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 his special effects team was Paul Jones returning from the first film, as well as new names such as Stephen Norrington, future director of Death Machine and Blade.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.

Other gothic horror homage makeups included brief appearances of a Mr. Hyde and a Nosferatu-style vampire; funny as in an interview with Fangoria on the original Waxwork, Hickox stated that he was not a fan of the Count Orlok look!

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.