WAXWORKS 2 FRANKENSTEIN MOVIE

There are some shoddy effects – a very poor matte of the castle during the Poe episode and a mere optical flare that stands in for the explosion of the space shuttle during the Aliens episode. Waxwork II: Lost in Time has been made on the cheap, much more so than the film that preceded it. Moreover, the segment not a film pastiche – a couple of Edgar Allan Poe allusions do not a parody make. The Mediaeval episode is the film’s longest, least connected and most pointless sequence – Anthony Hickox seems to want to turn the film into a sword-and-sorcery romp during these scenes. The worst of the segments is the Frankenstein one that becomes wrecked by Martin Kemp’s absurdly campy take on Frankenstein, which he has decided to play as some mad Prussian military commander, and an overall air of silliness. So too is the Aliens (1986) pastiche where amid much flashing lights and hissing steam, the Alien Queen comes up to tap one of marines on the shoulder in a game of peek-a-boo.

Nevertheless, the scene with Bruce Campbell chained up in the cellar and gored down to the skeleton, facing such indignities as a raven pecking at his entrails while having various things slung at him during the course of the action, but insisting the whole time “it’s only flesh wound” is amusing. However, a few stabs at the psychological mood of the original upon Anthony Hickox’s part soon give way to campy gore. The best of the parodies is probably The Haunting (1963) episode where, in the first few moments, Marina Sirtis’s take on Claire Bloom’s predatory lesbian and Sophie Ward’s capturing of Julie Harris’s fragile Eleanor hit right on the mark. Bruce Campbell (rear with entrails exposed) and Zach Galligan (front) in the pastiche of The Haunting None of the parodies come with any of the discernible frisson or style that made them classics in the first place. With Waxwork II, Anthony Hickox ups the number of homages and gives a slightly more substantial motivating reason behind everything, but offers little else. Both films have been construed as a pastiche of various genre films. Waxwork II: Lost in Time is decidedly inferior to Waxwork (1988), the passably mediocre original that spawned it. (See below for Anthony Hickox’s other films). Since the 1990s, Hickox has moved away from horror and concentrates now on action films and thrillers, while he appears to have disappeared as a directorial force from around the end of the 2000s. Hickox’s best film, in terms of consistent theme, has probably been Hellraiser III, but that film’s main distinction was the reduction of Clive Barker’s menagerie of Sadian demons to one-liner-dropping Freddy Krueger castoffs. The nearest Hickox has demonstrated to a discernible style so far is a considerable enthusiasm, albeit a tongue-in-cheek one, for the letting of gore.

WAXWORKS 2 FRANKENSTEIN MOVIE

So far all he seems to have done is sequelize other people’s films – Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992) and Warlock : The Armageddon (1993) or rehash themes from the past – Waxwork (1988), the vampire Western Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989) and the werewolf movie Full Eclipse (1993). Anthony Hickox is a director who has frequently dabbled within the fantastic genre but has yet to establish himself as a director capable of making original films.

Waxworks 2 frankenstein