October 3rd

Waxwork (1988) directed by Anthony Hickox

After half an hour of deliberation, Jack and I settled on this little '80s gem.  I'd forgotten how much I liked this movie.  It's kind of the Cabin in the Woods of its time.  People are sacrificed to a great evil and the end of the world is threatened, but really it's an excuse to let loose every cool monster possible and have them go nuts.  I've got no problem with that.

I don't know what it is about waxworks, but they're one of my favorite horror movie settings.  I guess it's the uncanny valley-ness of the wax dummies combined with the funhouse-like setup of the place that works so well.  They're also great for movies as they give you an easy excuse to include a bunch of characters who normally wouldn't be in the same film together.  Want Dracula, a werewolf, a mummy, the Marquis de Sade, zombies and a rip-off of Audrey II in the same story?  No problem: make 'em wax dummies who come to life.

Besides the monster mania, I like this film quite a bit due to some of the really memorable scenes it contains.  Burned into my head from when I watched this as a kid is the scene with the vampire victim chained to a table.  His eaten leg, tibia and fibula exposed and raw muscle hanging out of his thigh, remains one of the grossest things I can remember seeing in a horror movie.  I also love: the werewolf ripping a guy in half from skull to groin, the police inspector digging into the wax China's face and finding wax muscle and tendon underneath (truly disturbing), Sarah's ecstasy when de Sade tortures her, and the end in which the monsters fight an army of old men (including butler Jenkins!).  Just a film full of great fun and great gross-outs.

Watched: DVD from Artisan.

Tales from the Crypt 5.10: "Came the Dawn" (1993) directed by Uli Edel
A decent episode with the old villain fake-out.  A bit of a Psycho rip-off in that way, but it creates a nice atmosphere with some tension as to what form the inevitable violence that ends the episode will take. I was disappointed that Michael J. Pollard didn't have a bigger roll.  I was expecting him to show up as the cross-dressing wife or something equally funny.