Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992)

The sequel to Waxwork again had its special effects supervised by Bob Keen, who also did some second unit directing. Among Keen's team was Paul Jones and Stephen Norrington. Keen's duties alternated between the various pastiche monsters and the copious gore effects.

Keen recounted about why he took the sequels gig so soon after having worked on Clive Barker's Nightbreed; 'The attraction of doing a Waxwork film is the range of things you get to do as an effects person. You get everything from aliens to Godzilla to Jekyll and Hyde. Usually, you never get all that in one movie.'

The original Waxwork was notorious for a gruesome effect where a man's leg had been gnawed to the bone, which Keen matched in the sequel with Bruce Campbell's torn open chest; 'His chest is peeled back for the entire sequence and hawks are pecking out the flesh - it's very impressive. Then there's this other guy who gets his jaw knocked off by a falling beam and has to spend the rest of the scene with it hanging there. Oh, and Baron Frankenstein gets his head squeexed so much, his eyes, teeth and brain pop out.'

The ribcage prosthetic was applied on Campbell by Paul Jones, who reacted in horror when he realized he had accidentally scalded Campbell's chest, but was relieved when it turned out that it was just a temporary burn that healed the next day.

The various pastiche monsters were mostly Gothic horror homages, keeping in line with the first Waxwork. The Frankenstein's Monster did not take any cues from either the Universal or Hammer depictions, instead following more from the original Mary Shelley novel and realized as a prosthetic makeup with a heavy jawline and brows.

One sequence required a maiden being transformed into a 'panther woman'; the transformation's first stage makeup utilized air bladder prosthetics, while the second stage utilized a rubber mask only seen in motion.

The fully transformed panther woman was achieved as a mask fitted with animatronic mechanisms allowing the mouth and eyes to open.

The most elaborate of Waxwork II's pastiche segments was the spaceship segment sending up both Ridley Scott's Alien and James Cameron's Aliens; naturally a facehugger parody was required, and realized as a squid-like animatronic puppet with mechanisms allowing the eyes to blink. A soft rubber puppet head was fabricated for when the alien bursts out of its mouth, evoking moreso The Stuff than the original Alien!

The sequence's parody xenomorph was realized as a man in a sculpted rubber suit, with a head fitted with mechanisms to allow the mouth to shoot in and out. Bob Keen explained the alien's design process; 'The alien wears protective armor; it's a bit like a crustacean. It has adopted the shape of some creature and what it looks like inside is completely different.'

The Godzilla parody appeared to be realized as a puppet, and was only briefly seen - and it's intentional shoddiness reflected the style of suits in many cheaper Japanese TV productions!

The gargoyle briefly seen in the time portal segment appears to be a reuse of the gargoyle stopmotion miniatures seen in Hickox's earlier Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat and will be discussed further when that film is covered here. Sources:

• Fangoria #108 'Waxwork II: Time for Terror' by Anthony C. Ferrante
  
• Assorted behind the scenes featurettes.
   

Waxwork (1988)

The special effects of Anthony Hickox's Waxwork were supervised by Bob Keen, who under the banner of Image Animation amassed a team of British effects artists; Paul Jones, Neill Gorton and Dave Elsey being some of the names among them. Hickox gave Keen the job due to them previously collaborating on a project 'Death Star' that, as far as I know, never got made.

Hickox conceived Waxwork as a 'monster mash' type film, but was quick to explain how different the design process for the monsters would be compared to the earlier Monster Squad, which he was quick to distance himself from;

'Remember, I've had a steady diet of Hammer horror films since I was 8 years old. That's been the main inspiration for Waxwork, although Dario Argento's Suspiria is still my biggest influence in life. So, although the creatures ae not based on any one movie, they are true to their legends. I've always felt that vampires are absolutely human-looking except for their teeth. I'm not a fan of the Nosferatu vampire at all. I wanted a very aristocratic, Christopher Lee vampire. I wanted Dracula's son to be based on Roman Polanski's Fearless Vampire Killers. For the werewolf, we used The Howling type, not the Lon Chaney Jr. version.'

Bob Keen and his team had a particularly heavy workload, as not only did they have all the various monster makeups to realize but then the myriad gore effects! Keen spoke about the Waxwork experience;

'We had a partnership in designing the creatures. Tony asked me what could be done and like a fool I said, 'The world'. Really, the restrictions from Universal were a golden oppurtunity to do it our own way. Tony was already in the States rewriting the script, so I'd fax him designs and drawings. He'd call and generally just say, 'Cast them up'. Because we were shooting in the States, we had to have everything finished here in England and shipped over before the cameras started rolling. Consequently, we worked 18-hour days for about 8 weeks before we could leave.'

'Once in the States, the first scene we shot required the mummy to stamp on someone's head and squash it. Then the werewolf literally tears someone open from the top of his head to the base of his spin - just tears the guy in half and eats what's inside. It's a lovely family movie, you know? The zombie scene was a toughie, requiring about 20 effect gags including a mechanical hand, and it had to be shot all in one day.'

The various monsters were mostly realized as prosthetic makeups and rubber masks, with rubber sculpted gloves made for the alien as well. As the effects were all made in England, this meant they couldn't do life-casts of the American cast, so Keen worked around it;

'We didn't have the luxury of knowing who was going inside each creature. We had to make them in a wide as possible range. As we built the creatures in England, when we came to America, we then auditioned the parts and found who could wear each thing. It's very important that you can work with the people inside these costumes, cos if someone is not happy in there, you're not gonna get a performance out of them'.

The Mummy

The Frankenstein's Monster

The Golem

The deformed mad scientist

The alien

Mr Hyde and the witch were both realized as cable-controlled animatronic masks, with behind the scenes clips showing the facial movements better.

Mr Hyde

The witch

The snakeman (homaging 1966's The Reptile or 1973's Sssssss) was realized as a performer in prosthetic appliances over the torso and arms, as well as a cable-controlled animatronic head.

The snakeman head behind Bob Keen.

Two werewolves were made for Waxwork, the first being the more minimal design Dana Ashbrook transforms into. Judging by Hickox's love for Hammer horror, the makeup could have been inspired by makeup applied on Oliver Reed for Curse of the Werewolf. Air bladder prosthetics were also applied on Ashbrook's face for the transformation shot, homaging The Howling.

The Howling-inspired 'fully grown' werewolf was realized as a hair-punched rubber suit and a cable-controlled animatronic head with movable ears and face. Wearing the suit was animatronics engineer Steve Hardie, who did not enjoy the sequences in which he was almost burned by the flames during the shooting of the finale!

Sources:

• Fangoria #78 'Making the Waxwork' by Larry Barsky
  
• Assorted behind the scenes featurettes.