John’s Horror Corner: The Wax Mask (1997; aka Maschera di cera), this period piece Italian horror is an 80s-esque gem to be mined from the 90s video era.

MY CALL: Great gore, really fun and ambitious effects, a horror period piece, and well made by several huge names in Italian horror. How had I never heard of this!?! I guess another solid movie without studio support just got lost in the craptastic 90s video-era horror ether. MORE MOVIES LIKE The Wax Mask: Let’s stay in theme with Waxwork (1988) and House of Wax (2005).

Director Sergio Stivaletti (The Profane Exhibit) normally handles special effects (Dracula 3D, Mother of Tears, Cemetery Man, The Church, Demons 1-2). But for a movie written by Daniele Stroppa (Witchery, The Crawlers), Dario Argento (Dracula 3D, Mother of Tears, Two Evil Eyes, The Church, Demons 1-2, Suspiria) and Lucio Fulci (Demonia, The House by the Cemetery, The Black Cat, The Beyond), this is sounding like a true Italian horror dream team! And the product herein will not disappoint!

The story takes a classic horror trope of a group of twentysomethings with a dare to spend a night in a haunted house and brings it to an early 1900s Parisian brothel, in which high class young men with lovely sex workers on their laps discuss such a dare to spend an evening in the new wax museum. So, the dared young businessman breaks in and finds that the exhibits seem solely to illustrate scenes of death, mutilation and the macabre. Of course, he is found dead the next morning, presumably scared to death.

Twelve years after witnessing the murder of her parents to a mechanical-handed killer (around the time of the young businessman’s death), Sonia (Romina Mondello) is hired to assist Boris Volkoff (Robert Hossein), the artist behind the wax creations. Boris has two highly eccentric assistants, and we just know they’re up to something sinister. All the while Sonia’s parents’ killer has never been apprehended after all this time.

In Giallo form, with his face obscured and his hands gloved, a killer hunts down victims with a really big syringe. We later find that the killer has a mechanical hand—and this leads to so much awesomeness. The gore is quite feisty and ambitious. We see a hand ripped from its bloody latex wrist, and when the killer’s mechanical hand plunges through a man’s chest (claymation effect) and removes his heart, my own dark heart warmed with pleasure. This mechanical arm is more of an alchemical cybernetic creation and I love it. In his Frankensteinian lab, this killer drains the blood of victims with electric baubles lit up in the background playing to the most delicious of mad scientist cliches.

In proper Italian form, captured women find themselves naked and bound to the experiment chair with leather straps and buckles before their blood is drained and their fluids are replaced with embalming-like liquids. Eventually someone sees a wax model that looks like a missing local prostitute (Valery Valmond) and, upon further inspection, like a body post-autopsy, we find her flesh stitched together up her spine! Sonia then sees a waxwork exhibit depicting the night her parents were killed and mutilated, with the details shockingly accurately depicted. Dun dun dunnnn!

In the finale, our killer’s wax face is melted away, leaving a disfigured monster. The ridiculous effects smacks of the T-800 endoskeleton from The Terminator (1984), and the melting wax models in the museum fire offer their own gross, drippy FX pleasures.

As a period piece, this Italian horror works quite well! I enjoy the horse-drawn carriages, oil lamps and wardrobing offered by the film’s crew. Frankly, I’m not sure how I never heard of this. It seems to have been lost in the mediocre maelstrom of the 90s video-era horror releases. But this one is truly a gem to be mined.

I really enjoyed this through and through. This felt like an awesome 80s horror with 90s quality special effects (even if not big budgeted). Most importantly, it felt like the filmmakers and crew all really cared about this. The acting and writing were better than expected (even if not ‘conventionally’ very good in that ‘filmy’ way), the story was more elaborate and interesting than most effects-driven or Italian horror, and the special effects and gore were spectacular.

Hidden gem status: UNLOCKED! Go and watch this movie!