Released on June 17th, 1988 by Vestron Pictures, Anthony Hickox’s Waxwork had a respectable box office showing during its limited theatrical run, but it was on VHS where the horror comedy did gangbusters business as a generation of fans fell in love with its infectious charms. A hilarious love letter to Hammer horror movies and quite possibly the very first self-referential genre movie, Waxwork is a film that was unequivocally a product of its time (ah, the glorious age of 1980s horror!) and yet, somehow managed to also be ahead of its time, firmly cementing Hickox’s directorial debut as one of the best genre offerings to be released during 1988.
While classic Hammer films influenced Hickox’s story and approach to Waxwork, the genesis of the movie’s story came from a notable tourist attraction in the UK that the writer/director had spent some time in during his childhood.
“There was the big Madame Tussaud wax museum in England, and I used to love it when I would go as a kid,” Hickox reflected. “I always wondered what it would be like to spend the night alone in there. Would these things come to life? So, I always had that idea, and then when somebody said to me early on in my career, ‘Can you write a horror movie?’ I thought it would be a lot of fun to take that idea and give it this Hammer horror feel. That’s why I went with different stories and creatures, because I loved all the different types of Hammer movies. That’s why Waxwork has romantic vampires, a mummy, the Phantom, and even a werewolf. I would've loved to have had Oliver Reed be the werewolf, but then we had John Rhys-Davies and he was playing a version of Oliver Reed, so that was great, too.”
As mentioned, Hickox utilized a lion’s share of horror baddies in Waxwork, which meant he needed to find himself several warm bodies to throw into harm’s way. He discussed how his casting director, Caro Jones (who also was behind the casting of other notable films from that era, including Rocky, The Karate Kid movie series, Better Off Dead, Back to School, and Can’t Buy Me Love) was instrumental in helping him secure dream casting for his first feature, which included a variety of talented players such as Zach Galligan, Deborah Foreman, David Warner, Patrick Macnee, Michelle Johnson, Dana Ashbrook, Rhys-Davies, and many more.
“I can't remember who introduced me to Caro, but she was an amazing casting director,” Hickox explained. “Caro was like 70 when I met her, and she just fell in love with the script, so we got on really well together. Her son was my assistant, and she was a huge casting agent at the time, so when she picked up the phone and called an agent, they picked up, because they knew she was serious.”
“I was in love with Gremlins at the time, so when Caro asked me, ‘Who do you want to play the lead role?,” I said without any hesitation, ‘Get me that kid from Gremlins.’ She came back to me a few days later and told me that Zach wanted to meet, and I couldn’t believe it. We met at Hugo's and became best friends almost immediately. It was Caro who recommended Deborah Foreman, because she loved her in My Chauffeur and thought she was great in Valley Girl with Nicolas Cage. And then everything started to fall into place.”
“Because of the story we were telling, we looked for the character actors, too. I was a huge Avengers fan, so I asked her, ‘Can you get me Patrick Macnee? And then one day, I got a phone call from him, and I couldn't believe I was actually talking to Patrick Macnee. David Warner came in because of Caro, of course. He had a bit of attitude at the beginning, but by the end of our talk, he was loving all of it. With John Rhys-Davies, that was an adventure, although I can’t really tell you what happened when I met him at his house. I did tell an audience once, when I was drunk at the Waxwork screening one time [laughs].”
“Also, we had Miles O’Keeffe in the film as Dracula, and everybody knew him as Tarzan from the Tarzan, the Ape Man movie. He wasn’t great with his lines, so every time you see him speaking, he's speaking to me, repeating my every word like a parrot. It was very funny. And by the way, he got a hard on when he was biting Michelle, too. Right after we shot that scene of them on the stairs, she came to me and said, ‘I don’t know if you could see it or not, but this guy definitely had a hard on.’ I will never forget that [laughs],” Hickox added.
When it came time to create the elaborate and stunning Gothic-inspired sets for Waxwork’s immersive environments, Anthony relied on the immense talents of legendary Italian production designer Gianni Quaranta to bring his ambitious vision to life.
“What’s funny is that most people don’t realize the production design work on Waxwork is actually Oscar-worthy. I met with Gianni one day, who had just won the Oscar for A Room with a View, and I was telling him about Waxwork and what I wanted to do. I didn’t think he would ever agree to work on this film, but he actually said ‘yes.’ I made him sign a contract on a napkin right then and there, and he honored that contract that was on that napkin. I couldn’t believe it.”
“He never actually came to set, though. He just sent over all the designs, which I still have to this day. They're beautiful. One of the things I was the most specific about when working with him was that I wanted a completely white set for the kitchen, so that I could make it red by the end of the scene. Which is exactly what I did. In those days, nobody had done blood like that, because we really went way over the top with it.”
“The reason for that was because I knew it was the only way I could get away with it. I remember sending in my first cut of Waxwork to Jack Valenti at the MPAA, and whenever he’d tell me to take two frames off this or that shot, I would only take one frame off and send it back to him. He knew what I was up to, though [laughs], but he told me that officially, he couldn’t tell me what to do, because censorship isn't allowed in America, so if I didn’t make some changes, Waxwork would have had to go out with no rating, and that would have killed the movie.”
“So, what I started doing was taking bits of sound off. Because when you take the sound off of a gory bit, it's not as gory. We got a lot by the ratings board by taking away those sounds, and we could keep all the blood and gore. I do think that Waxwork had the most blood ever used on any movie up until that moment. We used something like forty gallons of blood just in that kitchen scene alone,” Hickox recalled.
The man behind all the blood, creatures, and practical effects that helped turn Waxwork into a horror-filled smorgasbord was talented special effects artist Bob Keen, who had previously created the mind-blowing effects in the first three Hellraiser movies.
“Bob and I designed every single creature you see in the film together. We had this great fellow who did all of our storyboards, and he did them in the style of Tales from the Crypt, and they were really cool. But Bob also was my second unit director, since those scenes primarily dealt with all the effects. I think he did really amazing work, and we became such good friends after that. Bob and I even worked together for years afterward, and sadly I think his work got killed by the digital age, but he was brilliant at what he did.”
Even though Hickox was hassled for the amount of blood in Waxwork, the one scene that surprisingly went unscathed by the MPAA was the steamy segment featuring Foreman’s good girl character Sarah getting brutally whipped and tantalized by the Marquis de Sade.
“It's funny. They never gave me any grief over that scene because there was no nudity. I was very careful, and made sure it was all in the dialogue. The only thing was that we couldn't show the actual whip hitting her back, so we had to cut every time before it actually made contact.”
“The only big thing I remember being an issue was in the vampire scene, I couldn't show anyone putting human flesh into their mouths. I could show them chewing afterwards, but I couldn't show anyone taking the flesh and putting it in their mouths. Cannibalism was apparently very taboo at the time.”
“But, I got the craziest fan mail from the Marquis de Sade stuff,” Anthony added. “I used to get women turning up at my house and tying themselves up, because I never locked my house back then. A lot of people could not understand why Sarah would want to stay with the Marquis, but I think it’s because deep down, we all want to stay with the bad guy [laughs].”
When it came time to shoot Waxwork’s challenging all-out monster brawl of a finale, Hickox’s kitchen sink approach was born out of pure necessity, but it ended up working in favor of the overall film, taking the chaotic energy he so desired to an entirely new level.
“The reason that was done like that was because we had run out of money, and we had a completion bond on set saying that we had to finish the movie, or else. Originally, I had planned on having three days to shoot that whole sequence, and my whole idea was that they would go back in time in each display, like we did in Waxwork II, but they told me I had only twelve hours to finish it.”
“I tried to explain that we had all these extras for the next few days, but they were like, ‘We don't care, we're going to close down the set if you don’t get this done in time.’ So, I told everyone to just start fighting, and none of them were stuntmen, they were all regular extras. I didn't know what else to do, so I just thought we should have a bar room brawl. Maybe it was a mistake, but I was watching it at some screening that they had in Miami, and I realized there are a lot of funny moments in there that are just so ridiculous, and I do think it really ties in with the whole theme of the movie.”
While he never could have imagined the impression his very first foray into horror would leave on the genre, Hickox is grateful that so many fans over the years have connected with Waxwork, and still continue to discover it to this very day, thanks to the recent Blu-ray set of both Waxwork movies released by Lionsgate under the Vestron Video banner.
“There’s definitely been a renewed interest in these films because of that Blu, which is really cool. I think it’s something that connects with film lovers, especially horror movie fans, because you can tell it was made with love. I’m such a film lover myself. I wanted to put that joy of film in myself out there, so I could give back with this movie, and from that moment on, for the next twenty years, I never stopped working. I may have made some bad choices [laughs], but I never stopped working. I was really very lucky that my first time as a director would end up having such a huge impact on my career.”
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Be sure to check here all month long for more special features celebrating the Class of 1988!
Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
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