Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992)

WARNING: I’m going to give away major details about the movie including how it ends.  You’ve been warned.



The first Waxworks wasn’t particularly impressive.  I could forgive you for not having heard of it.  It was about some friends, most of whom fall victim to an evil wax museum.  Sarah and Mark escape, only to be followed by a reanimated hand in the final scene.  Waxwork II starts with a montage of scenes recounting those events.  We see the wax museum burn down, many characters die horrible deaths and so on.

The movie starts with Mark dropping Sarah off at her place.  Her place happens to be her stepfather’s apartment.  He’s abusive, and very much in the stereotypical way.  He wears the famous undershirt and drinks beer.  (How do we know it’s beer?  It’s in a white can with the word “BEER” on it.)   Sarah’s stepfather begins yelling at her and whatnot when the reanimated hand shows up and kills him.  Mark is able to save her, but Sarah is still left to take the fall for Stepfather’s death.

The trial goes about as well as Sarah has a right to expect. No one believes her story about the zombie hand.  After all, Mark is the only person that could back her up.  I’m not really sure why her attorney doesn’t go for an insanity or self-defense plea.  After all, Sarah’s stepfather was about to hit her.  I know that affirmative defenses can be problematic, but I think this might be an appropriate time to try.

After the trial lets out, Mark and Sarah go looking for something that can help her.  They find a magic compass-looking thing that allows them to travel to an alternate dimension.  They pass through worlds, much like in the first movie.  Each one is an homage to a different movie classic.  Their first stop is Frankenstein.  From there, they end up in other movies, like Alien ad The Haunting.

Sir Wilfred shows up in the form of a raven to provide a little help.  Well, he basically shows up to explain what’s going on.  This alternate dimension is a playground between God and Satan.  They can’t battle it out on our plane directly, but they can fight it out here.  Sir Wilfred calls it God’s Nintendo.  What happens in God’s Nintendo has effects in the real world.  Each side has time warriors that help out.

Mark is able to get Sarah the help she needs before sending her back.  He stays behind to be a time warrior, himself.  The important thing is that Sarah has a reanimated hand to offer as evidence of her story.  She is, of course, promptly acquitted.  As she exit’s the courthouse, a cab pulls up.  A man gets out and hands Sarah her very own compass thing.  She drives off with the implication being that she goes to rejoin Mark.

Ok.  So, there are several issues.  First off, no mention is made of the house burning down with nearly everyone in it.  Most of the main characters from the movie also went missing.  You’d think Mark and/or Sarah would be on the hook for at least some of that.  Nope.  Not even an arson charge.  (I think the deaths might be felony homicide depending on where they live and who’s prosecuting.)

Another issue is how the hand managed to kill Sarah’s stepfather, being that it’s just a hand.  How does something that small manage to pin someone down and strangle them?  The movie seems to have little use for physics.  (I know the man is drunk, but still…)

Zach Galligan and Patrick Macnee are the only two actors to appear in both the first and second movies.  (Deborah Foreman was replaced with Monika Schnarre as Sarah.)  We do get to see Bruce Campbell and David Carradine make appearances.  And wait… is that Marina Sirtis?  Wow!  Deanna Troi appears in this film.  (Well, not as Deanna Troi, but still…)

Like the first movie, this one wasn’t great.  It was entertaining the first time, but I don’t think I would buy it.  It’s the kind of movie that a local station might play because the studio wasn’t asking a lot of money for it.  This movie could easily have not been made and I don’t think anyone would have noticed.

IMDb page

Death Race 2000 (1975)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

Have you ever been in a car when someone said that hitting a pedestrian would be worth a certain number of points?  It's gotten to the point where it's ubiquitous.  Most people probably don't even know where that came from.  My brother told me that it came from a movie called Death Race 2000.  He recommended that I watch it.

The movie was released in 1975, but takes place in 2000.  The ‘future' is dystopian, not unlike Mad Max or The Running Man.  Society has degenerated to the point where the big sport is racing.  These are no ordinary races.  Yes, speed counts, but if you hit and kill people along the way, you get points.  A woman might be worth 30.  A child might be worth 40.  Elderly are worth 100 points.  (Early in the movie, there's a newscaster going over the scoring system.)

Death Race 2000 chronicles a cross-country race that serves as the big event.  Five teams (one driver and one navigator) are trying to make their way from the East Coast to the West Coast over the course of three days.  Frankenstein, played by David Carradine, is the big name in this sport.  He's survived a lot of crashes and is said to be more machine than man, now.  He has a rivalry with Machine Gun Joe Viterbo, played by Sylvester Stallone.  (Frankenstein is faster, but Machine Gun Joe is better at scoring.)

As you might expect with a dystopian future, there's a resistance that wants to go back to the way things were.  They don't like the senseless killing.  The resistance is led by Thomasina Paine, a direct descendant of Thomas Paine.  (I've never liked it when a movie feminizes a male name that doesn't normally have a feminine counterpart.  In this case, it seemed like it was done just to reference Thomas Paine.)

The plan is to kidnap Frankenstein and have an impersonator deliver a message on national TV.  (It's not hard to get an impersonator since Frankenstein wears a mask in public.)  To facilitate this, the resistance has put an agent in as Frankenstein's navigator.  When the time comes, Frankenstein gets out of the trap and continues with the race.

Much of the violence was ridiculous and gratuitous.  A hospital has a Mercy Killing Day in which they line up several patients that are apparently beyond hope for the contestants to kill.  Since many are elderly, contestants can score several hundred points easily.  (Frankenstein instead chooses to kill some of the hospital staff.)  In another scene, a group of Frankenstein fans has selected one of its members to be killed by their favorite racer.

The special effects aren't that great.  To say that you can't see the strings is being kind.  There are some backdrops that are fairly obvious if you actually look at them.  (Take the scene where the race is starting.)  Also, the cars apparently couldn't go that fast, so there were several scenes where the footage had to be sped up.  In a few cases, it's fairly obvious.

I think most of what makes it so campy is the writing.  There were a lot of cases where it seemed that the writers weren't trying that hard, as in naming the president Mr. President.   Mr. President, being the not-so-nice guy that he is, likes to blame Europeans for everything.  He blames the French for destroying our economy and our telephone system.  Telephone system?  They couldn't say telecommunications system?

The acting wasn't so bad.  Given the rest of the movie, it fit right in.  Carradine and Stallone were the only two names that I recognized.  (For those that are wondering, I was born in 1976, shortly after the movie was released.)  Overall, the movie deserves three stars.  It's not a great movie, but it's worth watching.  If you can rent it, go for it.  I would almost recommend buying it, as it might be the kind of movie you'd want to watch with your friends. 

IMDb page