NNtG: Shivers #34: Weirdo Waldo's Wax Museum

CONTENT WARNING: TALKS OF RACISM, GENOCIDE, THE HOLOCAUST AND MORE. YEP. IT'S A SHIVERS BOOK ALRIGHT.

It's Shivers time again. And one I've always been a bit curious on. Wax museums work really well for horror given the already creepy vibes that the wax figures often already display. And if we've surmised anything about Shivers so far it's to expect the unexpected, especially with this being a latter-end book in the series. Hoping for the best, so let's waste no more time waxing poetic and talk about Weirdo Waldo's Wax Museum.

This cover is great. A bit goofy looking in the grand scheme, but for selling you on a creepy wax museum, it does the trick. The freaky wax face staring at your soul complete with the standard skulls that these covers are known for. The leaking effect of the melting wax complete with some bloody red wax melting. It makes for a super freaky visual that does a great job selling you on something far more sinister is going on with this wax figure. Shivers covers usually deliver and this is no exception.

You wanna talk about starting off strong? We open with our protagonist, Billy Miser, his mom and little sister Crissy in a dark dungeon filling with hot wax. They panic, but their mom insists their dad will save them, though Billy already doubts that'll happen. Hot wax rains from atop the ceiling of the dungeon which burns their skin and ruins Billy's Rude Dudes shirt. It's his favorite band. His dad hates it, because it's not like the Beatles and that makes him lame. Beatles slander? Nah, fuck this kid. Let him burn in the hot wax. But their dad is a scientist, who manages to make a key out of wax. Will it work for them? Well, you'll have to wait a bit because we need context as to what the hell is going on. 

See, Billy's dad is super cheap. He'll turn off light regularly, he'll reuse sandwich bags. He won't get his kids name brand clothes, which Billy notes means that he wears clothes that make kids on welfare look better off. But Billy's a genius himself which means he hates stupid people. Oh, and ugly people too. No, for serious, drown the little fucker in the wax. He's a narcissist who also mocks his little sister Crissy for being fat. Eight pages in and I want our protagonist to die. That's Reva Dalby level shite protag. But we also get the point that his dad is a super cheapskate. Which is what makes it so odd that he's all for taking his family on vacation to Mad Mac's History in Wax Museum. They got an invite to head there. It's ten bucks for the whole family and it's educational. Reader beware, you're going to learn goddammit!

The family drive to Mad Mac's, while Billy plays his Game Guy. No, not a Game Boy, that exists here, but a cheaper console that has Luigi Brothers. He thinks it sucks, but he can't say sucks, so he says shucks. They also have other items like a Darbie doll and a Stony WalkKid. I love this book already if only for the off-brand cheapo stuff. They stop off at a hotel that doesn't have cable, a pool, or, at least implied, non-cummy bedsheets. After a noisy night, the family head to Mad Mac's and give their invitation to the fortune teller figure in front. The building looks like an old castle and is already full of families that also got the invites. The Harris family, a bunch of bible thumpers that Billy dubs the "Church Mice". The Nedleys, a family of nerdy analytical types that Billy dubs the "Nerdroids". The Sniders, a family of preppy rich folk, which are the "Prepmeisters" to Billy. The Jockheads, a family of big brutish jocks. And the Marlins who are presented as a redneck family that Billy thinks may be inbred "Cretins". At this rate, this kid being racist seems pretty possible.

They are greeted by a strange man wearing a dark hooded robe who leads them through the museum. The door slams behind them as the hooded man tells them that no one one can leave until the tour concludes. Every time he gets heckled, he mentions that he knows who everyone is because they were all personally invited. This includes a preppy boy named Huntington Snider, and a heavyset jock kid named Sonny. They enter a hallway and note the deathly smell. One of the church mice, a kid with big ears named Jeremiah Harris, mentions that someone cuts the cheese to which the hooded man says that he must have come up with that by going to chat rooms and pretending to be an adultWHAT THE FUCK IS THIS BOOK WHAT THE FU

The hooded man mentions about a whole bunch of methods of torture, to which Mr. Marlin (the cretin as Billy put it) says he ain't here for no lecture, which gets him derision from the nerd family and Billy's dad, which then goes into talking about the atomic bomb. After some more snideness from Mr. Snider (heh, ironic?), the hooded man calms the cretin and the prep from fighting, but both men seem afraid all of a sudden. As if they saw what's under the hood. They're led to a room that starts to show images of riots, beatings, almost all of them race-related with every race. To the point that Billy says that while everyone's scared at first, they all sort of tune out by the end. Shit I was joking about this kid being probably racist. They then see an exhibit of a group of angry men about to shoot a bunch of people huddled in terror in front of a wall, one kid that looks exactly like Billy. Then they hear a gunshot noise, but it was all a jape of the hooded man.

Everyone is already pissed, including Mr. Marlin's son Junior, who the hooded man mentions threatened another kid to do his algebra for him, oh and Mr. Marlin has a "my kid beat up an honor student" bumper sticker so any attempt to BS and deflate just left the building. They then stop at an exhibit of a caveman beating another caveman to death in front of a family. Everyone notes that the caveman doing the clubbing reminds them all of someone they know, but not in a positive light of course because all these people suck. Then after the lights flicker, the Marlin family appears to have disappeared! The hooded man just says they all left and, since nobody gave a shit about them anyway, nobody really cares and we just move on.

The next exhibit is the Spanish Inquisition, which depicts a man on a rack and another man burned at the stake, which of course the bible-thumping Harris family really love. Burn them before they burn in hell. The hooded man also Narcs on Crissy for using matches at her friend's place. The lights flicker and the Nedleys are the next to go, with the hooded man saying they must have went to the restroom or something. Billy thinks it must be part of the act and that the Marlins and Nedleys are plants put there to scare the families. Next up is the French Revolution which involved a henchman holding a severed head. Then it's the Cambodian massacre. As everyone talks, the Sniders disappear. The group are then taking to another place that looks like an old prison. And we're in the slave castles of West Africa where prisoners were sold out to European slave traders. As they see the atrocities of slavery, Billy notices the eyes of the wax figures look to be moving, but the hooded figure says that it's just a robot. Totally not a person under there. 

The next family to vanish are the Jockheads, leaving the Misers and the Harris family. And since we've covered slavery, it means that our next room is religious wars between all faiths. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus. Oh MAN did I pick a bad time to cover this one. Nero fiddling as Rome burns, Catholics and Protestants fire bombing each other in Ireland, a little Palestinian girl throwing rocks at Israeli soldFUCK FUCK FUCK FUUUUUCK DID I PICK THE WRONG TIME TO COVER THIS BOOK! I mean any time wouldn't have been ideal but right FUCKING now was the worst time. Oh god. Again, the image of the girl looks familiar to Billy and again the eyes stare back at him.

Once again the lights go out and now the Harris family are gone, leaving the Misers all alone. Dad's excited because he thinks he won something by being the surviving family which, celebrating at an atrocity museum might be in poor taste I think, so maybe cut that out. And now we're at a Nazi concentration camp. Oh I hope you didn't think we were getting out of this without the fucking Holocaust, did you? He mentions that Mr. Miser's father was John Miser, who was at this very camp in 1944, but this depicts the year prior and all of the wax people he sees before him were killed. And by the time his father arrived, it became a warehouse. His father took one of the shoes from the warehouse as a strange souvenir. But as the hooded man talks, Billy notices a boy in the wax exhibit with big ears and realizes it's Jeremiah Ferris. 

Billy clues in that all of the missing families have since been added to the exhibits. The hooded man then teleports them into the dungeon with the dripping hot wax. And we return to where we left off after chapter one with Mr. Miser's wax key. But it doesn't matter as the wax covers everyone. Billy falls over to the wall and sees it dent. Then he realizes that his dad didn't have a literal wax key, the key was that the wall is made of wax. Billy manages to break the wall and free his family before freeing all of the other families who are now all cool with one another because, despite their differences, it's better to get along than be turned into wax figures. 

They try to escape, but the Hooded man blocks them. He again talks about the evils of mankind, but everyone's tired of him. The men rush at him but slip because the floor is made of wax. Crissy then lights a match and throws it on the hooded man's cape which catches fire and causes him to melt. They then take all the men's shirts off and light them on fire, which allows them all to escape in time as the wax museum melts like a candle. The Misers go camping later on and admire the landscape. Turns out they weren't the only ones. The other families have all gone camping with them and ever since the incident at the museum, they are all friends now. Billy realizes that the hooded man was somewhat wrong. That there can be a chance for humanity to get along if they tried. That we can be united in tolerance and acceptance. And the book ends with Crissy lighting a wax candle in the visage of the hooded man. And they all lived happily ever after. 

So, this was definitely an interesting book. I was mildly warned on this one, but even I wasn't expecting something to this level. I get the message being put together. That it's more about how the human condition has always been about violence and suffering and how the solution is peace and acceptance. A very ahead of its time message to have for a book, especially in the mid 90s. Granted, it's done so with some of the most extreme situations in all of society. Though it does muddy some of the waters like the French Revolution being there. I mean, that one was at least justified given, you know, "let them eat cake" and all. The other examples are definitely strong factors to the argument that humanity are monsters willing to destroy one another for any reason. 

So it's not lost when the families chosen are all representatives of different classes and theologies. All very oil and water towards one another be it for their education, their beliefs, their lifestyles. And part of me wishes the book was able to do more with that concept instead of just having each of the families trapped in the different atrocities of the wax figures. Something that plays more on the tensions of each of these families having to learn how to coexist. Instead the book only brings them to a different atrocity, removes a family and moves forward. Like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but with a shit ton of racism. But I think that's also the point of why the hooded figure's message is meant to fail. We blanket blame different people for the sins of the past, literally in some cases with Billy's grandfather. It could have helped the book if they did more with that idea with the different families. We kind of did with the Farris family being into the burnings of the Spanish Inquisition. And the quick squabbles we  get do work. But we don't get enough of that and as such, it ends with more message than perfect execution.

Billy starts as a super frustrating protagonist, what with his own judgmental attitude towards others. But by the end, he does become a better person, ultimately learning that those judgments are toxic. So for all my comments earlier about leave him to die, I can take some of them back. Not the Beatles slander though. I wish we got more of an answer as to what the hooded man's deal was. Was he an alien observer who is judging Earth and the human race for their actions? Like, an alien made of wax? I get the book doesn't need a finite answer as the point either way is to prove his beliefs wrong, but it would still make for a better answer as to any of this. The other families are also all fine, though all stereotypes, which is of course intentional. 

There's some decent ideas in this book, and a message with a moral that does work, and its imagery is still powerful and resonant, being strong representations of the worst atrocities of mankind. I also like its final message that humanity shouldn't be defined by the sins of everyone. But it stumbles on its feet to get that message across while still having to be a horror adventure with an entity that turns people into wax figures. As such, it leaves us with a book that could have worked so much better if it executed its message far better. That being said, I still recommend it way more than I would Camp Massacre. It's a solid concept, with a great message that is very important, but it just melts into just okay territory by the end. Also why the fuck was it called Weirdo Waldo's Wax Museum when there's no Weirdo Waldo? Mad Mac's Museum could have easily worked. You're losing some points on that, book. Weirdo Waldo's Wax Museum gets a C+ (Really like a B without the title swap).