Inside a strange, shadowy wax museum, a young poet is hired to craft stories that bring the museum’s eerie exhibits to life. As he wanders through its dim corridors, he finds himself drawn to three sinister figures immortalized in wax: the cunning Caliph Harun al-Rashid, the ruthless Ivan the Terrible, and the terrifying Jack the Ripper.

With each figure, the poet’s imagination spins a vivid, unsettling tale. First, he envisions the decadent court of Harun al-Rashid, where love, lust, and betrayal unfold in a dangerous game of power and deception. Then he conjures the icy chambers of Ivan the Terrible, where the mad Tsar’s paranoia and cruelty spiral into a tragic nightmare of tyranny and bloodshed. Finally, the poet’s mind descends into the foggy, gaslit streets of Victorian London, where Jack the Ripper stalks his prey, a phantom of pure evil lurking in every shadow.

As the poet immerses himself deeper in his stories, the line between his imagination and reality begins to blur. The figures in wax seem to breathe, their cold stares following him, their whispered threats echoing in the dark. The museum itself becomes a maze of his own fears and desires, and the poet is forced to confront the darkness within himself as much as the horrors he conjures on the page.

Waxworks is a haunting anthology of macabre tales, framed by a psychological journey into obsession and artifice. It explores how storytelling gives life to our deepest nightmares and how creation itself can become a trap for the creator. Surreal, stylish, and unsettling, the film invites audiences to step inside the wax museum – and wonder if they, too, can ever find their way out of its sinister spell.

Lead Cast

• Conrad Veidt
• Emil Jannings
• Werner Krauss