American horror movie, released in 1988. It was written and directed by
Anthony Hickox. It starred
Zach Galligan as Mark Loftmore,
Deborah Foreman as Sarah Brightman,
Michelle Johnson as China,
Dana Ashbrook as Tony,
Miles O'Keeffe as
Count Dracula,
Charles McCaughan as Inspector Roberts,
J. Kenneth Campbell as the
Marquis de Sade,
John Rhys-Davies as the
werewolf,
Patrick Macnee as Sir Wilfred,
David Warner as Mr. Lincoln,
Jennifer Bassey as Mrs. Loftmore, and
Joe Baker as Jenkins.
Basic plot: Mark and his friends get free
tickets to this
creepy new
wax museum in town, but they soon discover that when they step over the ropes and into the staged
tableaus of the
Chamber of Horrors, they somehow find themselves transported back in
time, where they are
menaced by the
evil people and creatures depicted in the
wax statues. And if they are killed while inside the wax exhibits, they end up trapped in wax forever. Can Mark and his friends get out of the wax museum alive? And even if they do, can they prevent a plot to use the wax museum to bring about
the End of the World?Okay, let's be honest -- this is a
B-movie. The
acting is
capable and sometimes even rises above that. Lots of
scenery gets
entertainingly chewed; when you've got David Warner, John Rhys-Davies,
and Patrick Macnee in the same movie -- well, there's enough
ham onscreen to qualify as a "
Pork: The Other White Meat" commercial. And poor Zach Galligan -- when you see him in this movie, wearing his
badboy shades and smoking
cigarettes, you wanna pinch his widdle cheeks and go, "Aww, look at the cute kid from '
Gremlins' pretending he's all grown up!" And at the end, when all the wax figures finally come to
life (Oh, it's no spoiler -- the wax statues
always come to life in these movies)... well, it's probably the single best scene in the movie, where they go ahead and give some love to all the fans who love good
monster-mash movies. (You know you're watching a movie with a monster-mash fan when they rewind and rewatch this scene over and over, moaning ecstatically about "alllll thooooose
mooooonnnssstterrrrrssss..." But enough about my love life...)
Worst part of this movie: I've seen a lot of
werewolf movies -- no, wait, I've seen a
LOT of werewolf movies -- and with the possible exception of "
Teen Wolf", this movie has the worst, most
embarrassing, most unintentionally-
hilarious werewolf
makeup in the history of the universe.
This was followed a few years later by a
sequel, called "
Waxwork II: Lost in Time".
Some research from the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com)