The Hilarious Horror Comedy With A Star Trek TNG Star, Stream Without Netflix
While Marina Sirtis is best known for her portrayal of Counselor Deanna Troi on Star Trek: The Next Generation, the actress has caught the eye of horror movie fans as well as Trekkies. Sirtis co-starred in the horror films Little Dead Rotting Hood and The Grudge III, in addition to four movies in the Star Trek franchise. But the best known horror film to co-star Sirtis was the 1992 followup to the graphic 1988 entry Waxwork, Waxwork II: Lost in Time.
Continuing From The First
Waxwork II opens where the first installment concludes. After saving the day and escaping the burning waxwork, Mark (Zach Galligan) and Sarah (Monika Schnarre) take a cab ride away from the carnage. Unbeknownst to the couple, a severed hand from one of the zombie exhibits managed to escape the fire and followed Sarah back to her house.
Wrongful Accusations
The plot takes a brutal turn when the zombie hand in Waxwork II beats Sarah’s stepfather to death with a hammer, a crime which the teen gets wrongfully accused of committing. When her testimony about the evil waxwork is scoffed at by the jury, she and Mark are in dire straits.
To prove her innocence, Mark and Sarah go to the home of the deceased Sir Wilfred, the man who Mark’s grandfather partnered to search the globe for supernatural beings and relics.
New Worlds
When Mark and Sarah accidentally discover an amulet that opens up portals to another series of universes, Waxwork II uses these alternate realities as a plot device to incorporate the horrors from fictional movies and literatures. According to Sir Wilfred, these worlds are all battles between good and evil, whose victor decides the fate of the world that we all live in.
More Monsters
Waxwork II sees Mark and Sarah have comedic run-ins with Frankenstein’s monster, the creature from Alien, Nosferatu, and an entire vignette spooking Dawn of the Dead. Their quest is to capture evidence to bring back into the courtroom so that the jury will believe Sarah’s innocence without a doubt.
Complicating matters are the same effects that the alternate realities have on the characters that the exhibits did in the first film; characters who become ensared often become mentally part of the exhibit/reality, making victory a seemingly impossible task.
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GFR SCORE
Waxwork II is a great spoof, generating even more laughs than the first installment. The acting is typical B-grade, with Zach Galligan showing little more ability than his previous film endeavors. But it’s great to see horror icons Bruce Campbell, David Carradine, and Patrick Macnee do funny cameos.
The film’s homages to various horror films are a fun ride, particularly Nosferatu and Dawn of the Dead. The sets are as cheesy as the acting, but still manage to combine with the humor to culminate into an easy film to digest. The special effects were also particularly noteworthy, on par with the ones generated from the first film in the series and at times make for some well-timed jump scares.
