March 23, 2016

I’m a huge fan of monster mashes. I mean, I think we all are, right?

We grow up watching these larger than life characters that fill us with both fright and delight, and for whatever reason, we immediately start contemplating what the odds would be like if they ever faced off against each other.

My earliest horror memories involve catching the Universal Monster Movies on regular broadcast television. Eventually I’d see films like FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN and HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, but the one that blew my mind was ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, still to this day one of my absolute favorites, and it featured Dracula, The Wolfman and Frankenstein’s Monster all in one film?! As I grew older, any monster variation that combined all the greats, like THE MONSTER SQUAD, made me feel like I was getting more bang for my buck!

One of the most often overlooked and underrated had to be Anthony Hickox’s 1988 video cult classic WAXWORK, starring GREMLINS Zach Galligan and David Warner of THE OMEN & TIME AFTER TIME. In it, a mysterious new wax museum suddenly appears in this quiet suburban town. The owner welcomes a group of preppy, rich high school kids to attend a private midnight viewing of the museum in advance of its official opening to the public.

Mark (Galligan) attends with his ex girlfriend China (the foxy Michelle Johnson at her foxiest), Sarah (Deborah Foreman) and Tony (Dana Ashbrook) and are greeted at the door by the tiny (and somewhat terrifying butler) who walks them into the main display room. There are several elaborate wax set pieces devoted to some of history’s most famous and notorious monsters. Both China and Tony separately walk past the rope into each display and are teleported into the actual scene of that monster movie. If they die there, they permanently become part of the wax display and their soul is embedded there. If the Wax Museum Owner is able to secure souls for each and every one of his displays, it will break the barrier between their world and ours, and those monsters will be free to walk our Earth to rule.

China’s set piece is Dracula. Tony enters the middle of a Wolfman scenario. Later on, the Detective investigating the missing persons in the town falls into The Mummy display. So you’ve got all these amazing, and super gory sections devoted to Dracula, the Mummy, The Wolfman and the Marquis de Sade.

WAXWORK is a lot of fun and the perfect way of introducing a radical, new interpretation of a particular horror icon in the span of one great sequence. It was followed up by 1991 sequel WAXWORK II: LOST IN TIME, which although similar in concept, failed to capture the pure spectacle of the original. I’m sure over the years, people have dreamed up ways to remake WAXWORK. But there was already a perfect opportunity to redo this story and do it in a way that would’ve both celebrated and updated the first movie, without straight out copying it.

For a short span of a few years there, New Line Cinema had a brand called “The House Of Horror’s.” Freddy Krueger has always remained their most valuable player as the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series was the franchise that built New Line, but over the years, they’ve managed to pick up some of the other horror heavy hitters. After the lukewarm box-office of FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VIII: JASON TAKES MANHATTAN, Paramount had had enough of that “slasher” franchise, something they admittedly were always a little embarrassed by. So they licensed out the character of Jason Voorhees (but not the title FRIDAY THE 13TH) to New Line. They ended up producing JASON GOES TO HELL, JASON X and finally FREDDY VS JASON. The main motivating factor behind getting the character was so that this much talked about monster battle could finally happen on the big screen.

They also managed to get the Platinum Dunes version of Leatherface and family when they remade THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE in 2003. So, let that sink in for a minute. There was a moment in time when one studio had the rights to Freddy, Jason and Leatherface. Universal Studios theme park saw the amazing potential in that and licensed all three of the characters for their annual Halloween Horror Nights event where each one got their own maze based upon their property.

Can you imagine if at that time, New Line Cinema secured the remake rights for WAXWORK, and did it with Freddy, Jason and Leatherface as the central set-pieces? Think about it! The Waxwork man sets up shop in another quiet little town in an attempt to restage his plan for world domination, only the museum pieces are each crafted after a major set piece from A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and FRIDAY THE 13TH and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. And that’s just for starters! The original EVIL DEAD was under the New Line House Of Horrors banner, so why not throw in the deadites into the mix?

Rather than worry about how to remake A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET yet again, or figuring out who could play Freddy Krueger, wouldn’t it have been easier to focus on just crafting one amazing NIGHTMARE related set-piece that one of our characters could stumble into? Fans would probably be more forgiving at someone else playing Freddy other than Robert Englund in that setting. Or hell with it, have Robert come back for 2 days work! Go for stunt casting! Bring back Kane Hodder as Jason!

The issue, of course, is would it even have been possible for New Line to have remade WAXWORK back then? Who has the rights to WAXWORK?

At the moment, figuring that out is still a bit of a mystery, Artisan Home Entertainment originally put out WAXWORK and WAXWORK II out on VHS, and eventually a poor quality full frame double feature DVD. The unrated “gorier” cut from VHS is not on the DVD sadly. Although FEARnet did air a good version of it a few years back. That’s because it’s currently in the Lionsgate library and relegated to one of their budget 6 movie DVD sets. So does that mean Lionsgate owns WAXWORK? I’m not sure. But we’ll never see a proper release of the original since Lionsgate doesn’t have any plans to upgrade their older catalog titles to Blu-Ray or allow a company like Scream Factory to license them. My guess is Lionsgate has the rights to WAXWORK and that’s where they’ll remain, dormant for years to come.

There was a brief period when Platinum Dunes set their sights on remaking THE MONSTER SQUAD. Thankfully, that never happened, so perhaps these proposed monster mash-ups not happening is for the best.

But WAXWORK, with New Line’s House Of Horrors characters…

…it would’ve been cool, wouldn’t it have?