Martin Senescu is an employee at a wax museum. His job is to care for the five wax figures of mass murderers (Jack the Ripper, Albert W. Hicks, Henri Désiré Landru, William Burke and William Hare) that are under his care. But one day the museum owner, Mr. Ferguson, tells Martin that he’s closing the museum. Rather than see his five exhibits destroyed Martin begs Mr. Ferguson to allow him to take them to his basement and preserve them until a museum wants them. He installs air conditioning to keep them melting in the summer heat and hovers over them while trying to find them a new home.
But his wife Emma is very upset. Her husband is unemployed but instead of finding a job he spends the little money they have left to buy air conditioning for the basement and pay the enormous electric bill caused by running the air conditioning day and night. Also, she can’t use the washing machine and dryer any longer. And finally, she’s frightened to death by the look of these grim wax figures. She goes to speak to her brother Dave and he tells her she should give Martin an ultimatum; either he gets rid of the wax figures or she’ll leave. When she hesitates at the severity of this tactic Dave mentions that maybe instead, the air conditioner could break down and ruin the figures.
That night Emma gives Martin the ultimatum but he assures her that he’ll find a solution if she’ll just have a little patience. After Martin and Emma go to bed, she sneaks down to the basement to shut off the air conditioning but as she passes Jack the Ripper, we seem to see Jack’s knife hand move and Emma screams in terror.
Next morning Martin heads down to the basement looking for Emma and finds her dead at the foot of Jack the Ripper. He sees blood on Jack’s knife and upbraids him for the murder. But you can tell he’s doing it as a friend. Martin buries Emma in the basement and covers her over with fresh cement.
Later on, Emma’s brother Dave shows up and wants to know where Emma is and what has happened to the wax figures. Martin tells her that she’s gone on a trip to visit Martin’s sister and that he has gotten rid of the figures. But Dave hears the air conditioning still running in the basement and doesn’t believe Martin. Dave breaks into the basement from outside and while he’s investigating the fresh cement the figure of Albert W. Hicks appears to attack him with an ax.
The next day Martin finds Dave’s body and once again chastises the other figure for this serious lack of restraint. Martin must then have buried Dave as he did Emma.
At some later date, Mr. Ferguson visits Martin at his home with the amazing news that a famous wax museum in Belgium wants to but the wax figures. But it is obvious from his demeanor that Martin is sad that the figures will be leaving his life. Martin agrees to the idea sadly and while he goes to the kitchen to make tea for them, Mr. Ferguson goes into the basement to measure the figures for shipping arrangements. But when he turns his back, he is garroted by the figure of Henri Désiré Landru.
When Martin comes downstairs to the basement carrying the tea service he is outraged. It’s one thing for wax figures to murder his wife and brother-in-law. It’s a completely different thing to murder a fellow fan of wax museums who was going to find them a good home in Belgium. Martin picks up a crow bar and threatens to destroy all of them for their ingratitude.
But now the figures seem to move toward him and they accuse him of being the actual murderer of all three victims. And the scene ends with Martin cringing at the onslaught of the five figures.
In the next scene we are in Marchand’s Wax Museum in Belgium and we see the five figures on display but then we see a new figure. It is Martin Lombard Senescu, an infamous modern-day addition to the mass murder club.
Now animate wax figures would seem to violate photog’s prime directive against living mannequins, robots, ventriloquist’s dummies and dolls. But a more careful analysis would reveal that this is actually a psychological drama. Martin has allowed his empathy for the figures to allow him to assign his crimes to them. And it’s interesting that Martin is played by Martin Balsam, the actor who played the private detective Milton Arbogast who is killed by Norman Bates, a character who attributes his own murders to an equally inanimate object, namely, his mother’s poorly taxidermized corpse.
Anyway, assuming that Martin is the murderer would seem to remove this episode from the purview of a Twilight Zone episode and therefore force me to give it a failing grade but I am going to make an exception. Martin truly should belong in the Twilight Zone and I’m giving him a B. He’s earned it.
