Time for a Good Wax

 

Is there a horror fan alive who doesn't love a wax museum?

I'd guess not, even though there's a good argument to be made that we've never actually had a great wax museum movie. Yes, the Waxwork flicks are fun and every variation of House of Wax is melty in all the best ways, but you know, neither franchise really produced an actual GREAT film. 

IS THIS THE DAY THAT ALL CHANGES? 

Quick Plot: At the start of the 20th century, Parisian police discover a grisly crime scene that turns their stomachs. A couple has been brutally slain, body parts scattered around the room or missing. The only witness is their young daughter Sonia. Inspector Lavin vows to solve the crime, but twelve years pass without a lead.

Grown and gorgeous Sonia is now on the job hunt in Rome, where she lands a wardrobe position at the city's newest attraction: a wax museum specializing in violent tableaus. The spot has already been in the news after a young man of leisure died inside after taking on a dare to spend the night.  

Surely there's nothing to worry about! It's just a wax museum! That ... focuses on violent tableaus, including the murder of Sonia's parents.

It doesn't take long for Sonia to suspect curator Boris and his creepy assistant Alex. She quickly teams up with reporter Andrea to investigate (along with some other things). Meanwhile, good old Inspector Lavin comes to town determined to help. Along the way, a few Romans of all ages disappear, with oddly similar faces debuting later in waxy glory.

Made in 1997, Wax Mask (not "Wax Max", as I keep writing, which feels very Rural Juror of me for those who understand) is gooey and gross and feels wonderfully out of time. There's a true Hammer Horror style in its bones, but those bones are also covered in wildly grand practical monster makeup and random callbacks to The Terminator.

I loved it.

Wax Mask apparently began as a Lucio Fulci project, but his death saw producer Dario Argento pass the reins on to special effects maestro Sergio Stivaletti. There was certainly some heft lost in the transfer. The acting is a bit stiff, even if you push most of that blame onto weird dubbing. Perhaps more importantly, Fulci (admittedly my personal favorite of the genre's Italians) might have come at the material with something to say. 

Instead, we get something that looks really, really cool.  

High Points

Seriously: Stivaletti holds nothing back in giving us hot acid baths, robot hands, essence-sucking waxing, and so much more

Low Points

I still don't understand the exact connection between Sonia and Boris, or Alex's actual opinion on things, or, you know, anything about the characters. Thankfully, I don't really care

Lessons Learned

Being an investigative photojournalist was a lot harder when cameras were the size of Warwick Davis

Every movie set in a wax museum must end with a very drawn out fire (I don't make the rules, but I do love them)

I never thought this had to be said, but here we go: when conducting an autopsy, it's important to check for a heartbeat before, you know, slicing into a possibly living chest

Rent/Bury/Buy

I flipped on Tubi one morning when I was frustrated with having to think too hard, and what a perfect decision I made. Wax Mask is silly and gross and in a word, grand. Have fun.

Putty Up

Let's get this out of the way: I like--not love--Dario Argento.

I understand and appreciate his contribution to genre cinema. Suspiria is something of a masterpiece. His support and connections helped make Dawn of the Dead be all that it could be. I’ll admit that I’ve yet to see some of his more respected early efforts (Deep Red, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, Four Flies On Grey Velvet among them) but regarding his middle-career streak (Tenebre/Phenomena/Opera), I come up in a rather scandalous category of meh.

Maybe I should just wait to reserve any complete judgment until I see his long-awaited Dracula 3D. Word on the street is it’s a hit!

Quick Plot: A young model named Celine is abducted by a yellow tinted mad man with a thing for disfiguring and killing beautiful women. Luckily for his latest soon-to-be victim, Celine's sassy flight attendant sister Linda will stop at nothing to save her. For Linda, that mostly means tracking down Adrien Brody's tortured Inspector Avolfi to crack the case before it's too late.

Giallo is, I guess, a giallo, save for the fact that doesn't really tease you with a mystery to the killer's identity. 

Well, maybe it does?

See, for some sort of creative/silly/yet sort of entertaining reason, Brody does double duty as the earnest hero and mumbling murderer. Now anyone who's ever caught a glimpse of Adrien Brody only to feel as though his one-of-a-kind schnozz has poked them in the eye might be wondering 'How can you possibly disguise a man with a face as singular as Adrien Brody?'

Well...

I'll spoil a question that you might otherwise be distracted asking for Giallo's 90 minute runtime: no,  Putty Brody is not the secret long-lost twin of Non-Putty Brody. Nor is Putty Brody supposed to be Non-Putty Brody in a putty disguise. Nope. He's just playing two parts a la Paul Dano in There Will Be Blood or Frank Morgan in The Wizard of Oz. 

Except with about 85% more putty.

You’re probably now thinking “how can you possibly get back to a semi-serious discussion of this movie when all I can think about no wis putty?” I feel your pain. And answer simply with this:

You can't.

High Points

Dummy violence! It's a giallo and it has dummy violence! THAT'S A GOOD THING!

Low Points

So. That was an note of ambiguous hope to end on eh?

Lessons Learned

Italian policemen were never taught how to take a pulse

The more puttied your face is, the further back your memory goes. This calculation does indeed lead to the conclusion that if your face is made entirely of putty, you can remember your life in your heroin addicted mother's womb

When considering what to be when you grow up, remember a hidden bonus of the occupation 'fashion model': you'll probably be skinny enough to squeeze through a chained door when trying to escape a mad putty-faced serial killer

Perhaps it explains my clumsiness as something blood-related: Italians are not very good at walking, at least if it involves passing another person without crashing into them

Randomly Aggressive Product Placement

Because watching a movie about a man who slaughters pretty young women ALWAYS puts me in the right mood for snappy Diablo Cody dialog

Rent/Bury/Buy

Look, I'm not calling Giallo a good movie. But unlike a lot of other gialli, it didn’t bore me. Many diehard Argento fans will call it a true shame, but as someone who’s never been overly impressed by the filmmaker’s output, I don’t see it as being THAT bad. It’s more that he never quite improved from where his run ended in the mid-80s. Fog up Giallo to make it look like it was made in 1987 and try to tell me it’s that much worse than Opera. 

Or just don’t watch it and save yourself an argument. The choice is ultimately yours.

Kissy kissy.

Let's Ride An Italian Stallion To Stationary Independence!

If you’re like me this summer, the word 'vacation' has no meaning. Isn't that awesome? Think of all the stab-happy hillbillies you won't have to flee, the cell phone signals in your office so strong they'll leave bruises, and the now unnecessary adorable but sickle-wielding Amish kids who hate you because corn told them they should.

That’s right, think positive. We're not talking about all the pina coladas we're not drinking, the fanny packs not usefully serving as storage and belly fat coverup or the license plate keychains we don’t even get to search through for our names. If you mention such glories of vacation, I'll have my cell phone signal punch you in the face.

So to combat the utter sluggishness of, you know, not going anywhere, let's GO somewhere! Virtually! It's like a futuristic road trip without the leg cramps and motion sickness.

First, break out that gold chain and spray tan for The Blood Sprayer's Italian Invasion! The always busy horror site is busting with special posts on giallo, Bava, cannibalism, and more. It's way better than Domino's pizza, unless you're drunk and Domino's pizza is then way better than just about anything in the world that ever existed ever. If you need a starting point, head yonder here for my own review of my frenemy Dario Argento's 1987 pseudo-Phantom adaption, Opera. 

Yup, this happens.

My, that was exotic! International even! We need to balance this virtualation with some good old fashioned American moviedom, namely, a bunch of indie flicks over at Rogue Cinema.This month, I reviewed the found footage horror Evil Things and the unique mystery Dogs Lie. There's plenty more in the August Issue, including an interview with Tim "Doll Man" (or more excitingly to me, Gangland) Thomerson.

He's the one that reallllllly wants to get to Arizona.

Wasn’t that fun? And look, there was no humorless fondling by TSA agents or socially awkward hitchhikers to make us feel uncomfortable with the stat of Texas. Heck, nobody even broke into our house when we were gone to steal our famous jewels and then get stuck inside an evil death trap orchestrated by our no-good exterminator! 

Maybe vacations aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

Keep telling yourself that Emily.

Reader Recommendation: Tenebrae

“Eschewing any in depth analysis or over-enthusiasm for something I personally like a lot, I'll try and just give you one quick reason to see one of the movies on your list. When you reviewed a movie and said that it contained a death by dodgeball scene in it, I wanted to see that movie. That's the kind of recommendation I would like to pass on. That said, my recommendation to you is "Tenebrae," and it's for this reason only: it's got some pretty damn impressive stunt work performed by a Doberman Pinscher. That doesn't sound so alluring now that I've written it, but it's like nothing I've ever seen before.”--Dave 

“You should watch tenebre because I won't read your blog again until you have!”

--Myke

Having finally watched one of the seminal films of Italian horror, I can honestly tell you what I will take from it most prominently is...

Doberman Pinschers are indeed capable of doing incredible stunt work.

Quick Plot: Horror/mystery novelist Paul Neal heads to Rome for his book tour just as a psychotic slasher begins murdering beautiful brunettes in the style of his pages. A fanboy detective investigates while Neal, his assistant, and driver play Encyclopedia Brown on their own time.

Talking about Tenebrae in the horror community is the equivalent of discussing Citizen Kane at the Producers Guild or Guinness at an Irish pub. It is, to my understanding, the definitive giallo film, one of Argento's crowning achievements, and, for some, the best Italian horror film of all time.

For. Some.

Sigh. 

I can't gush over Tenebrae. I can say, in utter honesty, that I found it be an interesting watch from a film-ish point of view. As an experience, however, it never felt...well...effective.

I'm going to divide this review into two parts: the simple sit-down-to-a-movie fan and the intellectual meta-watcher. Here goes:

Couch Potato

Though visually interesting, Tenebrae just isn't that suspenseful from my 21st century sensibilities. It's hard to be emotionally involved in a character's fate when synthesized music blasts through the television to tell me said character is being stalked. It's hard to care about a mystery that seems so calculatedly mysterious on the part of the writer. It's hard to be scared by a film that wears its style on every frame.

At the same time, Tenebrae grew on me strong enough that I was intellectually, if never emotionally invested in its outcome. It’s impossible to not TRY to solve the mystery, even though the film spends just about every minute making it impossibly improbable to crack. The climax is sufficiently brutal (yet still pretty unbelievable) so you’re left satisfied enough.

Intellectual Movie Watcher

One needs to read a little bit about Tenebrae in order to get why it figures so prominently on best-of lists in cinema studies. I did this after watching the movie.

And so yes. I get that the extraordinary movement of the camera, superbly executed crane shots, and meta nature of Peter Neal’s relationship to Dario Argento. It’s there onscreen to be sure, and when analyzed, very impressive. The visuals are superb. The red is very red. There are books to be written (and recommended) and long conversations to be had. It's an important movie to be discussed. I just didn't really like it enough upon first viewing to do it right now.

High Points

I’m always for daytime horror, and one thing I genuinely admire about Tenebrae is how well Argento uses sunniness and full lighting to show us everything

Low Points

I know Goblin and Argento are as complimentary as peanut butter and banana, but really, how scared can I as an audience member be when the soundtrack just makes me want to put on a pair of jogging shorts and a headband and do a few laps?

Lessons Learned

The best way to get a girl in bed probably does not involve telling her you might throw up

When your driver is clearly mentally unstable after witnessing a horrific murder, it’s a good idea to buckle your seatbelt

Those ‘keep your bag in your view at all times’ airport rules aren’t just useful for terrorism

There really is a reason for modern art!

Stray Observation

Two characters do things I can’t: the aforementioned dog climbs a fence and John Saxon demonstrates how to bow and dance without losing a snazzy hat. Both make me feel insanely jealous and inadequate

Rent/Bury/Buy

Considering its pedigree, all genre fans should see Tenebrae at some point in their lives. I would recommend reading up on why it’s so important before watching, something you could do quite rewardingly with blogger extraordinaire James Gracey’s book . I’m sort of stepping away from calling Tenebrae good or bad, great or dull. It’s essential viewing, and one I’ll need to revisit before feeling comfortable with a judgment. In true honesty, I didn’t really ‘enjoy’ it the way I did something like Suspiria or The Beyond. It was pretty. Rather silly. And I know, very important. For now, I’ll leave it at that.

Something On a Stick Day's Eve's Eve

Mark your calendars, one and all, for a holiday rarely celebrated yet full of pointed possibilities. That’s right: March 28th is none other than Something On a Stick Day! Imagine a whole 24 hours randomly assigned to celebrate corndogs, cotton candy, ice cream bars, Salem With Trials, protest signs, and a whole lot of sharp things itching to cause some very painful horror movie deaths.

To name a few:

11. Jeepers Creepers 2

Not a great--or even good-- film by any means, but I’ll extend a tip of my hat to the opening scene, where a young farmboy catches a glimpse of one scarecrow that just doesn’t look the others, and not just because he’s a little too comfortable hanging out on that stick. Sadly the film only goes downhill from here, but it's an excellent early image worthy of at least one toothpick

10. Trick ‘r Treat

Don’t mess with a kid’s candy, particularly if the sweet tooth belongs to a pumpkin-headed, mangled face Halloween enthusiast with no tolerance for cranky candy bar swipers or snotty and insecure neighbors. Naturally, little Sam’s weapon of choice is none other than a juicy lollipop, the perfect something on a stick for autumn or spring. Or summer. Or winter. Or autumn again. 

9. The Hills Have Eyes

Poor Papa Carter spends his silver anniversary blackened like catfish while tied to a stake while his daughter gets raped, wife gets shot, and granddaughter kidnapped for a possible shish-ka-baby served on another family’s dinner table.

8. Children of the Corn

More effectively drawn in Stephen King’s short story, but the 1984 film does retain a few striking images of people staked out in the Nebraska cornfields. No one is safe, not a rotting corpse of a policeman, pre-Sara Connor Linda Hamilton, or man-child preacher Isaac. Bonus points for the implied itchiness of being tied to dried out cornhusks, particularly if have allergies.

7. Silent Hill

Poor Alyssa. Shamed by the community. Raped by a janitor. Burned at the stake at the encouragement of her Borg Queen aunt. All that's really left to look forward to is a future of blackness, annoying hourly alarms, ashy snowflakes, and the opportunity to watch others burned at the stake. The last part ain't so bad when said burnt-at-stake is infused with your blood (or the mother of someone that looks like you's blood, or something that supposedly makes sense to someone) and can therefore extend unending spools of barbed wire from her crispy appendages to gruesomely (by CGI standards) tear apart all the puritan-like townspeople that killed you first.

6. Wolf Creek

True, there’s no shrimp on a stick-headed barbie, but there sure is a head on the stick! Kind of. According to John Jarratt’s bush-wacked wacko in this 2005 shocker, the best way to use a knife--a real knife--is to jam it in a tourist’s back and sever her spine, rendering said backpacker a metaphorical head on a stick. It was definitely cuter in Lord of the RIngs.

5. Scarecrows

The life of a scarecrow probably isn’t all that great. Bird poop. Sunburn. Straw innards. And spending eternity dangling from a splintery stake in the middle of farm country. Luckily for the titular monsters of this 1988 chiller, the occasional crashed plane of bandits can call upon some sort of evil corn-infused mojo that lets them throw their voices and gleefully slaughter trespassers. 

4. Happy Birthday to Me

Not the best slasher, but easily one of the greatest movie posters of the ‘80s (and that’s a more competitive field than your average Iron Chef). Most of this 1981 film’s infamy comes from its cover art that captures the true glory of death-by-shish kabob. Painful, but delicious.

3. Zombi

You know the one contingent that actually observes Something-On-A-Stick-Day? Zombies, at least the Italian ones that hang out with Lucio Fulci. When not battling sharks or chomping through island natives, the retired conquistadors of this 1979 not-sequel-with-a-sometimes-sequel-title find innovative ways to kill alcoholics without taking a single nibble. Hence, the infamous splinter-in-the-eyeball scene. Not in zombie character, but the highlight of this zombie film.

2. Two Evil Eyes

Some guys are just asking to be impaled via log at a pagan festival. It’s only fitting if you’re a grumpy Harvey Keitel who tortures cats, hacks up his girlfriend, and generally acts like giant jerk worse than any bad lieutenant. True, the aforementioned cross-your-legs-and-wince stretch 'n stab is only a dream, but this Dario Argento directed adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's short story stakes itself in your memory long after Keitel wakes up.

1. Cannibal Holocaust

The ultimate woman-on-a-stick film, so great in its woman-on-a-stickiness that director Ruggerio Deodato was actually investigated by the authorities and suspected of murdering the actress famously shot in a state of impalement. Really it’s just a simple parlor trick involving a unicycle and some tasty balsa wood, you know, the kind of thing your uncle does at family reunions. If he's awesome.

The Horror of Hype

Genre fans tend to feel a little unpatrioritc pledging allegiance to the same mass-produced flag saluted by 80% of the general public. We’re far more comfortable digging our way through dusty, sometimes crusty DVDs in questionable basement or neon lit video stores than we are sitting amongst the Friday night crowd at the week’s big release. 

It’s no wonder then that movies like Paranormal Activity throw some of us for a loop. How, you ask, could I possibly enjoy the same film that my coworker with the Twilight screensaver has been raving about all month? At the same time, we also get stuck trying to evaluate our own opinions amidst the chokingly thick fog of fanboy enthusiasm that surrounds new cult favorites like Hatchet and Grace. 

So how, you ask, can one navigate the dead-end, it’s-not-as-good-as-people-say labyrinth that is viewer hype? To find a map, we first have to consider the type o’ hype, and I don’t just say that because rhyming is fun.

1.  Long Awaited Hype 

Admit it: you drooled like an overly hydrated zombie when details surrounding Land of the Dead surfaced, just as you giddily brushed off your boomstick at the sound of Sam Raimi returning to his horror roots with Drag Me to Hell. When our childhood heroes reupholster their bloodstained director’s chairs, our own expectations can grow to unreachable heights. Thus, when George Romero makes a decent, if weirdly clean smelling zombie film with a happy ending in the 21st century, we put aside the flaws of the obnoxiously acted Day of the Dead and its own cheat of a final shot in order to blast horror’s indie king for seeming to sell out for CGI and Canada. 

As hard--or maybe impossible--as it is, any film needs to be seen on its own terms and unless it’s in 3D, with no tinted glasses to fog our sight. Sure, it’s depressing to watch Dario Argento continue to roll down a hill of film quality and near impossible to not look up the address of the actress narrating Diary of the Dead in the hopes of slaying her puppies and tearing our her vocal chords, but I promise you that these directors didn’t make these films simply because they hate you. Maybe they’ve lost touch or maybe their visions were simply more startling in another era. Either way, the main thing to remember is that a film should be judged against itself, not your memory of its older brother.

2.  Defensive Hype

There’s a reason nobody makes feel good features documenting the NY Yankees. We don’t care about winners born into luxury, and while not all genre fans can latch onto a sports analogy, everybody loves an underdog. 

Hence, horror loyalists stand on virtual soapboxes to warn passerbys about studio-backed cash cows like Saw while gleefully catching rides on The Midnight Meat Train. Is it fair? In theory, yes, but this comes from a long-suffering Met fan well accustomed to disappointment. Likewise, Lions Gate earned genre fan disapproval when it failed to give a wide release to 2008‘s public transportation terror trip, and I waved my fist in solidarity. 

Then I saw the movie.

While it wasn’t nearly as awful as some recent remade offerings (I’m still washing out my eyeballs for the stain imprinted by Black Xmas)Midnight Meat Train just....wasn’t good. Well-acted and polished, but dank, oddly plotted, and ultimately, quite uninvolving. Aside from battle ready horror fans and Cliver Barker bookworms, would full price ticket buyers really have wanted to spend their Friday night allowance on such an unlikable film? The same could easily be said for Repo! The Genetic Opera, a polarizing rock opera that amassed an army of devotees alongside a migraine suffering horde of conflicted haters.

The best solution I can conjure is to assume nothing. Praise the idea of an original film and support its release for people to actually see, but don’t force yourself to love something that simply isn’t your taste pallet. This leads us to ...

3. But I’m Supposed To Love This, Right?

What do you mean, you didn’t want to marry Hatchet and have its pickaxe babies? And really: what are you doing going out to a Halloween party when you could be home rewatching Trick ‘r Treat, aka The Greatest Horror Film Of All Time, for the ninetieth time this week? 

Of all the hypes out in the cinematic universe, this may be the most difficult to overcome. After two years of nearly universal ravings about a little unreleased horror anthology, it’s hard to watch a film without feeling sadly underwhelmed, angrily disappointed, or unconsciously bullied into submission (remember: Alllllllllllllll the boys love Mandy Lane). 

We could certainly try to build our own Skinner boxes and block out any rumblings from around the genre community, but in the age of blogs, podcasts, and bootlegs, that’s about as realistic as Martyrs getting an Oscar for best foreign film (what, you agree? you didn’t like Martyrs? What kind of fan are you?) Ultimately there is no such thing as a universal opinion, even in a more isolated specimen like the horror community. There’s nothing wrong with not loving a film that makes Fangoria swoon, but try to not let your dislike grow with the positivity of others; don’t hate it more just to match the positive intensity of those who enjoyed it. The best way to handle this is to return to the film several months--or years--after its buzz has been died down. Sometimes, you can only discover what your genuine thoughts are after they don’t seem to matter anymore.

4.  Mainstream Mania

In many ways, Gore Verbinski has earned a rigidly uncomfortable seat for himself in the filmmaker realm of hell. No, the mini pirate boom of the 00s wasn’t that bad, but his fairly big budgeted Americanized take on Ringu is the heavily botoxed grandma when it comes to remakes, aka the Scourge of 21st Century Horror. And to think, most of 2002‘s The Ring‘s impressive box office return came straight out of the pockets of...well...everyone. Men, women, eighth graders...you couldn’t throw your popcorn without hitting someone raving about that randomly scary film they caught in the theaters, much as

Paranormal Activity and 1999’s The Blair Witch Project commandeered a normally neutral audience immune to the haunts of quiet horror.

So where does that leave you? You can’t be the only one in the office without a take on why Michael was standing in the corner, and more importantly, you may be the only one with the sense to explain that no dear, Heather, Michael, & Josh are NOT still lost in the Burketsville woods. Plus, if you avoid a film just because everybody else didn’t, you might actually miss a good movie.

Think of the experience like dining in a fancy, highly recommended but seemingly overrated restaurant you’ve yet to patron. You have to make reservations. Wait 45 minutes and still end up in a less than desirable seating area, then deal with rude waiters. After all that, even a decent meal can’t live up to the hype. Likewise, when watching a too-talked about film, one must be careful to judge it on its own terms. Any extra effort only adds to the aggravation and inevitable unmet expectation. 

In other words, wait a month into a film’s run and hit up an economy priced matinee. Make sure that when you give the film your less-than-premium-price dollars, you can judge the film on its own merits, rather than the experience that surrounded your viewing.

5. Late-to-the-Party Classics

We’ve all hear our parents and grandparents wax nostalgic on how Frankenstein lurched through their nightmares and Psycho made Janet Leigh swear off showering, but depending on your initiation process into genre cinema, many older classics can fall flat on modern eyes. Some timeless films work in any era, but when you’ve eaten cereal shaped like smiling vampires, it’s hard to accept that Bela Lugosi’s Dracula was once a force to be feared.

In order to enjoy a film that’s been written about for 30+ years, it helps to understand why it’s still relevant in today’s cinematic universe. Something like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, for example, may seem rather--well, silent--upon a blind watch, but pop in the special edition after after Blade Runner, Total Recall, or Dark City and note some of the architectural inspiration. From Birth to JoshuaRosemary’s Baby as the matriarch of eerily sterile NYC thrillers. Sometimes, the only way to fully appreciate an older, possibly dated film is to go backwards and watch with your head, not heart.

So which films have you hated due to humongous hype, or felt never had a true chance in the face of overexposure? Share your thoughts but remember: don’t get too excited. Then I’ll have to figure out what the Hype-Over-Hype-Type-Hype means, and that gives me a bigger headache than hearing Bill Moseley duet with Paris Hilton.