2005's HOUSE OF WAX: a running commentary

House of Wax
Dark Castle
Warner Brothers presents a film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
Written by Chad Hayes and Carey Hayes
Based on the story by Charles Belden (I suppose)
Starring Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, Brian Van Holt, Jared Padalecki, Jon Abrahams, Robert Ri'chard, Damon Herriman and, last but certainly by all means not least, The Chick You Love To Hate
113 minutes
Rated R (for horror violence, some sexual content and language)

I know exactly what you're thinking.

Why would Craig, of all people, want to see House of Wax? What anonymous phone call threat, letter bomb, or hostage taken has convinced me to watch House of Wax? Could it be...?

Okay, I now know exactly what you're now thinking. ;)

LOL, no it isn't because of her. I am not seeing it just to watch her bite the big one. I've read all about it in the papers, of course, of paid critics cheerfully reporting on just how thrilled the audiences were upon opening weekend as they watched Paris Hilton get bumped off; you know, all the reports of audiences shouting, "KILL HER!" and whooping it up once she was toasted in an obvious visual gag mocking a certain internet video incident. I'm no fan of hers, but I don't hate her the way so many seem to. As a matter of fact, I giggle when I think about her because I think she's just so ridiculous and get amused by people's general overall reaction to her. So no, that's not the reason.

And no, I don't like slasher movies at all. Not at all my thing, not in my nature. So that's obviously not the reason why either.

So if you've already seen this movie, think carefully as you think about my work and my personality: why do YOU think I've decided to see it?

That's right, I want to see the famous "melting House of Wax" sequence at the end of it. I've heard all about that scene and thought that it actually sounded kind of cool and interesting, so I've decided to check out the movie just specifically for that reason. And since I'm home sick today, feeling a bit better but still too dizzy to do anything other than lie down or sit down (for reasonable periods of time) or maybe stumble over to the store across the street for food and medicine, I thought I'd do what some other pages I've seen do and actually create a running commentary for you people while I watch the crazy thing. I've never done this before and am not sure in the least how long it will take, but I'll be taking pauses as I take breaks from this nonsense to rest up and the like, okay? Hang on to your seats, away we GO!

And so the stupidit--er, the adventure... no wait, that's not quite the right word, and besides I don't want to insult Diamond David Lee Roth's famous use of that phrase for this crap, so uh--the thing begins...

So after that famous WB logo, the Village Roadshow Pictures (???) logo and an incredibly overdramatic Dark Castle Entertainment logo which I'm sure will be far more effective than the thing that follows, the screen shows us.. wax. Well, hey what did you expect? That is the title of this thing, after all. Turns out it's wax dripping off a stove, while Spielberg/Elfman-like music's swooning in the background. Gee, sounds more like a Tim Burton fairy tale thing than a horror opening so far.

And now it says it's the year 1974... gad I miss the seventies... and I'm sure this film will do the precious decade and my memories of it no favors... some lady is stirring wax stuff for a mask while some kid in a high chair has made a mess of his Cheerios, and man everything is all in the browns... I mean it, this whole movie is so far all washed-out browns, geez, I thought this was supposed to be 1974 as opposed to the turn of the century or wild west...? You can't see anyone's faces, probably because they're all too embarrassed to reveal themselves as being the ones stupid enough to be in this dumb movie. Mommy is complimenting the one baby in the high chair, now Daddy rushes in with a twin who's throwing an obnoxious tantrum and has to be strapped and taped into his own chair, looks like the struggling is causing some wrist-bleeding too, boy this music reminds me of a Tom & Jerry score. And when one little hand scratches Mommy's, she immediately wax... er, whacks him across the face as the screen goes black.

And we finally see the waxy House of Wax logo appear on screen, it's all brownish-yellow and dripping dark brown wax, oh geez, it's all so brownish-yellow so far I'd swear they accidentally left the print out in the sun too long or something. Geez, we're only at the title screen and already I'm rolling my eyes.

Anyway, so now we flash over to a bird's eye shot of a freeway somewhere, and it says it's now the present. Or at least if you were watching this back when it was first released, now fashions and stuff will all look dated and... oh wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyways, there's this ultracool song playing in the background that reminds me of The Smashing Pumpkins, you know, loud yet melodic... I don't care if it does sound sorta like a cheap knockoff, I still dig it. At least so far I can say the tunes are cool. We're zooming in on a diner...

Hold on. Is that blood already? Geez, how anxious is this film? Oh, wait... no, there goes a french fry into it, turns out it was just ketchup. And said french fry belongs to... HER! Yes, it's HER, ladies and gentlemen, The One You All Love To Hate So Friggin' Much! Brace yourselves as I prepare to say her name... oh wait, I've got an idea, how about every time I say her name I pause to give you all time to shout your boos and hisses at her? Hmm, well wait, I don't think that will work out so well, after all I don't want any more pauses to this thing than there already are, so tell you what, I'll just add a copyright after her name (since she's a walking copyright anyway, HA! I kill me.) whenever I mention her like this@ so you'll know that that's your allowed cue to boo, scream, shout obscenities, laugh, mock or whatever the heck else you want to do to her, okay? Okay? So let's try a practice run. Take a deep breath:

PARIS HILTON!@

There! That work out okay? Cool, let's continue. ;)

Anyway, we now see her perfectly manicured rich finger perfectly moving along perfectly rich (?) newspaper ads, and she's probably wondering if all this perfectly moving her perfectly rich finger will perfectly cause (gasp!) perfectly icky ink to perfectly smudge on to her perfectly picky fingertip. Okay okay, I'll stop now. Turns out she's sitting at this diner going over the Housing/Rentals section with a friend who kinda reminds me of a young Sheryl Crow with her hair tied back. They're discussing where Paris's@ pal is gonna stay while going off to New York to pursue some fashion career or something, it's a magazine internship something-or-other, and Paris@ is delivering all this with all the convincing believability of your average mannequin; come to think of it, that's all too appropriate for this movie, and I'm sure lots of audiences were probably thinking the same thing, all fantasizing about how much more delightful she'd be dipped in wax and shut up for eternity, something like that. I giggle just thinking about the possible wisecracks that must have filled the theaters. Oh, and the color scheme has switched to blue. I guess that means brown/yellow=evil and blue/white=goodliness, saintness and light. Ok yeah, got it.

Paris@ asks, "Or would you rather stay at The Waffle House as a waitress forever?" If I were Sheryl Crow, I would've replied, "Better idea; how about you give me the cash for all this, what with your being Paris Hilton@ and all, then I go there to pursue my dreams while you take my place at The Waffle House as a waitress forever?" Sounds cool to me. Geez, three and a half minutes into this thing and already I have a better idea than the main characters. This is gonna be so easy I could start a Rocky Horror-style "reply" script to it. Although not as "easy" as you-know-who is though, if you get my drift. I have some scruples, man.

So anyway, while they're gabbing about all this some Wannabehip Kid with sideburns sneaks up behind Sheryl Crow with "Hey babe" or "Hey baby"--I ain't rewinding to find out--in her ear just to instantly get the point across that they're dating. Hmm. Something about this brat smells. No, not that brat, the other brat, and not in that way, you perv. Get Hilton@ outta your brains for a sec, I know how much you all hate her, okay, let me rephrase that, I know how much you all LOATHE her, but she'll get hers in due time I'm sure, and just let me get back to my point and explain: I mean, something about that boy kid who just walked up just seems so very know-it-all and intrusive. Something tells me he's gonna end up being one of those "I don't care if it's stupid, I'm gonna poke my nose around all over the place and do stupid stuff just to get the plot moving" types. I don't know, just something about him. Maybe it's that pretentious-looking "snob" mustache, he just immediately gives the impression of someone who spends all his time bragging and boasting about stuff he really doesn't know anything about. You know the type, the Wannabe Brain. Case in point: Paris@ points out her opinion that, "There's no rednecks in New York", to which he immediately says while clearing his throat, "No, there's not *ahem*." As in, "There, see? If I say it or agree with it, it must be so." Theory proven.

Okay, so there's three in our happy little gaggle. So far anyway. Who's next?

Paris@ then gets this evil little smirk, then delivers a line that sounds at least halfway unintelligible from what's coming out of my brand new speakers. "You know I'm gonna sit on Blake's tonight. He seems like that car more than we notice," is the closest I can make out. Whatever, Paris@. You've got your idea of entertainment and we've got ours, to each his own, you know?

So she gets up and leaves, much to the apparent relief of Sheryl Crow. Wannabe watches her leave for a second, probably making sure she's gone for good or something, then asks Sheryl Crow why on earth her brother had to come along too, since after all, he's The One Who Knows Everything and he's soooo sure that her brother will Spoil Everything. Turns out bro's just gotten out of jail. Wannabe thinks her parents bailed him out, she says no, the previously-mentioned Blake did and invited him for whatever reason.

So then, to put a face, er, hand to the name, we cut to the inside of a car in the parking lot waiting for them as we watch Blake's hand playing with a Toy while bopping out to rap music. That's what a pal of mine calls those GPS things, "Toys" with a capital T, because they're supposed to help guide you to a specific destination yet only work only about 50% or so of the time, or so have said all my friends who own them. So it's a Toy. ;) So, is the Blake-in-question waiting for them to come out, was he supposed to pick some of them up or what? Or did he just opt to spend all that time in the parking lot because he'd rather be there since he's so obviously easily amused? Whatever, dude.

Uh oh, here comes Paris@. She keeps trying to keep his attention but he doesn't even acknowledge her presence even though she's standing right next to him at the driver's window (which is rolled down) and he's behind the wheel, and I can't say I blame him. Finally, after she goes, "Fine," and starts to walk away, he then finally talks to her because he apparently just realized that now he has to before she walks off the set because it's in the script and he's being paid for this and he'll be one of the many out of a job in this rotten economy if he doesn't shape up and play along. He calls after her like she's his girlfriend since the script says they're a couple and looks like merely saying the words, let alone pretending they are, is gonna make him hurl at any given moment. Bleah!

They kiss in such a way that he looks like he just wants to get it over with and she's looking up and around to her side like she's trying to think of something else. Double bleah!

Okay, here come two more guys outside. One near-bald kid with one of those wannabe military haircuts and another in a red cap walking obediently behind him while videotaping everything the first guy does on his camcorder. He passes some guy on the ground with a cup hoping for handouts and--gasp!--actually kicks the guy's cup out of his hand. Hm, must be Sean Penn. No wait, I take it back: Sean would be busy beating up the guy behind him with the camcorder, but he's definitely acting like more than quite a few stuck up celebrities I've encountered in my time. "Ah, me public! How they love me! Come on, Flunky, make sure you get my best side," and the guy recording all, "Yes sir, yes sir, yes sir, yes SIR!" Or hey! Wait! Maybe this is how this particular actor really is and he doesn't realize he's just walked on to the set yet! Oh well, whatever, either way, here they come.

Wannabe says as the two walk up to him and Sheryl Crow, "That's nice. Yeah." I guess he's giving his personal know-it-all approval to all that, too. Who knows?

Baldy sits down with him without saying hello, while Camera laughs as he captures it all. Geez, he must have just gotten that thing, he's so... easily amused by it. You know, kind of how Blake is busy being with his new "Toy" out in the parking lot. No, for cryin' out loud, not PARIS!@ His OTHER new Toy! Geez, how many times do I have to straighten you guys out? But anyway, these two laugh like a Beavis & Butthead bit.

Sheryl Crow smirks at Baldy for a sec, then Wannabe asks the other two about "the biggest game of the year" they're all heading off to. They're still going all B&B on them. Nope, no chance of intelligent conversation with these two. Camera's still trying to video, and Sheryl Crow's telling him to cut it out, and after Baldy gets him to cooperate there's some banter between Baldy and Sheryl Crow. Oh, so Baldy's the jailbird they were talking about, huh? Judging by this, he must have loved the security system's security cameras. I can just see him posing endlessly for them, kinda like the guys thinking they were acting like models for a calendar in Tank Girl.

Camera leaves, Sheryl Crow glancing over her shoulder watching him do so just to make sure he's gone. Good, she's clearly thinking, now maybe both he and Paris@ will stay out in the parking lot where they belong. You wish, chick.

Camera walks with that stupid camcorder right out to the parking pot over to Blake's car so he can video Blake and Paris@ making out in an extremely obvious parody of her previous, uh, video release. Incidentally, those two are "kissing" verrrry hesitantly and barely at all, it is just SO obvious that neither of them want to do it at all and are anxious for the shooting of this particular scene to be over and done with, I kid you not. Oh, and never have I seen anyone say, "Put down that damn camera," in such a stiff, disinterested voice.

The scene changes to the group's two cars zooming up the highway off on their way to the all-important "big game". Cool music is again blaring out of the soundtrack, geez, I wanna get this disc. We cut to the inside of one of the two cars where the kids are all trading flat dialogue, something to do with He-Man's haircut on Wannabe, snooore. Then suddenly they see their other car in front of them forced to take a detour to the right; the road has been blocked off for construction or something, and Wannabe remarks, "So much for his nice little shortcut." Oh broth-ER, so Blake decided to try ignoring his stupid little Toy to try a "shortcut", easily one of the stupidest things anyone following one of those things could do. I mean, never, NE-VER attempt a "shortcut" when trying to follow them; it can be bad enough just trying to follow their normal route as it is! I'm speaking from personal experience, here! Geez...

And to top it all off, is this little moron paying attention to where he's driving? Nope, he's busy allowing Paris@ to get busy, and the others drive up beside them laughing, honking, videotaping, etc. Actually, Paris@ claims via cell phone that she had dropped her lip balm. Blake wants to keep driving, but wouldn't you know Paris@ has the brilliant idea for all of them to just stop on the side of the road and camp out in the middle of nowhere just so she can catch her perfectly rich petite beauty sleep??? And the rest all AGREE with her...?!?!?!!!!

Anyway, it's all too obvious that this bunch isn't the slightest bit concerned about where they might be or what might happen, not to mention the fact that they're not exactly the brightest bulbs on the tree. Ah, the stupidity of stoned, sex-crazed students...

And OH MY GOD we FINALLY get to see some kind of HINT that we're in a HORROR FLICK!

They notice a sign they pass which reads "Come visit TRUDY'S World Famous HOUSE OF WAX" along with some info on its address and the like which is obscured exccept for the ending words "children free". And the very first notes of the DA-DUM scary music are finally heard in this movie! Geez, can't they take a hint???

Completely unimpressed and unconcerned, they moronically drive out in the middle of nowhere while playing cheerful semi-surf rock music on their stereo (what, both cars are playing it at the same time or something? Same station tuned in, I guess...) and set up camp. Beer, cigarettes, music all around. Playing catch with a football. You know the drill. Whoo-bee doo-bee, we have fun.

The only other thing that happens during all this is a bunch of mild banter between the characters in a limp attempt at tension building and character development. Everybody repeat after me: Yay.

So finally after all this boring stuff they all of a sudden notice the SECOND HINT that they're in a horror movie: the SMELL. Followed with that same ominous music that greeted them back with the sign. Funny how they missed it before, and they're all concerned... so what do they do? Why, they simply ignore it after that simple lapse of sanity and get back to partying! GEEZ! How many MORE hints will this group NEED, for pete's sake! Please, God, PLEASE tell me that there aren't real people out there in the world who are this stupid.

So both the music and videocamera are both back on, football's still being tossed around, soon there's a campfire, more of this type of stupid stuff going on, blah blah blah, boy for such a gross smell they sure are ignoring it well, and would you believe Camera gets a friggin' MAKEOVER from Paris@??? Geez, why am I not surprised? He emerges also wearing these ridiculous exaggerated women's-style glasses and is immediately told that he looks like Elton John "only more gay". Hey, watch the wisecracks, I always did like Elton.

...and then, THEN we get HINT NUMBER THREE: the OMINOUS TRUCK. And yes, it's accompanied by that music again. It pulls up, headlights blinding everything of course, everyone's trying to figure out who it is and why, Blake's all, "Hey, turn your lights off!" and Wannabe tells him "Hey, it's cool, man." No it's not, Wannabe. Can't you get that into your thick skulls, any of you? The audience can see all this universes away and you're all so clueless. And then, just to make matters worse, Baldy throws a beer bottle at one of the truck's headlights, which busts it.

"Nick!" protests Sheryl Crow after watching what just happened. Hmph. So NOW her brother has a name? All this way into the movie, and just now he gets a name, huh? Well, I don't feel like calling him "Nick" after all this time of calling him something else, okay? So he's Baldy. Plain and simple. Serves him right for being such a stupid jerk and a louse.

They all walk up to the lights and do their best to give it a collective glare of disapproval, which only makes them look even younger than they already are, and oh I almost forgot to mention; the mysterious driver's arm has (gasp!) marks on its wrist, and OH WOW, the EXACT SAME da-DUM OMINOUS MUSIC in the background, meaning that oh GOSH, oh GEE WHIZ, why, HE must be THE WILD CHILD from the very beginning opening prologue! Wow, how could we have ever guessed that??? ;) and Camera simply raises his yellow-jacketed (no pun intended) arms and shouts, "WHAT!" and the truck backs up. "YEAH!" shouts Camera as it drives away. Yeah, I'd probably get scared away too if I found myself shining my brights at a neon yellow Elton John fanatic.

Okay, so that's Three Ominous Warning Hints so far, who's up for Four? Someone? Anyone? You just know they're gonna keep piling up... geez, these stupid kids are so dense.

So they STILL keep camping out there!??!?!?!?!! This is just... beyond beyond, people. You see what I mean, now? Anyone else would have torn out of here long ago, at least if this was real life. But these characters totally defy logic and realism, not to mention brains, even more so than the usual Stupid Kids Who Make Dumb Decisions In A Clunky Horror Flick type.

Ho hum, now they're all a-sleeping in their tents... oooh, someone's sneaking up on Blake and Paris's@ tent, now said person's sneaking up on everyone else, how scary... geez, I have the feeling it's Camera, it's all shaking and moving around like he's videotaping again. Oh well, wait, maybe not. Oh WOW, we just heard a bit of noise from what sounds like a car being tampered with. Oh look, there's Camera sound asleep. So whoever it is most definitely is not in their group. In any case, Sheryl Crow wakes up, is unnerved and decides to go look outside but doesn't see anyone... and I'm sure I don't need to tell you that Wannabe causes a stupidly predictable false alarm to end this whole scenario. Geez, it's about time somebody started acting concerned here even if it is only because Wannabe's such a know-it-all I-wanna-be-in-charge-of-everything kinda twit.

Suddenly it's morning and everyone's getting up. Well, that was harmless, now get the living daylights OUT of there while you can! Oh wait, they can't. Oh... seems Camera's camera is missing. And suddenly, there's that SMELL again... the girls notice it while doing their personal business... isn't it just the oddest thing how they keep noticing it and tuning it out at will? I think they, uh... oh never mind. I've given up trying to explain that phenomenon in any way whatsoever, logically or otherwise.

"Let's go follow the smell!" announces Sherly Crow. SNAAARLLL..... I've lost count of how many dumb decisions these airheads have made so far, I swear to God. Now if it was Paris@ singlehandedly making all the dumb decisions, that would have been a heck of a lot more believable, but...

No wait, actually Paris@ makes one genuinely intelligent response here. As Sheryl Crow pipes energetically, "I want to see what it is!", Paris@ gives Sheryl Crow a look like S.C.'s lost her marbles and questions suspiciously, "Why?" as if Sheryl Crow had just announced she wants to dye her own hair purple with pink polka-dots. Frankly, I would have reacted the exact same way. Geez, the first genuinely intelligent question posed here by this bunch so far, who'd have thought that Paris@ would be the one to ask it?

Meanwhile, the guys discover that Wannabe's brand new car belt has "broken" Uh huh, geeeee, could it be that Sheryl Crow was correct when she said she heaaaard something? Naah, couldn't have had anything to do with the car noise at all, now could it? Pure coincidence, I'm sure. That's what Paris@ would say...

Well actually no, it turns out Paris@ does not say that. Turns out she ends up saying the SECOND genuinely intelligent thing anyone here has said so far in their situation! "I canNOT believe you're making me do this." Well, whaddya know? Wow, keep it up Paris@, you're actually starting to impress me here--at least in comparison with the others.

Hey, look, check it out! She just said THREE! Following Sheryl Crow, she remarks in follow-up to her previously stated intelligent phrase, "Only you." As in, only you, Sheryl Crow, would make anyone pull such a stunt. WHOA! She's on a ROLL here, folks! Isn't this amazing! Keep it up Paris@, you gonna go for four?

Hey, YEAH! She DID it! For making Paris@ follow her, Paris@ remarks to Sheryl Crow, "Oh my God, I hate you." You and me BOTH, Paris@!

THIS IS AMAZING, FOLKS! I can't believe I'm saying this, but... wow, she's said four smart things in a row, and... this is really frightening, probably the most frightening thing about this movie I'll encounter I'm sure... I'm AGREEING with them????!?!?!?!!!!! WHOA! STOP THE MOVIE! This horror movie just succeeded in TRULY SCARING ME! BEST SCARY MOVIE I'VE SEEN IN AGES!

No wait, I gotta finish this... so let's continue...

So anyways, Sheryl Crow ends up falling smack dab into a roadkill pit. Ew. She's screaming and everything, can't say I blame her, I mean like ewww, there's also what appears to be a human hand in it... no wait, it looks too plastic-ish to be real, I think it's a mannequin... still gross though, blood and everything. Ick. Everyone else rushes over and pulls her out.

So now a different truck pulls up right on cue (no busted headlight), and it's got all these sharp tools rattling away in the back of it and is filled with roadkill. Ick. And I'll bet it also smells something fierce. Geez, this movie just gets more and more delightful, doesn't it? And yet these doofuses still refuse to take the hint. Whatever...

...and out steps Your Average Backwoods Weirdo Creep, who immediately opens the back of his pickup and starts tossing all the roadkill into the pit. Now wait, Reality Check here, folks... what are the chances of this kind of timing? That's right, barely at all. I can just imagine the producers screaming at us, "We keep telling you, suspension of disbelief! Don't you guys have any imagination?"

Now at this point, anyone else would have just taken off... heck, anyone else would have been miles away hours ago at this point. But no; Wannabe immediately calls out to the weirdo, "Hey!"

So let me see if I've got this straight: stuff like being late for the game and busted fan belts cause annoyance and even concern, while this stuff stuff doesn't? Hel-LOOOooooo...?!

Anyway, wouldn't you know that it would be Wannabe who first gets the weirdo's attention. I guess everyone else just lets Wannabe pull all this crap because hey, he knows everything, or so he'd love to have the world believe.

And Sheryl Crow immediately and stupidly asks Weirdo, "Don't you see that?" as she points at the mannequin hand. "What is that?" Stupid, stupid, stupid... frankly, I'm amazed that she's the one so far saying and doing all these stupid stunts and Paris@ isn't. Not so far, anyway.

Weirdo stares at them for a moment with a look on his face indicating that he immediately sees that these kids aren't exactly brain surgeons, finishes his little chore, then pulls the hand right off ("No way," remarks Wannabe, "What are you doing, man?" as if to emphasize their obvious collective stupidity). Yup, I was right, it's only a mannequin. See? Now if I could tell, and theoretically they were, ahem, right there, wouldn't you think they'd be able to see that as well?

Weirdo immediately asks the most obvious quip in the world: "Anyone need a hand?" Uh, yeah. Whatever. Can these kids all just go now? Hell, just get in the other car and take off... actually, they're all beginning to remind me of an old Yogi Bear cartoon with Little Red Riding Hood in it, and she's a-skipping through the forest going, "Duddle-de-dum-de-DUM, duddle-de-dum-de-DUM"... yeah, you might know which one I'm talking about... Yeah, that pret-ty much sums up the collective I.Q. at work here in a heartbeat. I swear, these are the exact kinds of kids out there gathered in Wall Street right now as I write this... which, frankly, I'd rather even be watching them on the news right now as opposed to this tripe... But man... my mind's wandering again, this thing is so lame and these people are so stupid... yawwwn... back to the commentary...

Anyway, I'll give Weirdo one thing: as he's standing demonstrating how fake the hand is, he's also sure demonstrating brilliantly that whatever intelligence he has is vastly superior to our little group of doofuses. Wannabe stupidly answers Weirdo's question of what they're doing, blah blah blah, camping out, blah blah blah, fan belt, blah blah blah Weirdo of course knows of a gas station where "Bo" may have one, blah blah blah... and of course, Wannabe refuses to abandon his oh-so-precious car... uh dude, you are NOT INVINCIBLE, and you're obviously DIMMER THAN THE AVERAGE DOORSTOP, stop trying to do all the thinking already and GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE! Geez, somebody take a lasso to this kid and DRAG HIM back to where they started already before he gets them all killed... no, wait, that might give Weirdo over there ideas... but whatever, just SMACK the kid, he's just so... GRRRRR...

Geez, just listening to this whole scene with Wannabe's blathering is making me irritated. Here's hoping he gets it first, if for no other reason than just to shut him up.

Blake says that if Wannabe stays with his car then he'll miss the game. And then... then... get this, Wannabe says it's fine and then, after eyeing Sheryl over there, admits that that's not the reason why he came. Oh, so he's not only an annoying wannabe brain, but a LETCH too? Ugh... now he's an even worse character than before... no wait, it just struck me... "wannabe brain"... maybe that "brain" should be capitalized, kinda of "wannabe Brainy". You know, the smurf. The one whom you couldn't get to shut up and was always being thrown out on his head, and deservedly so... GEEZ how I wish that would happen to this pr--er, uh, I'm trying to force myself to be polite here, uh... this... person. In fact, he's not Wannabe anymore, from now on he's Brainy. He's just reminding me too much of Brainy for his own good, not to mention mine... how I suffer... geez, the things I do for people...

So now anyways, Brainy's got the brilliant idea that he's go gonna go with this goon to this gas station to get a fan belt while all the others go to the game? DOUBLE GRRRRR... this clown's just full of intelligence. And Sheryl says she's going with him... of course... well, if nothing else, it sure looks like Brainy will be snuffed out of the plot pret-ty soon...

"Carly, no," Paris@ protests lamely at Sherly Crow. I don't care if her name's Carly, my nickname stands. But she insists. "Yes, we'll be fine." MOO-ha-ha-ha.

So Baldy then strips off his top just so the girls in the audience can have something to drool over for a moment and gives it to Sheryl to replace her now messed up top. It's obviously far too big for her, and yet a scene change later it's a perfect fit and is so obviously not the same one that was just handed to her a second ago, but nevertheless makes her look more like Sheryl Crow than ever. I repeat: my nickname stands.

So Brainy has decided to go with Weirdo, who has literally been standing there picking his nose through all this -- ew. Some more stupidly pointless talk is exchanged, and the scene finally ends. Thank God.

And now Brainy and Sheryl Crow are riding with Weirdo in his pickup, which is all adorably decorated with all sorts of dead relics and charms straight out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I was once forced to endue at someone's birthday party around 1988 or so. Stupid, stupid, stupid... well, no I wasn't referring to that movie being played at the birthday party and my being forced to endure it (which was indeed stupid nevertheless), but to these two kids actually riding with this looney. Of their own free will. Out in the middle of nowhere. How dense can you get?

Ick, and now Weirdo is leering at Sheryl Crow.

So what do they do? Why, they both simply relax and Sheryl Crow politely asks Brainy, "Could you roll the window down, please?" Dumb de dumb dumb...

Well, whaddya know? The window won't work! Why are we not surprised? The only ones who seem to be surprised are Brainy and Sheryl Crow, who both appear by this point to have a collective I.Q. of about -10. Brainy politely asks if Weirdo can roll down his window instead. To his credit, Weirdo does, apologizing and explaining that after a while he sort of got used to the smell. Charming.

This road they're driving on is practically nonexistant, it's all mud and water. And Weirdo is explaining that if the roadkill he finds is fresh enough he'll just take it home: "Why waste the meat?" Double charming.

And yeesh, even THIS doesn't appear to alarm our Clueless Twosome. Sheryl Crow merely asks, "Are we almost there, yet?" And as Weirdo is explaining that yes, they're almost to Ambrose (the town in question) and as he's explaining how it used to be a nice town, Sheryl Crow then notices the huge bowie knife on Weirdo's belt. And... and...

And OH MY GOD she FINALLY starts to look truly UNCOMFORTABLE! It's ABOUT TIME! Apparently the actual sight of the knife was the last straw so desperately needed to make a huge mental fist shove itself up into her skull and connected with the single particle of braincell that was her brain that had no doubt been asleep in there all this time.

Weirdo sees her noticing. "You like knives?" "No, not really." "Goes with the trade! You want to see it?" he asks, pulling it out of its sheath before they can respond properly, although she manages to gasp out, "It's okay" after he does so. "It's a good knife; can cut through anything," he remarks, immediately thrusting it into the dashboard.

And that's when the truck skids to a stop at a small river of water.

The two doofuses ask what's going on, Weirdo explains that the town is just around the bend. I won't go into the whole conversation that follows, I'll just say that Weirdo gets out of the car, he's getting annoyed that they obviously don't feel at ease around him anymore, Brainy says thank you but they'll walk the rest of the way, they want out of the car. Weirdo is obviously irritated by this, goes around to open their side, but hey, turns out the nasty knife (just like Zork I!) is sheathed, he lets them go all insulted that they aren't accepting his hospitality.

The two doofuses cross the water, which is really just a small creek, and they're walking slowly but quickly away from Weirdo, who's staring back at them an unhappy camper. When they finally are enough of a business away, the truck drives away. All through this scene, they're finally exhibiting a little intelligent caution.

Well, there's the town, and just as explained, it really was just right there.

Meanwhile, we now see that the rest of our band of heroes are stuck in the middle of traffic out on some wild snarl of freeway somewhere. "Dude, it's over," gripes Baldy. "It'll move," insists Blake. After a split second, Paris@ observes, "It's not moving." Ah Paris@, what a gift for stating the obvious. Darn, I knew that all those flashes of intelligence couldn't last... Blake wants to keep moving, the others all argue and make him turn around... famous last words...

Back to Brainy and Sheryl Crow. Seems like a quaint albeit quiet little town. Now they're in a much lighter mood. Hey, they've discovered a pet store... and there's puppies in the window...

Now wait a minute here. Are they real? And if this town is deserted (as I've read about in reviews of this thing), then how can there be puppies in the window? Are they fakes? Who feeds them? Who takes care of them? Is it a continuity error or stupid writing or are they fake? I've slowed the film down to study them and I honestly cannot tell. As I love animals, I sure hope this film isn't trying to suggest that they were killed and waxed or whatever it was the reviews were describing (now please don't get after me for writing a "spoiler", I mean, the whole world already knew about that part of the plot when this film came out, so please, no complaints, okay? Thanks. ;) ). But if they weren't, then how did they get there? And why? Nothing about this shot seems to really make any sense...

...or do I really want to know?

So here's the gas station. It's both old and deserted, although there's rock music playing in it. And then Sheryl Crow's cell starts ringing. She answers it, and... it's PARIS@! Now THAT'S a horror movie, I mean, what if you were just walking along and you suddenly got called by Paris Hilton@? No no, just kidding... silly joke, I know... anyway, Paris@ explains they're heading back, and they make arrangements for the rest of them to meet them back at their makeshift campsite. Meanwhile, we see someone looks out the window, specifically a closeup of an old woman's hand, and the hand is real. I mean it. Watch it carefully. It is real. I kid you not.

So now they're just discovered the House of Wax, and right behind them is a theater playing Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? At least somebody making this thing had some taste, lol. Since there was no one at the gas station, they decide to ask at the town church, which is close by. They go in and accidentally interrupt a funeral, so they immediately step back out. Some ultraslick greasy hair guy is praying at the coffin, and there's a priest there. Well, I saw the priest move twice, so clearly he isn't a wax dummy either. So what is this, only some of the people are and some aren't? I'm confused. Guess that's what I get for reading movie reviews before seeing the actual movie.

Outside, the two are obviously embarrassed, and while they briefly decide what to do next, Greasy suddenly comes out. They attempt to apologize and explain that they're looking for "Bo", the gas station guy. Turns out it's Greasy. Geez, how much grease does he use in that gas station anyway?

Greasy's all peeved that they interrupted the funeral for a fan belt, and he says he'll be right back out. The two still attempt to apologize. Greasy then comes out, and he apologizes, saying that someone special to him personally passed away and that he didn't mean to take it out on them. He then adds that things will wrap up soon and that he'll meet them at the station in about half an hour, or something like that. I don't feel like rewinding to find out. Anyway, Sheryl Crow says that would be great, and Greasy heads back into the church. Brainy's all annoyed because Greasy gave her the Eye. They decide to kill time by checking out the House of Wax.

So then we cut to the inside of some studio-like place where operatic music is playing and... oh my GOD, ROTFL!

Sorry folks, you'll have to excuse me for a second: you see, just now a friend sent me a link to a review of this movie over on Badmovies.org, and as it describes the plot it says, and I quote: "Their arrival signals a man with beautiful girl hair who is sculpting a woman's bosom." OMG, that is HILARIOUS! I love it! Anyway, that's exactly what's happening. Oh, and we quickly see a glimpse of one of his candles having extra long nails stuck through it. Why, I have no idea. We see lots of closeups of this guy scultping the wax woman's breasts, probably to titillate (no pun intended... no, really) the teenage/college boys in the audience.

And as they approach the House of Wax, Sheryl Crow asks, "What do you expect to see in here?" and I expected Brainy to reply, "WAX!" What else?

"It is wax. Like, literally." he says instead as he actually peels a small portion off of the side. And this, of course, brings up all sorts of nonsensical questions, such as how in the heck did this place manage to stay in one reasonable piece during the summertime, especially during those hot, muggy southern-type summers. In case you haven't noticed yet, this is one movie which has chosen to simply throw all logic into the toilet and give a mighty flush. I suppose the producers figured the audience was just as stupid as the heroes in the movie. They guessed wrong. Which suggests, of course, that maybe the producers were! An explanation which would make a ton of sense by this point.

So anyway, all Sheryl Crow says in response to this is, "Oh." Or maybe it's "ho," or "huh". Either way, it's obvious that she's just taking this all in stride and seeing absolutely nothing ridiculous or nonsensical about any of this whatsoever, you know, just like the producers of this movie were.

Brainy grins at her like the idiot he really is, and then tries the front door, which of course just HAWPens to be unlocked, and stupidly strolls right in.

"You're not gonna go in there, are you?" remarks Sheryl Crow with a just-a-touch-of-boredom sort of tone to her voice which suggests that she's really hoping Brainy's going to finally get totally brained so he'll finally be shut up and she won't have to put up with him for the rest of the movie. Brain then gives her another one of his idiotic looks/grins as he goes, "Yawh" in the stupidest tone/whisper you've ever heard in your life. Okay, as if we didn't need any more proof right off the bat that Brainy isn't exactly the brightest bulb on the tree as it is. Not even bothering to cautiously peer in first, he simply barges right in, leaving Sheryl Crow to watch all this with a total, "You have, like, got to be kidding me, are you a fruitcake or for real?" look in his direction. Nevertheless, she -- and with far more unease than he displayed, might I add -- follows after. But then she does something nearly as stupid; she actually closes the door behind her. Wow, do these people have a death wish or what? It doesn't even strike her even for a moment that they may need to make a speedy getaway? Oh whatever, I give up, I keep forgetting these dorks don't know they're in a cheesy horror flick.

We cut to Previously Mentioned Man With Beautiful Girl Hair down in his studio suddenly pausing as he realizes that somebody has just arrived for a soothing waxdown upstairs. He can hear them talking loudly right through the ceiling/floor and everything.

"What if someone's here?" asks Sheryl Crow as we then see our first glimpse of inside the House of Wax, lots of furniture and waxed-up figures all set in various poses all over the place. "Hul-LO? ANNY-one IN here?" Brainy immediately calls out loudly, then says quietly, "See? We're fine." Geez, how long have these two known each other anyway? Must not have been for long, I mean if it was for too long you would have thought she'd have long since figured out that if you follow this twerp that you end up in a blind alley. "Wow! How cool is this?" Brainy continues. "Everything in here is wax, the floor..." he babbles on and on, as if he were making a brilliant deduction but is in reality just demonstrating his amazingly stupid gift for stating the obvious. Ugh, puh-LEEZ let this loudmouth get bumped off first, he's driving me NUTS!

"Yeah, cool, awesome," she replies, looking far smarter and more uneasy than he is. And Brainy just can't keep his hands to himself, I SWEAR! Meanwhile, Sheryl Crow's checking out newspaper clippings and stuff on the walls nearby, and the two start going on about New York, and he says he still hasn't made up his mind about going there or some such nonsense, and she actually says that she'd really like him there with her...??? Wow, wait, back up, did I HEAR that CORRECTLY???!?!?!?!!! Ok, these two must have known each other for what, two days or something? I mean... oh, whatever...

Now Brainy's joking around about holding fire up to the wax stuff, ugh, I once knew someone like this back during my teens, drove me nuts. Ugh! He needs a gag and handcuffs, I swear. And the very moment she stops him, NOW he immediately heads over to a dog figure on the floor. He just can't KEEP HIS HANDS TO HIMSELF, for God's sake. How I'd hate to be his mother.

Okay, now this part's really hokey. Turns out the dog's not really a statue and starts barking at him, but a second ago the filmmakers put a fake statue lookalike in the dog's place to try and convince us he was standing peeerfectly still until that moment. Uh huh, real convincing there, guys.

Sheryl Crow laughs as the dog makes Brainy fall over and then runs out of the room, although I'm not sure if she's laughing at how the dog tricked Brainy, or the stupidity of how the filmmakers attempted that whole scene, or both. Probably both.

Brainy immediately starts fooling around with the piano (Do I lie? I said he can't keep his hands off things...!!!) while she notices that figurines are signed "Vincent", an obvious nod to Vincent Price in the earlier version. I can't recall which of the two earlier classic versions he was in right off the bat, but then again the whole point was to convince us that these filmmakers knew what they were doing and have class. Uh huh. Sure...

Okay, I think you've all gotten my point about this whole scene, he's acting amazed and fascinated, and she just thinks it's all weird and is appropriately uneasy, no need to go on with the rest of this scene's dialogue by this point I'm sure. Besides, I'm bored.

Sheryl Crow finally looks in a mirror and sees a reflection of, as pointed out in that above Badmovies.org link I included, A Man With Beautiful Girl Hair staring in the window (snicker). She whirls around, and of course Girly Boy isn't there anymore, blah blah blah. Geez, I'm getting anxious for something interesting to happen here.

Now of course, you just know this means that Brainy's gonna go outside and check it out, not because he's trying to be cautious or anything like that, but simply because he's nosy.

"Wait! Don't leave me here!" she says, and watching that he's going outside anyway, she decides to stay indoors and shut the door???!?!?! Stupid, stupid, STUPID...

So now she's all alone in the place and is getting all spooked and freaked out by all the wax things and starts making her way back over to the piano, where she sees Brainy outside where Girly Boy was, and Brainy motions to her that he doesn't see anything. Of course not, Brainy. You really think someone suspicious is gonna STAY there for you to discov... oh, never mind. You're hopeless, Brainy.

Sheryl Crow keeps looking around indoors while Brainy outside nosily tries to open the outside door that leads down to the cellar, being the stupid nosy so-and-so that he is. Sheryl Crow continues to look around alone inside the place and discovers the kitchen. She then hears a tapping noise, turns around to see a wax lady figure with a disfigured face, freaks, and accidentally knocks the thing over as she shrieks and runs out. Funny how she didn't notice it before until, quite literally, the camera did -- even though she was facing it when enterting the room. Turns out it was Brainy tapping on the window who made the noise, of course.

So THEN she runs out of the place and up over to Brainy. Okay, like any of that scene made sense at all in the first place, right? She's freaking out, and they both go somewhere else.

And we FINALLY cut to another scene!

And it's... ew, that wasn't a sight I needed to see before dinner time. Baldy and Camera urinating against a tree. Blake interrupts them them by asking if they're gonna have sex? There goes lunch.

Anyway, to cut an annoying scene short, the others have all decided to just take off and get going, leaving Brainy and Sheryl Crow to fend for themselves. Or at least I think they have, I've lost track. That second part aside, this is what they all should have been doing in the first place... what do you guys wanna bet that they'll for whatever reason change their collective minds and head back?

Meanwhile, Brainy and Sheryl Crow are now inside the gas station while Brainy's just helping himself to a new belt without permission. No surprise there. And to make it even dumber, Brainy then starts to go on about how it's all everyone else's fault, as if none of his nosiness and stupidity had anything to do with it. No, why of course not, not him...

Sheryl Crow goes on about the so-called importance of there being two sets of twins in this movie while Brainy notes that the gas station has every belt size but the 15-incher he needs. He notes that he'll just have to use a 16-inch instead, characteristically helping himself. Of course, that's when Greasy makes his appearance, and Brainy has to explain himself, albeit arrogantly so. Sheryl Crow gives Greasy the same explanation much more convincingly. Greasy says the right size is back at the house, hey, why don't we all go over there and get it?

While walking outside, Brainy asks if he can use the bathroom, and of course Greasy says the gas station's is out or order, why, he'll just have to use the one in his own house. They both agree and go along with him, like stupid people. All the while, they gab on and on about stuff that's supposed to deepen the film. Meanwhile, it's obvious Greasy's got Sheryl Crow in his sights.

When they get there, Greasy immediately opens his truck's door and suggests they both get in and wait while he gets the belt and then he'll personally give them a ride back to their car. Sheryl Crow says no, actually they've got some friends coming along to pick them up soon. Speaking of which, why hasn't she tried using her cell phone during all this? I don't recall her losing it, and I'm not rewinding this junk to find out and refresh my memory. If I were her, I would have kept my phone handy at all times, constantly trying it every couple of minutes or so. Come to think of it, the others should have called HER to tell HER they were going to go ahead and take off! Gads, not a braincell in sight here.

So Sheryl Crow gets into the truck after all, and before Brainy gets in Greasy reminds him that he could go ahead and use his personal restroom. GEEZ! How much more OBVIOUS can this setup GET?? Brainy, you DUNCE, he's gonna SNUFF you! But hooray for us when he does, for we won't have to put up with his annoyance any longer... Greasy also asks Sheryl Crow if she also needs to "use the can" (so polite) but she says no, so they both leave her waiting in the car.

They go in, Greasy tells him when the bathroom is and says he's gonna go "get out of this jacket and tie" and get the fan belt as he heads upstairs. So of course, again, once he's alone Brainy AGAIN insists on poking his nose everywhere it doesn't belong. Kill! Kill!

We cut to a car driving through the night. Why it's Baldy and Camera, and they're babbling on about how they're using Blake's truck or some such, and they then notice that wherever-they-are is not on the GPS. "That's weird," remarks Camera.

We then see that Brainy took time out from being nosey long enough to use the bathroom but then picks up again right where he left off. Oooh, wow, even MORE stuff to snoop around in! He touches EVERYTHING, no matter how weird or gross it is, even making stupid noises as he does so. I'm just eagerly waiting for this kid to bite the big one. In fact, you guys can all have You-Know-Who killed for your personal entertainment, I personally want THIS idiot to go!

Meanwhile out in the truck, Sheryl Crow is trying all the stations on the radio; turns out Greasy left his keys in the ignition. She can't get anything, so she waits in frustration. What is taking so long, she clearly wonders.

What's taking so long is that Brainy's taking his dear sweet time in getting killed, and it's amazing that he hasn't been caught by now since by this point I wouldn't have been surprised if he was trying on old clothes he found as well. He's just going ALL OVER the place and looking at EVERYTHING, and no matter how sinister and weird everything looks, including surgeon gear he finds, he STILL doesn't get the hint and leave ASAP even though the whole joint has you are about to get KILLED, you fool, you fool written all over it.

Outside, Sheryl Crow gets out of the truck and starts to go up to the front door when she suddenly recognizes the broken headlight on the front of the truck.

Brainy is actually tugging on the straps of a surgeon's table just for kicks. GRRR.

Sheryl Crow has rushed to the truck's driver's side and is honking the horn, and at LAST Brainy begins to take some notice of something else other than his own nosiness. But he actually starts to look back down at what he was doing, apparently about to ignore the very very OBVIOUS danger signal, when suddenly the lights go out. Eek.

The music is all tense as we slowly focus on Brainy trying to make his way through the darkened room. He finds the door and discovers it's locked, then starts calling through it while behind him a conveniently-placed trapdoor begins rising up from the floor (don't you just hate it when that happens?) and Girly Boy reaches out with a pair of large scissors and snips the tendons in the back of one of Brainy's feet, causing him to collapse. Actually this scene is nowhere near as gory as it sounds. What you can see even in this quick shot is that in reality the fake leg had a baggie of fake blood tucked up inside its pantleg and the scissors snipped it. Low budget cheapie movie. Hey, I'm terribly squeamish and even I didn't flinch, it was so obviously fake.

Brainy backs away while making, "Uh! Uh! Uh!" sounds right into the surgical area. Still convinced that he can always take care of himself, he grabs some object off the surgical table and weilds it... no, wait, that's not quite the right word, this loon clearly doesn't know how to "weild" anything, he just holds it out in front of him instead. Even though there's no one right in front of him and he can apparently see that, he starts lashing wildly out in front of him at thin air like that's gonna do him any good? Uh, listen Brainy, you're supposed to have a TARGET in front of you before you start trying to defend yourself. And, of course, doing so only makes him trip and fall over on to the floor. Idiot. And then The Man With His Beautiful Girl Hair flying suddenly appears from out of nowhere, makes some sort of slashing motion that I can't determine, and then the scene switches.

Outside, Sheryl Crow is getting more and more anxious as she keeps honking the horn and no one is answering.

We cut back to Brainy lying on the floor squirming around, and we then see Girly Boy, with a dramatic flash of his trademark (TM) Beautiful Girl Hair, kick Brainy's lights out! YAAAAAAAAY!

Ah, so NOW Sheryl Crow decides to try her cell phone? She had it on her all this time and hasn't been trying it? And why not call 911? Geez, where's a brain when you need one... anyway, instead she's calling Paris's@ cell, and Paris@ gets out of her tent to answer it, only Blake then grabs her "romantically" and carries her off back into the tent so the phone doesn't get answered? GEEZ! These people just get stupider and stupider! So Sheryl Crow starts leaving a message, but then Greasy of course picks that verrry moment to come outside, and Sheryl instantly holds her phone where he can't see it. Greasy has changed into more casual clothing and is holding a bunch of stuff.

"Where's Wayne?" she asks. "Oh, he's not out yet?" She shakes her head. "Guess he's still in the bathroom, then. I've got the fan belt. You're not in a hurry are you, cause..." but while he's going on like this, she jumps into the truck and locks the door. He wants to know what she's doing. "Waiting for Wayne," she informs him. She then quickly locks the passenger side door as well. First reasonably smart thing she's done.

"Open the damn door! This IS my truck!" he demands. Of course, she doesn't. Then he starts getting violent, and somehow manages to bust the entire driver's side window with his bare arm (??!!!). He grabs her, she drops her cell phone at the bottom of the truck, then while he's saying he wants the keys she reaches over and turns the engine on, then pushes down on the pedal with her hand while he keeps saying he's gonna supposedly call the cops. The whole truck goes into reverse with him hanging on on the outside, and I swear, at one point I heard him shout to her, "Get IN here!" when he's in fact trying to get her out. I don't know, you explain it to me, I'm only watching this stuff.

Anyway, the truck skids to a stop in such a way that Greasy is thrown off, she then jumps into the driver's seat properly and attempts to peel out of there, only instead merely ends up getting the truck stuck instead. Smooth move.

She reaches for her phone, doesn't pick it up, looks around, doesn't see anyone, switches on the lights, and EEK, there he is in front of the car, so now she crawls out of the truck's back window and jumps to the ground even though technically he should have come all the way around the truck to get her by that point, and runs off as quickly as her Crow legs can carry her.

Meanwhile, Baldy and Camera are still calmly driving through the night. They both astound me by saying they like Wayne (Brainy).

So now we see Girly Man dragging Brainy off through some place underground I guess, somewhere where it's all wood and whatever, and with all the grace of handling a sack of potatoes.

While the music desperately tries to make things tense enough for us to care, Sheryl Crow rests gasping against some building of some kind.

We then cut back to what appears to be Girly Pie's underground lair. Geez, he's got a real racket here going on, apparently. Girly's got Brainy on a table, and the very first thing he's doing is using his scissors to snip off all of Brainy's clothes! Let's get KINKY! LOL, ah-h-HEM, okay so anyways, his trademark (TM) Beautiful Girl Hair flashes about his masked face as Brainy mumbles, maybe he's enjoying this nonsense of being stripped by this guy, I don't know and I don't think I want to know either. So then Girly gives Brainy some kind of injection and Brainy moans louder, geez it still sounds like Brainy's kind of getting a kick out of all this, euuu, sure doesn't sound much like pain. Now Girly's snipped off his pants. And I don't hear Brainy complaining one bit. Now THAT'S the scary stuff.

Girly uses water to wash the big nasty cut he caused on Brainy's left arm/chest area, then shows what a caring nurse he is by gently washing off Brainy's forehead with a sponge. Aw, that's right, get him nice and relaxed, wax is supposed to do wonders for the skin, isn't it? Girly's so nice he's even going to give Brainy a nice relaxing waxjob, just like beauty mud only it packs much nicer, don't you agree? That oughta clean out those pores!

Girly then shows what a caring professional he is by crudely sewing up that big nasty cut all by himself! Aw, isn't Girly just so attentive? Okay, now to take care of poor Brainy's face. Girly gently and caringly gives Brainy a nice relaxing mudpack, then places a nice soothing cloth over his face, gently and tenderly rubbing it on to Brainy's face, and after it sets he then quickly pulls it back off, revealing the clunky makeup job that the filmmakers gave Brainy in an attempt to cover his real eyebrows and make it look as though his just had his facial hair pulled off. Just how many box tops did they save up to make this thing, anyway?

We then cut to Sheryl Crow rushing around mindlessly through the dark, apparently all around the town area without having the brains to realize that she should be running out of town as opposed to in circles within it. Suddenly the whole town lights up all by itself, and she stands there staring at it, instead of running away like she should be doing.

Next, we see that Girly has Brainy sitting in a sort of chair while wearing this funky thing on his head that makes him look like he's straight out of that one movie I once saw advertised at the front of the Heavy Metal movie videotape I rented back in the mid-90s that quoted Terry Gilliam as enjoying it so much, but for the life of me I can't recall what it was called... something to do with absorbing dreams from children or something, can't remember, but anyway, on its cover it had a brownish picture of some old guy with a similar contraption on his head, and it all looked remarkably similar to this scene right here, brown hues and all... but I'm wandering off track... okay whatever, back to the film at hand. Okay, so the hot wax is all nice and hot and boiling, all ready! Girly turns on his contraption, and Brainy relaxes as he gets a nice soothing wax shower.

Sheryl Crow is stupidly standing in place mindlessly goggling over the town lights instead of running as she should be doing, and despite being right next to the area where she came in, she sees the church and decides to head that way instead. She runs into the church yelling for help, until she looks around and sees that all the people there are also wax figures, including the priest. But you know something, in that earlier shot I'm pretty positive I saw that priest breathing, just as I saw that real old woman's hand moving. So I'm pretty sure that it's an attempt at a "trick photography" switcheroo, you know, like the dog bit in the House of Wax. I'm not rewinding to find out, though.

One of the arms falls off of one of the figures, and it's bloody, so obviously it used to be a real person, so Sheryl Crow screams. Yeah, we're dealing with a pair of real fruitcakes here. Nutty as fruitcakes to be sure, but not scary.

So that's when she discovers that the "funeral" was for Trudy, the twins' mother of course, and we see a wax figure of their mom lying in the casket. Meanwhile, here comes Greasy up the front walk. He enters, and wow, no trace of her. Of Sheryl, I mean, not the mom. He discovers the one statue's dislocated arm, then apologizes to his mother in the casket (???). Sheryl's clearly hiding, although where hasn't been revealed yet. Finally he finds her, of course, and she's... hiding under the priest's robes??? Geez, what do you wanna be he'll be pissed at her for that too, saying how sacreligeous she's being at the "funeral"? What, is he going to start calling her a "whore", too? I certainly wouldn't put it past this dumb script.

She gets away and runs out of the chapel, and we get a pretty cool bird's eye shot of her running down the street with him after her before he finally tackles her to the ground. He keeps trying to tell her to be quiet for whatever stupid reason he thinks is going through his peabrained head, and she sees the old woman pulling back the curtains in that one upstairs window again so she tries screaming for help. The old woman moves the curtain back into place. Meanwhile Greasy keeps going "shhh" like the stupid idiot that he is, and she demands to know what he's going to do to her.

We then see Baldy and Camera stopping the truck they're driving and getting out somewhere. It's at the creek that was seen at the very beginning, so of course they cross it. Hmm, and here I thought they were headed somewhere else. My bad. Oh well, just goes to show how little this movie is succeeding in holding my attention. Bleah.

Baldy carries Sheryl Crow by force into the gas station, pausing long enough to put on the radio for no apparent reason other than the filmmakers needed an excuse to shoehorn in a song to sell their soundtrack, and drags her downstairs.

I hereby quote Samantha from Night of The Comet: "So you get a lot of dates this way?"

Greasy then straps her down into some metal thing which I haven't the energy to figure out whatever the heck it is right now, nor do I really care, and he uses masking tape to tape her down to it. What the heck does this creep thing he's doing, anyway? He tapes her legs together (she's still fully clothed), she struggles and shrieks in terror doing her best to make this all look real, the whatever-it-is music is blaring and I'm reaching for the Advil. The things I do for my readers. Meanwhile upstairs, Baldy and Camera have shown up at the gas station looking for people outside. As they entering the station itself calling, Greasy hears them and immediately covers Sheryl Crow's mouth before she can call for help, then grabs some sharp tool of some kind and holds it up to her throat to threaten her into silence. One conclusion I can share with you people right now; this guy playing Greasy is one lousy actor.

Baldy and Camera are all perplexed by why there's music playing (that makes three of us!) but that no one's there. They then decide that the place is deserted as Baldy calmly decides to go to the grocery store to get something to drink. He and Camera split up, and Baldy goes to a grocery store. Finding it locked, he knocks on the door calling out that he's a paying customer who'd like to come in and buy something, and then the camera shows us an old tipped-over jar that once had something edible in it that's now filled with bugs just to demonstrate how long it has been since anyone has been inside there. And all I can think of is, hey, how much longer before this stupid movie is over anyway?

Camera is walking along alone and he sees the House of Wax off in the distance.

Greasy is now, of all things, using Krazy Glue to glue Sheryl Crow's lips together. When she starts to go, "No, you can't do--" he interrupts with, "Shh, it's okay," and does it anyway. Uh, what is it about all of this that makes this "okay"? For that matter, what is it about ANY of this movie that makes it "okay"? Nothing? It's weird and stupid and ridiculous! I've seen better acting and writing in a school play. Anyway, after doing so, he leans in like he's going to kiss her but ends up just blowing on the glue to try to get it to dry faster. Weird, weird, weird. Then he kisses her forehead (??!?!?!!!) and leaves her there, shutting the door behind her. None of this is making any sense whatsoever. I gotta hand it to that actress though, she's sure trying to make this look real, maybe with a little luck she'll finally get to be in some other movie where she can get to do something else other than this slop.

Greasy walks outside the gas station and locks it, and up behind him comes Baldy. "Hey! I'm looking for my sister, and her boyfriend." As he tries to question Greasy, we see down below that Sheryl Crow hears him and is frantically trying to get his attention somehow. Greasy's denying everything, of course. Wow, she's almost complete loose! Way to go! She actually reaches up and sticks her finger through a grating, trying to signal him. "What was that?" asks Baldy. "Nothing, that was just my dog," replies Greasy, as he looks down and sees what Sheryl Crow's doing. While he distracts Baldy, he actual reaches down and prepares to snip her finger off??!?!?!?!!!!!!!?!!!!!!!!!!!

(!!!)

Okay folks, you'll all please excuse me if I don't watch that part, I don't care how fake that may look, I have no desire to find out right now.

Okay, that part's over, and Baldy's been acting suspicious the whole while and so far has been acting like he has more brains than all the rest of them put together. Sheryl Crow manages to open her mouth and scream for help, and the minute she does, Baldy starts a fight with Greasy, 'cause remember, he's The Tough Guy (TM), remember? He manages to get into the gas station and lock Greasy out, then rushes over to the car door and keeps it down before Greasy can get in that way, locking it as well.

"Nick!" "Carly!" "I'm downstairs!" Being The Tough Guy (TM) that he is, Baldy kicks in the door. He quickly lets her out and gets all the tape and junk off of her as she answers his questions while bandaging her hand.

We then cut to more ominous music as we see a close up of the House of Wax words over said building's main entrance, and it turns out Camera has gone into it to investigate. "Hello? Hello, anyone here?" He sees all the wax stuff, of course, but is far more interested in trying to find Brainy and Sheryl Crow, and... hey, I just noticed something! For a split second off in the distance you can see inside the kitchen just beyond Camera, and the statue Sheryl Crow knocked over is standing up again and in one piece! !CONTINUITY ERROR ALERT! Anyways, he keeps looking around... and guess who he finds!

It's BRAINY! Sitting at the piano just like before, albeit quiet for once and not getting into stuff, so right off the bat you just know that means somethings wrong with him, heh heh. And that's when he sees that Brainy has been one hundred percent IMPROVED by having been turning into a wax figure, and the eyes move, which is supposed to mean he's still alive, only the eyes are clearly fake and either mechanical or puppetlike as they move back into place! So yeah, this whole bit is just as fake and hokey as the whole baggie-of-fake-blood-inside-the-pantleg bit, in fact it's so obviously phoney and cheap-looking that I'm actually tempted to go back and take a look at that finger snipping back there after all just to see if it looks just as ridiculous... nah, on second though, no. I mean hey, what if I'm wrong? After all, you can't UNSEE what you've already seen, right?

So Camera says don't worry, he's gonna get him out, and starts to peel off the "skin" of what is obvious a fake dummy of the actor, and it's supposed to be all bloody underneath it, but it's obviously all plastic, fake blood and, yes, wax. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" he keeps saying as he keeps trying to pull the wax off while continuing to make it worse. What a fool! Would you let this puffhead rescue you? And besides, why would he want to? This is the best we've seen Brainy act and behave in the whole dumb movie! Thank GOD he's not jabbering and nosing around like he was ALL THROUGH THE WHOLE FIRST HALF OF THE FILM! What a relief!

Now for a split second, we see Brainy's real eyes with fake tears coming out (an extreme closeup) when Girly-Girly suddenly appears to make a slashing motion, but when he (?) makes his (?) appearance (we see him from behind), I swear to God that for a second I thought it was a woman! Geez, Girly, you're just all girly-girly-girly all over arentcha? So anyway, Girly looks more girly than ever and in the process we immediately see the dummy's "face" get partially chopped off, and the eyes are all wooden again. I'm surprised this thing isn't merely PG-13 considering how fake this production looks.

Okay ladies and gentlemen, curiosity finally got the better of me. After typing that last paragraph, I actually got the courage to go look at the finger snipping bit again and yes, it too looks absolutely fake with an obvious plaster finger that was hollow and filled with fake blood. It didn't even twitch, geez! Well, I'm glad it looked fake too for my sake, lol! Okay, it's official, this movie is flat out cheap almost to the point of a film like She (1985).

Girly chases Camera into the kitchen, where he starts wildly flinging random objects at Girly in self defense. Is that plastic kitchenware he's hurling at Girly? Sure looks like it, or maybe it's wooden. Anyway, he then dashes down some sort of passage leading down, and you can see wax faces in the wall, etc. etc., yaaaawn, whatevER you stupid movie, you're seriously boring the living daylights out of me. Candles all over the place, which again raises the question of why this place doesn't melt to the ground... Girly knocks Camera down the stairs, and of course Girly is taking his Girly time coming sloooowly down the steps after him just to give the camera an excuse to give an "intensifying" shot and also to give Camera enough time to look terrified and try to lamely back up a bit... Girly then decapitates Camera, I guess, with what appears to be a pair of shears with handles designed to look like a dragon (???!??!?!?!?!!!!!!). Where the heck did he supposedly get that? The handle's clearly plastic, so he didn't make it... anyway, we don't see the actual decapitating, it's offscreen. I repeat: whatever. So anyway, wait, now Girly pulls the body away without the head, and we see left behind a very obviously robotic replica of Camera's head blinking for the camera.

Cut to Baldy trying to bandage up Sheryl Crow's hand the best he can. They then get all alert as they hear a noise up about ground. "He's leaving," Baldy remarks unnecessarily as we then see a yellow pickup up on the street pull away. So then they both head upstairs, and I'm wondering if it's worth bothering to get up to get some water or something, no, doing so means I'll have to pause this thing even if only for a few seconds, and that means it'll delay its finishing up no matter how small a diff it makes... because I'm getting more and more anxious for this thing to be OVER with... anyway, the coast seems to be clear as Baldy ges a large wrench for a weapon I guess, and the two are all going on about how everyone's wax and all that, and now they're investigating the old woman seen earlier, only this time it's a wax dummy moving the curtain even though earlier in the film it was clearly a real person. Just like the attempt with the dog. Yawn, I'm like sooooo impressed, can I finish up this stupid movie now?

We then jump over to the campsite where we hear they're still playing music there, and the cell phone is still outside where the radio is while Blake and Paris@ are in the tent. Personally, I tend to keep my phone close to me at all times, but never mind. Inside, they're still making disinterested attempts at kissing before Paris@ leans back with this total expression that smirks, "Are we DONE now?" So Paris@ now sits up and makes a big thing out of removing her jogging suit, and yeesh is she ever scrawny. Not to be mean, but really, she is raw-ther scrawny. Not to mention her facial expressions are really boring. Blake looks like he's wincing with "Euuuuu..." as she continues. She's now in her underwear while Blake tries really hard to make it look like he likes what he sees as he says "Come here, sexy" in the most stilted voice I've ever heard in all my life. Paris then lies down next to him and very quickly kisses him while still making it all too clear that she's only doing it because the director wants her to, and that's when the music stops right on cue, so of course Blake gets all annoyed and goes out to investigate while she's all going, "Goddamn it, Blake, I need to talk to you for a minute! Blake!" and I'm sure she's going to say, "We can't continue doing this, it's embarrassing and you kiss like a fish, so if they make us do this one more time I say we WALK."

But before she can, Blake sees that the radio was merely just turned off by someone (oh, the terror!), then finally discovers the messages on his phone. See, that's the whole reason why I always keep my phone with me at all times, Blake. Fool. He then hears Sheryl Crow's earlier attempt at message-leaving, and meanwhile Paris@ turns off the light in the tent and lies down to sleep. And then just as quickly notices that (like, DUH!) it's quiet outside and that Blake isn't back yet or making any noise! Gee, what's a Paris@ to do?

Why, go back to sleep, of course! Haha, betcha thought she was going to go investigate, right? Not our Paris@! She'll sleep through it all, thank you very much, after all, she's so above dealing with stressful situations like this. Uh oh. Here comes somebody into the tent anyway, "Blake?" No, it's GIRLY! Paris SCREAMS with all her might, "NO! UGH! THAT'S THE LAST STRAW, MR. DIRECTOR! I WON'T DO IT, I AM NOT A LESBIAN!"

Well, no, she doesn't scream that, but okay, she does scream, and she scrambles to get out of the tent, trips, falls over, and discovers a robotic Blake dead on the ground with a knife in his neck. She gets up and runs off into the night.

And then we see Girly's boot step on the knife in robotic Blake's neck. Charming.

And this whole situation is of course the signal that the audience is finally going to get to see what they paid for! Except for me, of course. lol.

Paris@ is running through the dark, and the music is trying really hard to add to the tension, but the funny thing is that she doesn't look the least bit terrified, she just looks like she's running, like the director's shouting, "Run over there! Look over there!" That sort of thing. And I have the feeling that's exactly what's happening. Paris@ clearly can't emote, lol. She runs up to a building and looks disinterestedly around for a quick second before entering.

This is ridiculous. There is absolutely nothing about her to suggest she's frightened in the least; only stilted, somewhat bored trotting through the building with a bored look on her face. What an actress, lol. She collapses near some sort of dead end in a limp sort of way, and we see a light on her face, and she's got fake tears that are supposedly to make her look scared and crying but I've honestly seen better acting in college classes. The lights all go on. Ooh. Aah.

Paris@ looks stiffy around and discovers a box filled with cell phones, and of coure you just know she can't resist cell phones! "Britney! Like, HI! Guess what? I'm in this really stupid movie and it's getting kind of dumb and grody and fake looking, and I'm like SO bored running through this stupid empty building and I forgot my purse and everything! Let's go CLUBBING!"

Well, actually that's the first thought I had going through my mind watching her go through this box of phones, really. That, and "OmiGAWD, it's a PHONE SALE! Ya got pink?" Well (ahem), so she stands up, obviously none of the phone were to her liking, and awkwardly plods up a staircase. You'd think she's walking through mud the way she's stepping around here. She goes up to a part of an old metal pipelike railing and just pulls a part of it off to use as a weapon to defend herself? Uh, geez Paris@, that somehow just fails to ring true for me. I personally doubt you could have done that that easily. Tug and pull and maybe pry it out, yes. But not just walk up to it and give a slight tug.

She's carefully searching around trying to see if she can spot her pursuer, and for a moment she's on a safe solid floor. Then she stupidly walks across a grating area of it, and a knife shoots up through the grating area at her heel. She screams, and actually it happens so fast I can't quite tell how it happened, I just now went back for a second look and it's so fast I still can't tell, only that it really didn't slice her heel. It's trying to do it again and again, oh wait, now I see, it wasn't solid floor after all, the whole landing she's standing on's like that. Makes more sense. She goes back down the staircase but is curiously taking her time while doing so, I would have moved a heck of a lot quicker than that. She goes to an old car, lamely tries its door but it's locked I guess. She trots to another one, this one opens, so she gets into it, closes but does NOT lock it, then lays low in the front seat... and no, guys, please don't start making dirty wisecracks about that, okay? I mean, didn't we already have enough of that sort of thing back at the beginning of all this?

So anyway, there's Paris@ laying low in the front seat of the car, and she's trying to keep an eye out, but doesn't see anyone yet. Okay, now she's lying down and panting and sweating in such a way that I'm seriously starting to wonder if she's trying to attract Girly after all (or any of the guys in the audience, for that matter). Well, I'm sure lots of you can make all sorts of jokes about how panting, sweating and lying down waiting are her chief acting assets, but not moi.

Ok, THERE he is. Finally. She sees him just out the opposite side of the windshield. And reflected in the rearview mirror. He's just a-passing by. And I'm wondering if people in the audience would take this scene and substitute its soundtrack for something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon score.

Suddenly, he bursts through the driver's door and she lamely tries to poke him back with that stick... uh nope, keeping my mouth shut here about that situation being totally backwards... so she gets out of the car and runs off while he goes around to the opposite side and takes out the stick himself because she was too stupid to take it with her... and she hides behind a car. He's still stomping around. She looks under the car but can't see his boots, then as carefully as she can attempts to peer up and through the car window she's under (she's at the driver's side), and suddenly in one throw Girly throws the stick like a javelin right THROUGH BOTH CAR WINDOWS THROUGH HER SKULL..??!?!

Now, wait a minute here.

Just let's back up the Reality Train here a bit. Who IS this guy, a trainee for the Olympics or something? That's so impossible it's not even funny, even if the car windows were old. I mean, that's just a complete stretch any way you look at it! But hey, oh well, I suppose they had to do it some flashy way or another I guess, since after all this is the movie's BIG moment and all... and, as I mentioned before at the beginning, as I understand it paid critics all claimed that when this scene happened the audiences they were all attending the screenings with broke out into loud enthusiastic applause. And as Girly approaches her shishkebobbed body, as I heard it explained to me, the death pose here and this whole scene is meant to be a deliberate pun on some pose or action she was doing in that online porn clip she's so notorious for, or some such thing... I don't know... but anyway hey, you all got what you wanted, can we all go home now?

Ugh, I suppose not, otherwise this commentary will only be two-thirds or so of the way complete... snooore...

Okay, back on the main street to finish this up. Baldy and Sheryl Crow are all sneaking around now, geez, why don't they just leave? Oh, turns out Baldy's pissed, he's getting weapons, a crossbow, whatever, I can't bring myself to care or think about it anymore, I suppose he thinks he's gonna rescue everyone, I don't know, who cares. So now Greasy's appeared out of nowhere to shoot at them again, and they go run into the theater to hide. Of course, it's filled with wax figures too. And remember, Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? was what's playing there, so we see Betty Davis up there on the screen and all. Greasy goes in after them. You know, the more this thing goes on, the less and less it makes any sort of logical sense.

You won't be surprised in the least I'm sure when I say that Baldy and Sheryl Crow are both pretending to be statues sitting in the theater. When Greasy finally locates Sheryl Crow, he shoots at her, but she ducks. then from elsewhere Baldy shoots an arrow straight into Greasy, so Greasy's all in pain on the ground while they rush out. Greasy fires after them, but hits the statue of the usher instead, and bugs come out. Ew. Greasy follows them through the exit.

Out comes Greasy, ZING goes Baldy's crossbow, FWIT goes another arrow into Greasy, who falls over on to his back. Now they're looking Greasy over. Baldy takes Greasy's rifle and empties it. Sheryl Crow checks Greasy's pockets, doesn't appear to find anything. I hate to say this, but personally, I think Baldy should have used the rifle to blow Greasy to kingdom come and really make sure he was dead. But he doesn't. Which of course means Greasy is gonna pop up again at least one more time, that's how this sort of scriptwriting works, you know.

Okay, I think I'm in the home stretch now, let's see the House melt and call it a day!

Hurry UP, movie! >:(

They leave the theater, and now they're heading towards Greasy's house, and they're going on about whatever or some such, blah blah blah, Baldy's all determined, Sheryl insists she's coming with him, they check the truck, Baldy's heading towards the house again, oh whatEVER people, just melt the dumb House of Wax down and be DONE with it, for God's sake! I'm getting impatient here!

Now they're in the kitchen, they're all sneaking around in the dark, they try a telephone, I guess it doesn't work, no one seems to be there of course, now they're trying to bust through something or other, she grabs a baseball bat, they discover some old newspaper clippings about how the bad guys were once siamese twins but were separated in a "controversial procedure" and we see a photo of what's supposed to be them as infants still joined but it is SO obviously photoshopped. Geez, I can't recall by now whether I've already asked this question or not, but I'll say it anyway; just HOW many box tops did they save up to make this stupid movie anyway?!

The front door bursts open. They both hide. See, what did I tell you? It's Greasy, stumbling in even though he's still got arrows in him. Point proven, I stand corrected. Sheryl Crow crawls under what appears to be a pool table as Greasy stumbles into the kitchen. He's at the sink getting the arrows out of himself and screaming, and crudely bandaging the wounds. Meanwhile, Baldy has secretly discovered a trap door. Sheryl's still hiding. Yup, it's a pool table.

Meanwhile, Girly shows up in the yellow pickup truck (???) and we see the dead bodies of everybody else in the back of it. So does Sheryl, who's understandably horrified. She keeps the baseball bat close to her while hiding under the table as Greasy lumbers into the room and sees out the window that Girly's home.

Greasy opens a door and shouts out to him that he's not supposed to leave anywhere without him, how stupid Girly is, and Girly goes into the kitchen, Greasy treats him lousy as Girly lights a candle, takes out a spoon, and proceeds to do his Girly Boy Makeup (TM). Greasy's starts going on about how pur-ty Girly looks with his Girly Boy Makeup (TM) job, ugh, that really wasn't a scene I needed to see or hear before dinnertime. Next thing you know Girly's gonna put on a dress and sing "You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman".

Greasy goes over near the pool table and discovers the babies photograph on the floor, so even he obviously realizes that means that someone's there. He looks around, searches under the pool table, but luckily Sheryl Crow's not there anymore, instead she's sneaking up a staircase towards a door, baseball bat firmly in tow, armed and ready. She is suddenly grabbed from behind, but it's only Baldy. "GEEZ, Baldy, don't DO that!"

Now they're going into the next room and down again through the trap door Badly discovered, must be the same one that opened up behind Brainy way back there all that time ago... now they're downstairs, and because they can't see anything according to Baldy, they start stupidly playing with the fuse switches. This causes all the lights and power throughout the entire town to go berzerk. We briefly see some sort of mechanical thing turn on over in the pet shop where the puppies are, by the way, and a tail starts wagging, so I suppose that's meant to say they're fake or whatever, obviously they're not wax due to the way they're moving, but I don't care by this point about any of this stuff in this stupid town anymore, and I still say this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen in ages.

Naturally, all this brohuhaha means that the brothers upstairs see it and know someone's down there, and meantime Baldy and Sheryl Crow discover Camera coated with wax in the same chair Brainy was in. Baldy walks up and tries to get him out, but of course the whole head comes off since Camera was decapitated earlier, which of course means Girly went back for the head and had planned to properly include it with the rest of Camera's body for display. How thoughtful.

Here comes Girly down the hall brandishing various sharp objects, and right after I typed that sentence Sheryl shows, "That's Vincent!" as if to correct me. Jeez, everybody's a critic.

Both of them are fighting Vincent, and a fire gets started in the process. A bad one. "Nick! Let's get out of here! Hurry!" Yeah, that's right, better hurry out, because this must be the one scene I was waiting for, to see the whole surrealistic sight of that House of Wax building start melting down! About time, too. Heaven knows nothing else of any interest is going on here.

Sheryl and Baldy run upstairs, through the kitchen, see Brainy still sitting there and she gasps, "No!", apparently just as amazed as I am at just how much nicer and quieter (not to mention calmer) he now is. But now they're fighting Greasy as Baldy shouts obscene insults at him, and she actually jumps in after a moment's hesitation to start duking it out with Greasy herself, much to her credit. Interestingly, she started doing so only after I had muttered aloud to myself, "Geez, you just gonna stand there?" while I watched. Clearly she's grown to strongly respect my advice by this point.

Meanwhile, downstairs Girly uses a mattress to help himself cross the fire there, and now we see the fire from that area below is beginning t0 melt the main floor. They're all still fighting, by the way. The fire's spreading in the meantime, and everything, and I mean everything, is starting to seriously melt all around them. I'm not going to go on about details of the fight, it's just your basic fight, although I must admit Sheryl does a great job pounding away at Greasy with the baseball bat, since she's obviously now following my advice again and making sure he's dead this time. Which he is.

Girly comes up, discovers Greasy's a stiff, and moans in rage (?). He starts chasing Sheryl Crow up the stairs, Baldy can't follow them up because he got his leg injured some way or other I can't recall, so he keeps calling out to Girly, who ignores him and marches up the steps towards Sheryl anyway. Oh, now I see. Baldy's got a knife in his leg and is doing his best to remove it. Meanwhile, the melting commences.

Sheryl Crow rushes into a bedroom, still with her baseball bat. She closes the door behind her and leans against it, suddenly realizing she's in a room with a wax bed and a cradle with two wax replicas of the babies as siamese twins in it. Seems to me a certain couple of people have been a little obsessed.

Baldy is managing up the stairs while we see Greasy's body is going to opposite direction (oooh, SYMBOLISM!), namely, through the floor. The steps are melting under his feet now.

Sheryl Crow pushes the crib up against the bedroom door (the floor it skids across is melting as well) trying to keep Girly out. But Girly dramatically cuts his way through the door, symbolically cutting through the two siamese twin figures in the process while some Tim Burton-like music starts playing again in the background. OH, how very clever. (Insert rolling eyes here.)

Sheryl gets her baseball bat ready for a grand slam as Girly peels his way in. And then she does something which really doesn't surprise me; she actually tries to reason with him in a frantic rush. At one point she dodges him by climbing over the wax bed, but it's melting under her too, and frankly, I'm surprised she doesn't get stuck in it. The wax is melting everywhere now, and we can see the wax melting off the "statue"'s actual corpses. Baldy's trying really hard to get up to his sister. It's not surprising that her trying to frantically reason with Girly didn't work, but frankly I don't blame her in the least, I have the feeling I would have tried to same thing in her position.

Baldy's here now, and now he and Girly are fighting, and in the process Girly's mask gets ripped off and we see how naturally deformed his face is. Sheryl manages to get the knife out of Baldy's leg, Girly swings at her, and Sheryl Crow uses the knife to kill Girly while he was attempting to kill Baldy. Girly's finally dead, gets pushed away through the floor, falls down below, to join his brother's body, landing on him in such a way that they're going to die in the exact same position they were born in. Again, more SYMBOLISM. At the same time, both Sheryl and Baldy had fallen below to the top of the stairs as well.

The whole places is freaking out now, everything is melting everywhere at a rapid rate, it's actually pretty fascinating to watch, now we're seeing outside shots of the building itself melting, which is pretty cool, the two are literally digging their way through the wax wall to escape and making a hole right between the A and the X of the building's outdoor sign, now they're climbing out right as the whole place is melting uncontrollably, and suddenly this film has visually become much more interesting. Really interesting is how the sign part they're in ends up melting in such a way that it acts like an elevator and gently lowers them to the ground. How convenient, LOL! Ah, Hollywood.

Once on the ground, they get to a safe distance, and frankly I'm surprised they're not getting burned all over the place what with how much wax they've going through that's just gotten finished melting on to the ground. They watch the place dramatically finish self-destructing, and they we cut to the next day when there are police cars everywhere and an ambulance there. Geez, where were all you guys earlier?

Baldy and Sheryl Crow are in the back of the ambulance, and they notice that one of the cops has Camera's camera. "Hey, that's my friends camera!" Baldy protests. The cop explains that it's evidence now, and asks if they're okay, assuring that they'll get to the hospital. Sheryl Crow asks the cop how they could not have known about "all of this". The cop explains that the town is "hard as hell to get to", that it's been abandoned for ten years, blah blah blah, and Sheryl's got this totally annoyed look on her face like yeah yeah, whatever, I couldn't care less, shut up you old goat, you should have been here yesterday, otherwise I'd still have my finger, etc. etc. etc. Anyway the cop concludes that they wouldn't even had known if it weren't for all the smoke and the fire, and Sheryl Crow just looks sooooo unimpressed by this explanation.

The ambulance pulls away, and it turns out Baldy snuck Camera's camera back from the cop,he says it felt wrong leaving it behind. Sheryl asks him if he's okay. He says yeah, then we flash over to the cop getting a report over his walkie-talkie that the parents of the siamese twins had actually had three kids, not just the two brothers. Oh GOD, NO, don't tell me we're gonna get that old ambulance-driver-is-the-third-kid-and-is-gonna-drive-them-off-to-their-doom bit again???

Oh good. Turns out they're not going to do that after all, the film shows us that the "third kid" was that nosepicking Weirdo who first gave them that one ride in the first place, and he's got the dog with him waving goodbye as they drive off to the hospital, so they're safe in the end after all. Wow, I forgot all about him. That means the filmmakers tried to leave the door open for a sequel which (thankfully) never materialized. And that also means that the puppies in the window were real after all (equally thankfully).

And now FINALLY, THANK GOD I AM SO RELIEVED, THIS STUPID MOVIE is FINALLY OVER!!! WOOHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay everybody, as you can clearly see, I was both annoyed and bored by this thing. I really can't recommend it, and the cool music of course can be bought separately. I'm not sure if "pretentious" is the proper term to apply here, but it sure was stupid. What should we classify it as? Clearly it's not a proper "remake", nor is it really much of an "imagining". So what's say we simply call it "stupid" and call it a day? Yeah, that sounds about right.

And now if you'll all excuse me, I gotta go get rid of this thing. For my next running commentary, I've decided I'm going to tackle Spice World, which if anything has the potential of being far more terrifying than this dirtwad could ever hope of being, if you know what I mean! LOL! Do I DARE take this approach with Spice World? Will I even SURVIVE such an onslaught? We shall see...

See you then! ;-D