Nightmare in Wax

So the latest movie I watched in the Walmart Gorehouse Greats collection was called Nightmare in Wax. I was apprehensive at first because I thought it might be similar to Paris Hilton's movie House of Wax. There are some similarities between the two movies, but I think I actually liked House of Wax better, because at least I got to see Paris Hilton get murdered in a hilarious fashion. This film only has one murder, and it is not particularly hilarious.
The movie opens at some sort of party to celebrate the engagement of two actors, Tony DEan and Marie Morgan. The party is hosted by producer Max Black, who is wearing creepy sunglasses that made me think he was blind at first. Now, I actually had to glean these names from the closing credits, because the sound quality of this movie is atrocious and I could not understand a lot of the dialogue. Based on the rest of the movie, I don't think I was missing much. After the party Tony gets dropped off in a parking garage, and the camera becomes the point of view of someone following him. Right before Tony enters an elevator, he turns to face the camera and recognizes whoever it is, shortly before being hypodermic needled and falling to the ground. The title credits then roll over the elevator door repeatedly closing on his limp body in the doorframe, which I personally found hilarious. It then cuts to a wax museum, where the caretaker is leading a tour group. This caretaker is actually my favorite character, he's funny, he's charming, and he isn't as obnoxiously angsty as every other character in the movie. It's a shame he only gets a few minutes of screentime. The latest exhibit at the museum is a set of wax figures of a group of recently disappeared celebrities, to which Tony Dean is soon to be added. Apparently, the police found this just as suspicious as I did and deployed Detective Haskill and his less important partner, Detective Carver. They meet with the master sculptor of the wax museum, a mysterious looking dude with an eyepatch and what are apparently supposed to be burns on his face. The detectives question him, and we see a flashback of the eyepatch guy, who I eventually determined was named Vincent Rinard, before he got the burns and pirate monocle. Apparently he used to be the head makeup artist for Max Black and was in love with Marie Morgan. However when they got to Max, who used to date Marie I guess (like I said, I couldn't understand a lot of the dialogue), he tossed a glass of adult beverage at Vince's face as he was lighting a cigar, causing his head to burst into flames and prompting him to fall screaming out of a window into a convenient swimming pool. After this flashback, the detectives leave Vincent alone after he subtly hints that Max probably did it, and he begins talking to a creepy, very realistic wax head of a blonde woman. Oh, and also he collects shrunken heads, though this isn't really important to the plot beyond establishing him even further as a creepy motherfucker. We then see another flashback of Vincent in the hospital, with bandages covering his face clutching some sort of statue of a head. Marie says something to him about him ignoring her and he smashes the head on the ground. Back in the present, Marie calls up Vincent and says she wants to talk about something. After he gets off the phone with her, it is revealed that Tony Dean is still alive, though he is blue for some reason and has a cut up face. He also keeps mumbling "Hello Marie" over and over again. Then Max decides to pay Marie a visit to try and convince her to be in the new Alfred Herman suspense picture. I'm guessing the name is a shout out to Alfred Hitchcock. Marie refuses because of her grief over the disappearance of Tony. Max begs her to reconsider, claiming that his backers will withdraw from the project if she's not in it. Then Vincent shows up and he and Max have an awkward "Remember that time you set my face on fire" moment. Max leaves and Vincent gives Marie an extremely awkward kiss where he basically grabbed her chin and smushed her face into his. He then takes a seat and she asks him about the wax figure of Tony Dean he is "working on". She wants to have it for herself, and though Vince warns her that she might become a creepy recluse who talks to inanimate objects, you know, like him, he agrees. However, in exchange he wants Marie to model for a new wax figure, which she agrees to, apparently not finding itcreepy at all. That night, the caretaker, Nick, while on his rounds of chatting up the wax figures in a way that is way less creepy than what Vince does, notices that one of the figures of the recently disappeared celbrities blinked at him several times. He goes to tell VIncent, who assures him that he is a filthy, filthy drunk and is seeing things. Nick believes him for some reason, despite being completely sober, and agrees not to tell anyone about it. Once Nick leaves, Vincent has a villainous expository monologue where he tells the wax head he's been talking to that he is actually keeping the celebrities in stasis with some sort of mind control zombie serum. Apparently, if he orders them to stand completely still and not breathe, they will, in fact, not suffocate a few minutes later. Because of science. He then goes to some sort of bar, and we learn that the wax head is actually modelled after a showgirl named Theresa. After she is done dancing she goes and talks to Vincent, revealing that she is incredibly dumb and has an annoying voice. Oh, and also she is an aspiring actress who knows Max Black. She agrees to bring Max by the Wax Museum that night once Vincent finishes her figure. We then cut to the movie set, where Max and Alfred Herman discuss how to get Marie to appear in the picture. They somehow settle on filming part of it at the Wax Museum as a tribute to Tony Dean. I'm nto sure how that works, but OK. So Alfred goes over there and has a nice conversation with Vince about VInce's research into hypnosis and putting people in stasis. Alfred finds nothing weird about that at all and leaves shortly after. That night, Theresa and Max drive over to the Museum, while being followed by a mysterious white car. They get there and go into Vince's workshop, which looks suspiciously like a mad scientist's lab (probably because that's basically what it is). Vince shows off the wax head, and Theresa is fucking orgasmic over how great it is. Vince then serves them wine to celebrate. However, the wine is drugged! Max is paralyzed and Vince takes the opportunity to reveal his nefarious plan, removing the sheet over Tony Dean's head and informing them that he is still alive. Unfortunately, Theresa did not drink her wine so Vince decides to kill her. What follows is the most retardedly drawn out scenes of a killer stalking an attractive blonde woman I have ever seen. She trips over things, she screams, he follows at an excruciatingly slow pace, she fails to escape anyway. There's even a part where he actualyl puts a mask on his hand, and comes up behind her to scare her with it. All done with a completely serious expression on his face. At one point you think he's got her when he gets a noose around her neck but she screams and gyrates her way out of it. Finally, Vince catches up to her and for some reason they make out. Just as Theresa thinks it was all some weird joke, BAM! he murders the shit out of her. Vince then injects Max with the zombie serum, while the producer tells him that he will never get away with it. This isn't just generic good guy rhetoric, as it turns out the white car following him was the two detectives from earlier. Vince takes Theresa's body and steals Max's car, leading the detectives away. During the ensuing chase scene, Vince's creepiness factor skyrockets as he begins talking to the dead body, calling her Marie, and even kissing her at one point. He asks her to scream at one point and then confuses the police siren with a scream, prompting him to cackle maniacally. Finally the chase ends at a dock, and Vince leaves the car. The detectives find the dead body and then go after him. Susoense ensues. The detectives wander into a warehouse, Vince locks them in, and then they easily escape minutes later. He throws a tire into the water to... okay I don't know what he was doing there. Then the detectives wander into the exact same warehouse and he locks them in again. This time, however, they do not escape for some reason and Vince gets away. What follows is an extremely odd scene of Vince just walking along the beach at sunrise. I... don't... know. The next day Marie learns that Max is suspected of murdering Theresa and has disappeared. The Detectives once again pay a visit to the museum, and after remarking that it would be a really weird coincidence if Vince was already working on a MAx figure, they find Max's head, dressed up wit ha clown nose and wig. Seriously. The Detectives leave again, but Haskill decides to hide out in the museum unti after it closes. Marie arrives at the museum and Vince proceeds to lock her in a cabinet, exposing only her head, which is apparently what he has been keeping Tony and Max in. He allows his zombies to breathe and move and then prepares to enact his vengeance on Max by lowerign him slowly into a vat of molten wax. At this point, Detective Haskill notices the other celebrity figures moving into the lab and follows them, where he is thwarted in his attempts to stop them by having his gun knocked into the vat by a knife wielding zombie celebrity. That was a fun sentence to type. The other zombies restrain Haskill as Vince continues to gloat. Suddenly, Max bursts out laughing, and begins taunting Vince. Vince, being an idiot, lunges at him, despite the fact that he is suspended over a god damn vat of molten wax. Vince falls into the vat, and his life flashes before his eyes while the images of the rest of the characters appear above him, all laughing. Then, just like that, the movie ends. WHAT!?! I give this movie a 2 out of 5 for entertainment and a 2 out of 5 for technical skill.