Review: Waxworks (1924)

Like Weird Tales, Waxworks is an anthology horror film (i.e., a collection of short stories with a wraparound story holding them together) filtered through the distorted view of German Expressionism. This time around, the director is Paul Leni, who later emigrated to the United States, where he made The Cat and the Canary and The Man Who Laughs for Universal.

In addition to a highly respected director, Waxworks boasts an all-star cast of German actors, including Emil Jannings (later winner of the first Oscar for Best Actor for The Last Command), Werner Krauss (who played the title character in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) and Conrad Veidt (who appeared in so many German--and later American--Expressionist films, like Caligari, Weird Tales and The Hands of Orlac).

A young writer (William Dieterle, who became a director himself and made RKO's version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the big-screen adaptation of Steven Vincent Bene's The Devil and Daniel Webster) comes to a wax museum on a boardwalk, where the proprietor, who has a pretty daughter, asks the writer to pen stories based on each of three wax figures: Haroun-Al-Rashehid, the Caliph of Baghdad (Jannings), Ivan the Terrible (Veidt) and Spring-Heeled Jack, better known as Jack the Ripper (Krauss). We get to see the stories as they're written.

Story One: Haroun disguises himself as a commoner to go out and make moves on the wife of a baker (player by the same actress playing the proprietor's daughter), while the baker (played by Dieterle), determined to prove his manhood and love to his bored wife, goes off to steal the Caliph's magic wishing ring, even if he has to hack off the Caliph's hand to do it....

Story Two: Ivan the Terrible delights in watching poisoned prisoners die in his own private torture chamber. He comes down to the chamber and looks from the prisoner's face to the hourglass counting the last moments of life with mounting anticipation until, when the prisoner expires at the same time the sands run out, Ivan's face is contorted with what can only be described as orgasmic ecstasy. The Czar's poison-maker expects to be killed himself by the mad czar, so he writes Ivan's name on an hourglass. Later, Ivan is asked to attend a wedding. He switches clothing with the father of the bride, thus getting Dad killed during an assassination attempt. Then he steals the bride and sends the groom to the torture chamber! What a freak! But then there's that hourglass with Ivan's name on it....

Story Three: The writer falls asleep and dreams that he and the proprietor's daughter are pursued by Spring-Heeled Jack through numerous Expressionist sets and shadows.

Leni wisely puts the humorous story of the Caliph up front, puts the longest story in the middle, and concludes with the most fantastic and nightmarish story. All of the sets are wonderfully distorted, each story contains an element of the fantastic (magic, madness and murder), and the actors all give it their best, most vigorous shot (especially Veidt, whose wide-eyed Ivan is fearsome).

Waxworks lingered for decades as a neglected movie, more rumor than classic, seen only in tattered, worn-out prints with only production stills and reviews of the day to attest to its alleged greatness. The print I first saw on videotape a few years ago was dark and truncated, making it difficult to truly appreciate the elaborate sets and energetic performances. A couple of years ago, though, Kino released a set of German Expressionist horror films, including Waxworks. The print was cleaned up and restored, making it easier to appreciate what Leni and the cast were going for and revealing a lost jewel of the silent era to horror film fiends everywhere.

Caligari and Nosferatu may get all of the attention when silent German horror films are discussed, but now Waxworks can properly join them as a topic well worth talking about--as a moody entertainment well worth examination and praise.