One thing up front: Nobody, no matter how talented an artist they may be, can make a celebrity wax sculpture that isn’t at least a little bit upsetting. Humans are made of flesh and blood and seeing other members of our species rendered as rigid dolls, their familiar features frozen in a dead-eyed mockery of life, will always be hard to see. That said, some wax sculptures are particularly grotesque. Some seem to have been made not by human hands, but by the twisted claws of a demon.
Here, for your viewing “pleasure,” is a collection of these haunting—and maybe haunted—creations.
Wyatt Dunkin has created a Twitter thread archiving “some of the most cursed figures” sold from a Hollywood Wax Museum auction a decade ago. He starts things off with the cast of Seinfeld, their limbs stuck in place as if they’ve just been struck by lightning. (George, notably, is posed so that it looks like he’s about to flash someone by ripping open his jacket with corpse-like fingers.)
Other models depict a Tom Cruise-alike happily showing off the suit he borrowed from his dad and a version of Back To The Future’s Michael J. Fox that could easily be repurposed as an ‘80s era Joe Biden figure. In that same pairing, Christopher Lloyd’s Doc Brown stares wide-eyed at those who look upon him with a mix of accusation and horror—a natural reaction to being shaped into his terrible wax existence.
The Titanic models don’t do a great job of representing why the movie’s cast became ‘90s heartthrobs, but they pale in comparison to the wax Home Alone figures. Look at young Macaulay Culkin, an old man’s sad face stuck onto a kid’s body cut off at the knees, and know there is no room for hope at the Hollywood Wax Museum.
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