EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

BallWubba Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Asad Almond A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

MartinHafer In the 1920s, the German film industry was one of the best producers of films in the world--making many films that were about as good as anything coming out of Hollywood. Because of this, I had relatively high expectations for this film. Sadly, however, despite this and a wonderful idea for a movie, "Waxworks" turned out to be, at best, a mediocre film--mostly because it was written so poorly and the stories all were so unsatisfying.The idea behind "Waxworks" is that the owner of some wax figures wants a writer to come up with some great stories about each of his three figures in order to lure in the public. This anthology notion is pretty good...but the execution left so much to be desired.The first story is about a Caliph in ancient times and this story is by far the longest of the three. It seems that this Caliph has fallen for the baker's wife and he sneaks in to make love to her. At the same time, the baker is sneaking in to the nearby palace to steal the Caliph's magic ring. Unable to get it off the hand easily, he chops off the Caliph's arm! Oddly, the Caliph just lays there--but at the same time he IS at the baker's house--what gives? This Middle Eastern set is interesting because some of the artistic style looks almost like a book by Dr. Seuss. Unfortunately, the story itself isn't particularly interesting even if it starred the world-famous Emil Jannings. Sadly, it's the best of the three.The second story is about Ivan the Terrible. Oddly, the sets are VERY tiny--almost claustrophobic. And the story about Ivan, poison and madness just isn't interesting in the least.The final about Spring Heeled Jack wasn't great but at least it was visually arresting. That's because, like "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari", it's a wonderful example of German Expressionism--with its crazy art style. It's all supposed to be a dream, so it makes sense that that they used this weird look.Overall, the film looks pretty cool but the stories just bored me to death. I sure expected better writing.

MARIO GAUCI As it happens, this is yet another faux horror film from director Paul Leni - but, then, it's mentioned in every book on the genre I have, so this common misconception has probably more to do with the authors than with the films themselves having been sold back in the day as such! Anyway, this factor had certainly marked my initial viewing of the film - which, again, I had found rather disappointing; a second look reaps rewards in that it can be taken for what it is - and not for what it's been played up to be over the years! That said, the film started cinema's macabre interest in wax museums which, by and large, endures to this day... The premise itself is undeniably interesting: a young writer is asked to concoct blood-curdling tales about famous historical figures (we're not told what they are for, but I'd assume that the fairground owner would relate these tales on a stage to draw the crowds in). Initially it was intended to be a four-part film with the characters being Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid, Czar Ivan "The Terrible", Jack The Ripper (dubbed "Spring-Heeled Jack"!; is that how the notorious serial killer was known in the U.S.?) and highwayman Rinaldo Rinaldini; eventually, the whole section relating to the latter was dropped (but I'm curious to know who had been cast in this role - his wax figure is still visible in the linking narrative, but I couldn't discern the 'actor' whom it was supposed to look like!).The Haroun-al-Raschid episode is the first, longest and least 'horrific': in fact, it's outright comedy for the most part, with Emil Jannings' obese and perennially grimacing Caliph flirting with the beautiful wife (Olga Belaieff) of poor but jealous baker Wilhelm Dieterle; the latter, meanwhile, is scolded by the girl for their poverty and colorless lifestyle - so he contrives to break into the Caliph's palace and steal his "wishing ring". What he doesn't know is that the figure in the Caliph's bed is made of wax: he cuts the hand and takes it to his wife (who is concealing the real Caliph inside her husband's oven!), pursued by the palace guards; the wife, then, pulls a magic trick by 'summoning' the Caliph intact - but asks the latter to reward her husband by making him his personal baker! The sets (designed by Leni himself) for this episode are spectacular, and they're made even more arresting by being filtered through the director's Expressionist sensibilities - so that everything appears distorted and generally exaggerated. This entire Arabian Nights set-up apparently inspired Douglas Fairbanks to make THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1924), and Kino provides a brief clip from that film for the sake of comparison.The second episode - dealing with Czarist Russia at the time of Ivan "The Terrible" (embodied as a neurotic by Conrad Veidt, in a performance that anticipates the intense acting style that Klaus Kinski would come to be known for!) - is the best, despite its extremely slow pace. Interestingly, the stylized look of this section of the film also foreshadows Sergei Eisenstein's awesome two-part version made some 20 years later (which even adopts the ruse of having Ivan change places with a subordinate in order to dodge an assassination attempt). The romantic leads of the first story (who are actually those of the linking narrative - Dieterle being the young writer and Belaieff the daughter of fairground owner John Gottowt) return here as a couple whose wedding is disrupted by Veidt, who takes a liking to the girl and has her abducted to his lair. The plot is resolved when Ivan's poison-mixer (this is how the Czar dispatches his enemies) is imprisoned by his own increasingly paranoid ruler, but the former takes his revenge by inscribing Ivan's name on a sandglass - the marker that a new victim has been poisoned and has an hour to live - after which the Czar, driven insane, keeps turning the hour-glass upside down in a desperate attempt to buy himself a little more time...! Again, apart from Veidt himself, the sets are the main thing here; the generally grim tone of this episode makes it borderline horror, which is only really achieved by the third - and, regrettably, shortest - segment.The Jack The Ripper story (if so it can be called) actually ties in with the linking narrative, as the writer is stalked in the fairground tent itself by the knife-wielding maniac (incarnated by the resident villain of the German Expressionist movement, Werner Krauss); I say incarnated because the character isn't developed in any way, given that the episode lasts for barely 5 minutes (surely the horror fan's biggest bone of contention with this entertaining super-production) - still, the vision of his menacing shadowy figure superimposed, magnified and replicated all over the place is extremely effective and one of the undeniable highlights of the entire film.The restored print of WAXWORKS presented here includes several tinted sequences which, though nicely done, draw too much attention to themselves and, worse, tend to obscure some of the details in the image!

Cineanalyst "Waxworks" is an early example in film history of a movie that's clearly in homage to another film--in this case, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1920). The expressionistic stylization in the film is obviously influenced by "Caligari", and a few references to that film reinforces that, beginning with the title. The literal translation of "Das Wachsfigurenkabinett" is "The Wax Figures Cabinet"--the keyword being "cabinet". Additionally, the frame narrative is purposefully set at a carnival, although a more dimensional one than the stage setting in "Caligari".The narrative structure is closer to Fritz Lang's "Destiny" (1921), with the framing of three odd stories. "Waxworks" has the clever device of a writer of the inner stories in the framing story. And, the three biggest stars of Weimer cinema (Emil Jannings, Conrad Veidt and Werner Krauss) play the historical villains and waxworks come alive in the inner stories. For the three stories, a different expressionistic technique dominates, each relating to and enhancing their respective themes. In the Harus al Raschid narrative featuring Jannings, it's the sets (Paul Leni's sphere) with oddly shaped architecture more akin to "Caligari' than Baghdad. Especially nice is the staircase set. Rather than the horrific, dreamlike abstraction of "Caligari", however, the sets are delightfully peculiar, as is Jannings and the silly story. Low-key lighting dominates the Ivan the Terrible episode featuring a darkly paranoid Veidt, and the multiple exposure kaleidoscope imagery places Krauss's stalking serial killer everywhere.A clever film, and Leni and the other filmmakers seem to have had fun with it, which crosses over to viewers, but beyond that it's rather lackluster, not emotionally engaging as "Destiny", nor stunningly fresh as "Caligari".

funkyfry Three stories, perhaps loosely based on those of O'Henry, set within the clever framing device of a man trying to compose the tales of 3 waxwork figures. He imagines himself and the owner's daughter in the stories, one of which is an Arabian Nights-type story in which he is a baker who has angered the Sultan (Jannings). He goes out to steal the Sultan's ring while the Sultan sets out to steal his wife, leaving a waxen copy of himself behind as insurance. The second story, with Veidt as Ivan the Terrible of Russia caught up in his own murderous schemes, is one-dimensional and obvious compared to the relatively witty first story; the last story, which features the hero and his girl being stalked by Jack the Ripper (Krauss) seems like it's over before it's begun. Impressive film techniques, but to me this movie is pretty uninspired compared to the better films in the gothic tradition from the period. The producers were astute in their decision to cast the genre star trio, but they tried too hard to make this movie too much like other films in its class, never letting it breathe its own air.