie influences are the story. Part of the fun watching the film now is the obvious fact that the film’s ambition far outstripped its budget the writing and direction are occasionally slapdash, but the practical effects are inventive and a few set pieces are genuinely striking, like a bloody vampire showdown in a white-walled chamber, or the erotic-comic revelation that the “good” girl Sarah (Foreman) is less interested in Galligan’s vanilla-romance overtures than the whip of the Marquis De Sade (J.

#Waxworks tv tropes full

The collage-like plot, which comes crashing together in an anything-goes finale chock full of rubber monsters and spraying blood, was matched by its spin-the-wheel casting including Zach Galligan ( Gremlins), David Warner ( Time Bandits, TRON), Deborah Foreman ( Valley Girl), Michelle Johnson ( Blame It on Rio), Patrick Macnee (TV’s The Avengers), John Rhys-Davies ( Raiders of the Lost Ark), and Miles O’Keeffe ( Tarzan the Ape Man).

Coates ( Lawrence of Arabia) and director Douglas Hickox ( Theater of Blood), it wore its love of monster movies on its sleeve, using the tried-and-true waxworks trope to introduce what were essentially short films about Hammer-style werewolves, decadent vampires, and a rampaging mummy. The debut film of Anthony Hickox, the son of legendary editor Anne V. The best thing about Waxwork (1988) was its enthusiasm.