Horror Film Review: Wax Mask (dir by Sergio Stivaletti)

Posted on October 11, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1997 Italian horror film, Wax Mask, takes place in Rome at the turn of the 20th Century.

The film opens in 1900, with a young girl named Sonia witnessing the murder of her parents by a man with an iron claw and a wax mask. 12 years later, Sonia (Romina Mondello) steps into a Rome’s newest sensation, a wax museum where all of the wax figures appear to either be victims or murderers. The museum is meant to scare people. One man accepted a dare to spend the night in the museum and he was found dead the next morning, frightened to death. Sonia’s not interested in being scared. She just needs a job. Her mother taught her how to make clothes for wax figures. The owner of the museum, Boris (Robert Hossein), hires her.

When Sonia leaves the museum, her picture is taken by Andrea (Riccardo Serventi Longhi), a reporter who is investigating the mysterious deaths that have been connected to the museum. Meanwhile, Inspector Lanvin (Aldo Massasso) contacts Sonia to let her know that he’s following up some new leads concerning the still-unsolved deaths of her parents. He seems quite concerned about her working at the museum. When Lanvin later turns up dead, Sonia becomes concerned as well.

You can probably guess where all of this is going. Wax Mask is a remake of House of Wax, with the action moved to Rome and also with a lot more nudity and considerably more gore. The murders are brutal and bloody and the same can be said of what Sonia discovers when she starts to take a closer look at the wax figures in the museum. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this film is the idea that the wax figures are actually suspended in a state between life and death, aware of what is happening but unable to move, speak, or do anything about it. Wax Mask is a frequently diverting throwback to the bloody but atmospheric giallo films of the 70s. Suspense is mixed with special effects, some of which are more effective than others.

Wax Mask was originally meant to be Lucio Fulci’s final film. Dario Argento saw his old cinematic rival, Lucio Fulci, in 1994, by which point Fulci was using a wheelchair and was in frequent pain. Thinking that working on a movie might be good for Fulci’s state-of-mind and overall health, Argento agreed to produce Fulci’s next film. The idea that they came up with was to remake House of Wax. While Argento wanted to concentrate on spectacular death scenes, Fulci wrote a script that emphasized atmosphere over blood. Tragically, Fulci died in 1997 while the film was still in pre-production. Argento replaced Fulci with Sergio Stivaletti, a special effects artist who has worked on several Argento films.

Stivaletti rewrote the script and put the emphasis back on the special effects. (In the end, the killer has as much in common with The Terminator than with a traditional giallo killer.) Stivaletti does a good job directing the film. There are plenty of scary scenes. The film looks good. Even the special effect shots that don’t quite work still have a certain charm to them. That said, it’s hard to watch the film without thinking about what Fucli, at his best, could have done with the material.

In the end, though, Wax Mask is an effective work of late era Italian horror.

The TSL Grindhouse: Robowar (dir by Bruno Mattei)

Posted on July 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

After some men go missing in the jungles of an isolated island, a group of mercenaries is assigned to search the jungle, battle the guerillas who control the island, and rescue the missing. Accompanying the mercenaries is a shifty CIA agent who seems to know more than he’s letting on. What the mercenaries soon discover is that the guerillas aren’t the only threat that they have to worry about. There’s a shadowy figure stalking them. Equipped with state-of-the-art weaponry and encased in impenetrable armor, this figure is following them like some sort of preda–

Wait. Does this sound familiar?

The 1988 film, Robowar, is an unapologetic rip-off of the Predator. Directed by Bruno Mattei and written by Troll 2 director Claudio Fragasso (who also plays this film’s version of the Predator), Robowar is such a rip-off of the Predator that it even ends with an end credits sequence in which we see clips of each actor stalking through the jungle. Reb Brown plays Murphy Black, the head of the mercenaries, and he spends a lot of his time shrilly shouting at them to “Move! Move! Move!” Catherine Hickland plays the head of a local orphanage. She introduces herself as “Virginia” and is called “Virginia” throughout the film but the end credits insist that her character was actually named “Virgin.” The other mercenaries are played by a combination of American and Italian stuntmen and some of them vaguely resemble their better-known counterparts from Predator. Max Laurel, who plays the group’s fearless tracker, looks like he could have been distantly related to Sonny Landham. Massimo Vanni and Romano Puppo play two mercenaries who have a relationship that’s similar to the friendship between Jesse Ventura and Bill Duke. Of course, in anyone really makes an impression, it’s Mel Davidson as the group’s government handler and who spends the whole movie smiling while delivering lines about how the entire group is doomed, himself included. It’s such an odd performance that it becomes rather fascinating.

What type of film is Robowar? It hits all of the same plot points as Predator but it does it with a much lower budget. Indeed, the film’s opening sequence appears to be made up of footage lifted from Mattei’s earlier film, Strike Commando. Whenever we see the action through the killer robot’s eyes, Mattei gives the action an extreme orange tint that makes it impossible to actually tell what’s going on. Reb Brown spends a lot of time yelling but the same thing could be said for the entire cast. This is one of those films where no one fires a machine gun without screaming while doing so. And yet, because it’s a Mattei film, it’s always watchable. Bruno Mattei (who born 92 years ago today in Rome) may have specialized in ripping-off other, most successful films but he was so shameless and unapologetic about it that it’s impossible to judge him too harshly. As always, Mattei keeps the action moving quickly and doesn’t worry to much about things like continuity. Mattei’s films were rarely good but they were almost always fun when taken on their own silly terms.

At times, Robowar almost feels like a parody of an American action film, with Fragasso’s script featuring dialogue that is so extremely aggressive and testosterone-fueled that even Shane Black probably would have told him to tone it down a notch. Much as with Troll 2, the film provides an interesting view into how Fragasso imagined Americans to be. Early on, we are informed that the mercenary group is known as BAM, which stands for “Big Ass Motherfuckers.” Later, one of the members of BAM insults two others by saying, “I bet they have the AIDS.” It’s as if someone programmed a computer to write an action movie and, as such, Robowar might turn out to be a surprisingly prophetic film.

Despite featuring a few Americans in the cast, Robowar was not available in the U.S. until it was released on Blu-ray by Severin Films in 2019. Though Bruno Mattei passed away in 2007, his work continues to be discovered by new audiences.

Italian Horror Showcase: Zombi 4: After Death (dir by Claudio Fragasso)

Posted on October 18, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1989 Italian zombie film, After Death, takes place on a Caribbean island. I’m not sure if the island was actually given a name in the film. If they mentioned it, I either didn’t hear it or I didn’t bother to jot it down in my notes. But, to be honest, the island doesn’t really need a name. If you’ve ever seen an Italian zombie film, you’ll recognize the island immediately. It features the same lush tropical jungle that was used in Hell of the Living Dead and there’s the usual voodoo-loving island natives. Whether it was in Zombi 2 or Zombie Holocaust, you’ve seen this island before.

Years ago, Jenny grew up on the island. Her parents were scientists, working to discover a cure for cancer. But, after one of them shot and killed the local voodoo priest, all of the scientists on the island ended up getting eaten by zombies. Jenny would have been eaten as well, except for the fact that she owns a magic necklace.

Now an adult, Jenny (Candice Daly) is returning to the island with a group of mercenaries. We know that they’re meant to be mercenaries because they have guns and grenades and headbands. They’re not exactly the most impressive paramilitary crew that’s ever appeared in a movie. I mean, if this was a Predator movie, it would be a contest to see which one of them ended up getting killed first.

Jenniy and the mercenaries are heading to island to discover why her parents were killed. As soon as they arrives at the island, their boat’s engine dies, which is really rotten luck because now they’re stranded. Of course, their luck is about to get even worse….

But first, we cut to some hikers. They’re hiking the island and you have to wonder why Jenny and the mercenaries were acting like this island was so isolated when apparently, anyone can just hire a guide and hike it anytime they want to. Anyway, the hikers stumble into a cave that they shouldn’t have stumbled into. This leads to the zombies once again coming to “life” and proceeding to attack anyone who they perceive as not belonging on the island.

Only one of the hikers survives. Fortunately Chuck (played by Jeff Stryker, a porn star who appeared in this film under the name Chuck Peyton) manages to find the mercenaries and together, they all hide out in a deserted laboratory. Unfortunately, one of the mercenaries has been injured by the zombies and is slowly dying. Soon, everyone is under siege as the undead surround the lab….

So, After Death is a totally ludicrous film that I can’t help but kind of like. It doesn’t quite rise to the level of being a guilty pleasure but, for the most part, the cast fully commits to their thinly-written roles and, from the minute the dead come back to life, the action is nonstop. These aren’t your typical mindless zombies, just wandering about and randomly eating people. Instead, these zombies are on a mission and their determination makes them a bit more menacing than the typical decaying cannibal. While director Claude Fragasso never creates the type of ominous atmosphere that distinguished the zombie films of Lucio Fulci, he still keeps the action moving at a steady pace. Even the fact that the ending makes no sense adds to the film’s weird charm.

After Death is also known as Zombi 4: After Death. When Dawn of the Dead was released in the Italy, it was called Zombi. It’s success led to Lucio Fulci making a film called Zombi 2, which, while being a fantastic horror film, had nothing to do with George Romero’s classic. The success of Zombi 2 led to Zombi 3, which was started by Fulci but completed by Claudio Fragasso’s frequent collaborator, Bruno Mattei. (Fragasso also wrote the screenplay for Zombi 3.) Beyond the undead and the island setting, After Death has nothing to do with the previous Zombi films. It has even less to do with the subsequent Zombi 5: Killing Birds. However, you have to give the Italian exploitation film industry some credit. They never allowed a good title to go to waste.