Wax, or The Discovery of Television Among the Bees (1991)

The Worst Film Ever

Great Film overall

Good concept, poorly executed.

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Amazing title for a movie, no? It's what made me get it in the first place, that and the promise of weird. They weren't lying. What the hell was that? Something about Mesopotamian bees, souls living inside weapons, the land of the dead in the Moon, Cain, the Trinity site, the tower of Babel, and a planet TV transmitting the dead of the future inside the Garden of Eden Cave which (the dead) are giant bees. There's also stuff about a Supranormal Film Society trying to capture the dead on film in the 1920's, the letter X, missiles turning into flying saucers, a beekeeper who is murdered by his own bees, and the cities of the dead.It sounds like a big ball of spiritual-cum-metaphysical hogwash at first and well... it still sounds like a big ball of hogwash in the end, but somewhere along the way, if you resign yourself to the distinct possibility that there's no profound meaning to be gleaned and that if there is meaning it's flying way over your head, that racking your brain to connect pieces that don't really seem to fit together in any meaningful way and sound more like a science fiction mythological journey, if you can accept it as such and go with it, the movie can still be enjoyed both for the hallucinogenic trance it's prone to inflict if given enough room and the lyrical prose. Every now and then something beautiful comes along ("the graveyards where the new words are born") that doesn't make much sense but it's still beautiful.It's all narrated by someone who sounds a lot like Nobody from DEAD MAN (and a lot of what he says sound like something a spaced-out Nobody of the future would say).IMDb says it's a documentary but it's not. It reads more like the transcripts of some philosophizing drug fiend who dropped acid and walked around in the New Mexico desert and came back to write about it.Here are some excerpts: "our world was puny and finite in comparison with the world of the bees" "one of the dead of the future arrived... it was grotesque with four brains on a single body." "I lived in a mad tower above Trinity site, the day of my death the other dead came to visit me, and they said the bees would come to live there and the flying saucers so you will know that through the grace of God, the maker of people, his Son the saviour of the Christians and those bees who swarmed through the air that though you were dead you were born Zoltan Abbashid on July 11 1882. This was true." "the first place you stop after you die is the pulsating place which is designed to be familiar for people who used to have bodies. I became a short poem in the language of Cain. I would get my new body after I killed." "I followed my enemies through the bee television and arrived over Bashra, Southern Iraq, in the year 1991. Now I was going to kill. That was my job." This played over a combination of grainy stock footage, footage of a guy walking around New Mexico in a beekeeper's suit, and dated video SFX.

We showed this at our local Art film movie-house. It is where it belongs.Watch it if you think that David Cronenberg's adaptation of Burrough's book, "Naked Lunch," is too linear. If you don't know who William Burroughs is definitely avoid this. This has more to do with surrealist dream films than documentaries. Delightfully mad IMHO.Bees, Bouroughs, Book of the Dead. Egyptian myth.Anti-War Sci-Fi Cyberpunk "My dead wife was in the hive. She fragmented." "They were the dead and vengeance was their life." "I was Cain." "The Planet of Television, transmitting the dead."It's all pretty schizophrenic. Jacob Maker, beekeeper, in the land of the dead and the garden of eden, Iraq.

Not unlike an acid trip, I don't think this film is meant to be clearly "understood" in its entirety. You have to pay attention and give it some thought, like modern symphonic music or abstract painting, but doing so might just reward you with a strong appreciation. It is (a bit dated) psychedelic eye candy and food for thought. It can be rather depressing, or if taken lightly, can be quite comical. I found myself dumbfounded, asking the screen "WHAT?!" several times, but it was a good kind of "what?" because it's so off the wall. If you discount anything mind-bending or mentally challenging as boring or stupid, if your idea of great film-making is "Signs" or "True Lies," don't bother with "Wax."

This is a very strange movie. I'm not even sure that I can accurately describe the plot, because it doesn't make any sense and I don't know if it's really a plot anyway. But I'll give it a shot. I rented this based on the quotes on the box, which described it as being like Total Recall, only with 10 times the weirdness. After seeing the movie, I don't know what they were talking about... The whole movie is narrated by David Blair in a very monotone voice, and has no similarities to Total Recall that I see...The movie starts out with James Maker, who is a member of something called the Supernormal Film Society whos goal is to film the spirits of the dead walking among the living. There's some background on this which seems largely irrelevant. Then we meet his grandson, Jacob Maker who is the main character of this story. Jacob is a programmer who works on aircraft simulation programs. He's also a beekeeper of Mesopotamian bees he inherited from his grandfather.So, after a bit the bees drill a hole in his head and put in a television, which the bees use to start showing him things. About this time, a statue of Kane outside his house kills the statue of Able, and Kane is marked with the X symbol. Then at work, Jacob wonders why his co-workers never wonder what happens to the missiles they launch that don't come back (never mind that a programmer probably doesn't deal with missile launches), and he realizes that they turn into flying saucers which fly to the moon where the dead live.About this time, the bees start showing him things on the television and he makes a big pilgrimage to the Garden of Eden Cave which the bees tell him is the entrance to the world of the dead. Jacob then realizes that the bees are actually the dead of the future, and goes to the cave. Although it is a 40 miles walk through the desert, he makes the journey a bit easier by becoming a bomb part of the way. He then learns that he has to kill someone to fulfill his destiny, which is to be reborn in a wax body that the bees make in the cave.When arriving at the cave, Jacob learns that the cave is actually the entrance to a planet inside of our planet where the bees live. There, he dies and goes to join the world of the dead. For a while, he becomes the X symbol. Then he becomes a poem in the language of Kane. Then he travels to some other planets, including the Planet of Television. Next he becomes a rival beekeeper of his grandfather. Then he decides it's time to fulfill his destiny, which is to kill someone. So, he becomes a bomb and blows up two Iraqi soldiers in a tank. Then he becomes the X symbol with himself, his grandfather's arch enemy, and the two soldiers he blew up.And that's pretty much it... Make sense? No, I didn't think so... David Blair calls this Independent Electronic Cinema. I don't know what to call it. I can't figure out if this movie is bad because the weirdness of it all is hard to get over. And the filming is worse... One could today make this movie on a home PC fairly easy. There are 3 distinct types of footage in the movie. First, there is a lot of stock footage of bees, bombs, and other scenes. Second, there is footage that was shot with an amateur camera I'm guessing. Third, there were digital renderings. Nothing fancy, these were things like 3D letters and symbols, and renderings of the cave ceiling and floor just on the screen with a black background.And it's heavily edited. I hesitate to refer to this as special effects, as I think it's overly abused. There is not a point where more than 1 minute goes by without further senseless video effects. Things like the image warping, folding, unraveling into a string, blurring, etc. Basically all the stuff you could do to a movie with a piece of $100 modern software and a video capture card. And it took six years to make. Personally, I don't see what makes this a great art film, as I've seen some reviews and essays claim it is. I think it falls into the trap of being so different and bizarre that people figure it must be artistic. I don't know what the hell it is, and I don't think I ever will. I keep thinking that there must be some meaning in this movie, but I haven't the slightest idea what...