#Waxwork II: Lost In Time | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

forthegothicheroine · 2 months ago

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Ah, Waxwork II: Lost in Time! Or as I like to call it, Bill and Ted's Army of Darkness!

In case you missed my recap of the first Waxwork film, this is a duology of horror comedies characterized by three things: classic horror homages, sexual perversity, and the repeated humiliation of Mark the protagonist. The sequel doesn't hang together quite as well, but I think it's interesting nonetheless, in that the worldbuilding gets weirder with every scene, and my hypothetical novelization in which I try to work it out grows in increasingly epic proportion.

Ready to see more of Mark not getting laid? Read on!

We open with a quick flash of images from the end of the first film, not that it really matters- the whole waxwork conceit is over now, despite the title. Things are off to a weird start, since Sarah has not only been recast, the new actress isn't even styled the same- they have the same ending scene, but now there's a girl who looks like Kim Basinger in LA Confidential. It's similar to what they did with Jodie Foster and then Julianne Moore as Clarice Starling, but Foster declined that sequel because she was offended by the original ending, whereas here I guess they wanted as many actresses to not sleep with Mark as possible.

The theme music in this film sounds like a legally distinct version of the song from Suspiria. I thought I should mention that.

Unfortunately, a severed zombie hand also survived the last movie. It follows Sarah home, where she is threatened with an abusive stepfather who was never mentioned before. He is angry that she's sneaking home after being out late, which begs the question of how she got away with partying with China in the last film. Maybe China always drugged the stepfather and now that she's dead, there's nobody with access to narcotics? Anyway, he dies pretty much as soon as he's introduced, courtesy of the severed zombie hand. Sarah disposes of it in the sink garbage disposal, but that leaves her covered in gore beside her dead stepfather.

The next scene we see of her is at a murder trial. (I think? More on that in a bit.)

Sarah's legal case that a severed zombie hand killed her stepfather isn't going over well in court, although to paraphrase Legal Eagle, once your lawyer enters a plea of "not guilty because monsters are real", the judge should probably declare a mistrial. We also learn that over 200 people were found dead when the Waxwork burned down, which really doesn't square with the crowd we actually saw there. It was a big mob fight scene, but it did not look like over 200 people.

Strangely, after the court arguments, Sarah gets into a cab with Mark to try and go prove her innocence. Can you do that if you're on trial for murder? I don't think you can do that. Maybe this wasn't actually the trial, but a grand jury or an inquest or something? Anyway, they go back to the home of the occult professor guy from the last movie, and find some more of the monster hunting artifacts he and his colleagues collected- including a bloody Jason mask. Maybe this is in the universe where Peter Cushing accepted the role of Dr. Loomis when he was offered it, then proceeded to just kill all the available slashers?

Before he died, Sir Wilfred (the professor guy) recorded information about traveling to other times and places via "going through the looking glass." Sarah has read Alice in Wonderland, which is lucky because Mark can't even put together that "looking glass" means "mirror" without her help. He has gotten significantly dopier since the last movie. The key to opening the portal to other times turns out to be a chess set with Alice in Wonderland pieces, so off they go to find a new disembodied hand to prove to the jury that such things are possible.

If I were Sarah I would probably just say "fuck it" and find a new world to live in.

The first horror movie- I mean, time and place- they land in seems to be the Universal Frankenstein movie, but with Udo Kier instead of Colin Clive. Mark takes the role of Henry Clerval remembers who he is in the future, while Sarah takes the role of Elizabeth Frankenstein and does not. Unfortunately, the bad doctor sees his friend making eyes at his wife, and has his cackling hunchbacked assistant throw him to the monster to kill. I love it whenever Frankenstein is portrayed as a bit crazy over Elizabeth, so I appreciate it here. (I loved The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein, and I will even defend it.)

Mark gets on the monster's good side by finding him food, but only after suggesting they "order a pizza." Mark seemed reasonably put together in the first movie, but here he is not the brightest jack o lantern on the street.

Even in the face of an angry mob, Frankenstein rails and attacks his romantic rival. It's bad enough that he found Elizabeth talking in private with another man, he says, but with that dork Henry? Mark is sad to be spoken of this way, but he's used to it by now.

Mark's previous kindness to the monster pays off, and he and Sarah head off to find other portals while Frankenstein gets throttled (in good Frankenstein tradition.) They get separated in the ether, however, off to different places and scenes. These scenes cut back and forth between each other, but for the sake of convenience, I will discuss them separately in their entirety.

The theme song in the Frankenstein sequence sounded like a legally distinct version of the song from Young Frankenstein. I thought I should mention that.

Mark finds himself in The Haunting of Hill House- or rather, the 1963 film The Haunting. (Do horror kids today still watch The Haunting? They should.) Further cementing any associations with Army of Darkness, Bruce Campbell himself, in tweeds and with a pipe, leads a crew of paranormal investigators in black and white footage; Mark is his friend in a bad blonde wig, and Sarah is now the mousy Eleanor, whose main function is to constantly be hit on by Theo. Which I guess puts it one up on the Netflix adaptation. We get the classic scares from the 1963 film, with mysterious pounding and bulging at the door and voices calling Eleanor to come home, but Eleanor escapes her dark fate in this timeline. The others, though, fare worse.

Theo is hanged and then possessed by a ghost, but that's a kindness compared to what happens to Bruce Campbell. We find him at the climax of the sequence chained up, flayed open to his ribcage, with an eagle pecking out his organs. He then gets knocked face down on the ground, knocked in the head repeatedly with various objects, and has his wounds comically doused in salt and vinegar. He keeps up a cheerful, vaguely condescending fifties dad attitude nevertheless.

This sequence is what makes the entire movie for me, and it's kind of a shame when it ends with an exorcism.

Sarah, meanwhile, is in Alien, as the captain of a salvaging space crew with a xenomorphic hitchhiker. The men on board get into a comically macho yelling match, but it doesn't save them when the alien attacks. I make fun of these films, but despite being cheap B-movies, they make the most of their limited budget and give us some good, pragmatic practical effects setpieces. Sarah blows the alien out of the airlock, then meets Mark again, who tells her about various adventures he went on that we didn't see. I'm not sure if this is a joke or if those scenes were cut.

When Mark and Sarah proceed to their next portal-hopping rest stop, they change genre a bit- instead of doing a horror pastiche, they do a pastiche of shlocky 80s fantasy movies. I love shlocky 80s fantasy movies, but this part of the movie lasts a weirdly long time for something that's supposed to be a horror comedy. They have an actual character moment where they talk about how Sarah wants to go back and show the jury the truth about the zombie hand because she feels guilty about their friends dying in the last movie. Those friends will never be mentioned again.

Sarah is carried off by evil knightly henchmen, and the mullet and jerkin-clad Mark is left on his own- all except for a mysterious man who I think is doing a David Carradine impression. He tells Mark that an evil overlord called The Master abducts and torments the women he desires, including his own lost love Lenore. To avenge her and save Sarah, he gives him some kind of magic sword and vanishes into thin air. Great.

Like I said, this part of the movie lasts a long time, so I'll try to be concise here. ("No, there is too much- let me sum up.") The Master is a perverted dark magician overlord who wants to usurp the King of England, despite this not looking like a world that would have an England. He has a creepy henchman who evokes what I call the Fancy Sadist Problem, but that's its own long post. Sarah is the sister whom The Master incestuously desires, and Mark has to be helped out of humiliating captivity by the ghost of Sir Wilfred. This ghost tells him that he has been playing in "god's Nintendo game", time hopping to keep fighting evil in different universes. I think. I'm not entirely sure how it works. It sounds a bit like Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion mythos. I would expand upon it in my novelization.

The second best scene in the movie happens when Mark fences with the Master, and they crash through the portal to keep fencing though the street of various other horror movies- Jekyll and Hyde, Dawn of the Dead, Godzilla, Nosferatu, I think Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and something with Jack the Ripper. Whom they defeated along with the other evil souls in the first Waxwork movie, but time and space and alternate universes, etc. Hyde does the "How much of this bottle did I drink?" gag, which was very funny when done with a boiling beaker.

Mark and Sarah manage to snag a hand in Dawn of the Dead, but only she can go back through the portal because Wilfred's ghost says she needs to sort through her own problems before she can be a time warrior. I wish this was the first movie so that that meant accepting her masochism and finding healthy BDSM partners, but no, it means showing the severed hand to the jury.

Mark tells Sarah that he loves her when she leaves through the portal, but she doesn't hear him. Story of Mark's life. At least he manages to send her a letter via a postman who delivers letters centuries after they were first postmarked. And that postman's name, I assume, was Moist von Lipwig.

Even once Sarah is exonerated and goes off to be a time warrior with him in the final few minutes, though, she never requites his affections. Maybe we can assume she will, and she clearly cares about him deeply, but she never says she loves or even likes him, and they don't have what would seem to be the obligatory ending kiss.

Throughout time and space and alternate universe, the only thing that remains constant is Mark not getting laid.

#waxwork #waxwork ii

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emiarainewrites · 1 year ago

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Rest In Peace, Julian Sands

The world has lost a phenomenal actor and gentle soul.

Julian Sands went missing in early January whilst going on a hike. His body has only just been found now in late June, 2023. He was 65 years old.

Along with many, many others, I am deeply saddened by his passing. The only positive thing is that his body has been recovered. I’ve been hoping for the last few months that this would be the case. At least his family can have some form of closure now.

This is a terrible tragedy that I truly wish had not happened.

But, to honour Mr. Sands, I thought I’d briefly go over a few of his films that I’ve seen and highlight the amazing range that he had.

Boxing Helena (1993)

I first became aware of Julian Sands a few years ago when I saw this film.

Directed by Jennifer Lynch, Boxing Helena tells that story of Nick (Sands) and his obsession with one-night-stand Helena (Sherilyn Fenn). After an accident makes her dependent on him, we explore Nick’s psyche and how far he’s willing to go to keep Helena with him.

This is a film that will not appeal the everyone unfortunately, but I’d still highly recommend you see it. It’s a brilliant picture with many layers and at the centre is Julian Sands and his amazing performance.

Nick’s character is heads over heals obsessed with Helena, despite her outright stating she has no interest in him. She’s quite cold to Nick for most of the film, and you can understand why. However, for Nick, that coldness is incentive to try harder for her affections. He ensures she has to rely on him for everything because he “loves” her and wants to keep her for himself.

This showcases Julian Sands’ range as an actor. He has done many serious performances throughout his career, but for me this one is special. Nick is kind of a sad person and even a tad pathetic at times. But you never lose track of why he’s like that.

He’s emotional and even intimidating when need be. It’s a comparatively softer character than some of his other work, but Nick still stands out as a sympathetic and sometimes abhorrent character - played to absolute excellence by Julian Sands.

Warlock (1989)

Directed by Steve Miner, Warlock follows Julian Sands as the titular villain who travels from the 17th century to the 20th in order to end the world. As you do. Along the way he is pursued by Redferne (Richard E. Grant), who follows him from the past, & Kassandra (Lori Singer), a modern woman caught up in the dangerous medieval magic.

This is a good film, and it’s one of the biggest things Julian Sands is known for (the others undoubtedly being Room With A View (1985), Gothic (1986) and to a lesser extent Argento’s Phantom of the Opera (1998)) Not without reason, either.

Julian Sands is excellent in this, playing a cold hearted and cruel sadist of a character. The definition of evil. He’s very direct and at times his menacing stare does most of the talking. He brings a presence that few could ever hope to match.

From the first moment you see him, you know he’s bad news. A complete one-eighty to Boxing Helena.

I for one was quite surprised to see him in this role, having known him primarily for that film. He disappears into this terrifying, yet not outright scary, role. Rocking the long-hair-ponytail look, Julian Sands will make you fear magic and what it’s (and, by extension, he’s) really capable of.

Warlock II: The Armageddon (1993)

Directed by Anthony Hickox, the sequel follows the eponymous Warlock (Sands) as he is resurrected into the 90s (oh no!) and once again sets off on a quest to obtain mystical macguffins so he can put an end to the world as we know it. While that’s going on we follow a group of good warlocks that aren’t Julian Sands who must ready for the coming evil.

This film does away with the seriousness of the first and just about loses its damn mind with how crazy it can get. But if you’ve seen Hickox’s other works such as Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992) & the Waxwork films (1988 & 1992, respectively), you’ll probably be used to the amount of darkly wacky he puts into his pictures.

The lore is almost completely revamped in terms of the Warlock and he’s after. Plus, the expansion of other magic practitioners is interesting in theory, but the result for the latter is underwhelming.

Julian Sands, however, is magnificent. This is a bit of a lesser product compared to the first, but you can’t tell that from his performance alone. I feel like you get way more of him in this one (kinda rocking his Boxing Helena look a little bit, no surprise considering it was probably filmed around the same time). You follow the Warlock as he interacts with the modern world and it’s inhabitants, tracking down mystical stones that will bring about the end of the world once assembled.

The character feels more accessible too for modern times, in terms of his presentation and demeanour. So this means there’s less medieval speak and more one-liners. Also seems like they ramped up the sexiness too at times.

The movie is much sillier than it’s predecessor, but it’s goofy fun. And you have Julian Sands dispatching people in increasingly gruesome and creative ways. Very Wishmaster (1997), with the vibe of Wishmaster II: Evil Never Dies (1999). His performance remains intimidating and cruel, but all around less cold.

Tale of a Vampire (1992)

Directed by Shimako Sato, Tale of a Vampire follows Alex (Sands) as he finds reprieve from his lonely existence in the form of Anna (Suzanna Hamilton), a kind librarian. However, all is not well as parts of his past, and his bloodlust, come back to haunt him.

This seems to have been released direct to video and, call me crazy, may have been capitalising on another vampire film that came out the exact same year. Even this film’s poster shares some similarities. Although, Julian Sands was apparently in talks to play Lestat instead of Tom Cruise, so there’s another connection. At the moment, you can find this film on YouTube (VHS rip).

Setting that aside, this is an interesting film that I don’t believe gets talked about much. It won’t change your life and I don’t think it quite gets across its ideas perfectly, but Julian Sands’ performance, as ever, is brilliant. You believe he’s been around for ages and has never been able to keep a love for himself. We get flashbacks concerning a previous companion throughout the film as Alex tries to get close to Anna in the present. There is a type of warmth that Julian Sands brings to the role, whilst also maintaining the lonesome chill of a corpse. You get a sense of confliction from him as the film goes on - whether to pursue Anna or leave her be; damn her or let her go.

Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘Annabel Lee’ also features in the film, so the idea of youth and love lost are meant to be front and centre.

There is still an element of danger to Julian Sands’ character. The film doesn’t shy away from the fact that he’s still undead and thus, must consume fresh blood. ((Special warning to all cat lovers, by the way.)) He even has a brief flash of harming Anna due to his nature and personal feelings towards her.

You feel his pain and it’s a shame that Julian Sands didn’t play more vampires, or had roles like this. Or maybe he did and I just don’t know about them. Either way he was great in this role.

Arachnophobia (1990)

Directed by Frank Marshall, Arachnophobia follows a doctor (Jeff Daniels) and his family who move to a town that is soon besieged by tons of lethal spiders. As the death toll rises, it’s a race against the clock to stop the eight-legged menace from killing everyone there.

Julian Sands has a smaller role here compared to the previous films mentioned, but he is still important and does serve as the catalyst for everything. He plays Dr. James Atherton, who is studying an undiscovered type of spider that, of course, makes it back to a populated area and spawns off a deadly chain of events.

The film itself is fun and Julian Sands is a great, somewhat pompous, doctor who can be very dismissive of those around him. Very British and very passionate about his work.

Though, of course, he does not survive the film. The big hoss spider gets him. Then again, he did declare himself as “supper”. And when you see his body, it’s pretty gnarly. He’s covered in webbing with spiders crawling all over him. Real spiders. No CGI. That alone increased my respect for him one-hundred fold when I saw it.

From unhinged sap to scary villain to lonesome creature to apathetic doctor to even romantic lead, Julian Sands led a varied and fascinating career. He seemed unafraid to attempt any role and did so with impressive commitment and astounding results.

The world has lost a great talent that will never be forgotten.

RIP Julian Sands, we will all miss you dearly.

#julian sands #rest in peace #rip #rip Julian Sands #gone too soon #boxing helena #warlock #warlock 1989 #warlock II #warlock II: the armageddon #tale of a vampire #tale of a vampire 1992 #arachnophobia #arachnophobia 1990 #room with a view #gothic

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