Air date: April 4, 1963
Martin Senescu (Martin Balsam) is a meek and somewhat odd little man who is dedicated to his job: a tour guide in a failing wax museum. Specifically, his job is to curate his favorite section of the museum: Murderers' Row, housing wax figures of Albert Hicks (a conscripted sailor who killed the other members of his crew with an axe), Burke and Hare (the Scottish serial killers who smothered lodgers and sold their bodies for dissection), Henri Landru (a French serial killer who would strangle widows with garotte wire), and Jack the Ripper (whose identity and murders of five young women with a knife have remained unsolved). Martin has a measure of sympathy for some of history's most vile men, imploring all the attendees who tour the place to understand that they were ordinary people once. Instead, the attendees are just as creeped out by their guide as they are by the exhibit itself, quickly leaving.
Martin is called up to the office of Mr. Ferguson, the proprietor of the museum. Martin has faithfully worked at his museum for thirty years, but attendance is slowing, the museum business is passé, and Ferguson aches to retire. To this end, he has decided to close the museum, having the building torn down to make way for a supermarket. Martin is horrified, asking Mr. Ferguson what will happen to the waxworks. Not thinking that there's a market for wax figures anyomre, Ferguson instructs Martin to melt them down. Martin insists that he store the figures in his basement until a buyer comes for them, reluctantly prompting Ferguson to agree.
Back at his home, Martin has the figures placed in his basement, and has spent a large chunk of his meager savings on an air conditioner to keep them at the proper temperature. His wife, Emma, is alarmed at this decision, since they don't have money to waste on air conditioning now that Martin has no job. Martin argues that the figures are like old friends to him, speaking to them as though they're people who need his help. Emma acquiesces, but is notably disturbed by Martin's behavior. Desperate for money and advice, Emma goes to see her brother, Dave, who lends her money for groceries and advises her to stand up to Martin. If it fails, she can always break the air conditioner so that the waxworks will melt.
After buying groceries with the borrowed money, Martin confronts Emma, who reveals that she talked to her brother about Martin's erratic behavior and issues an ultimatum: either the waxworks go or she does. Martin again refers to the waxworks as friends fallen on hard times and starts advising other options for the situation. Annoyed with Martin's insistence, she sneaks down to the basement that night and prepares to sabotage the air conditioner. But while her back is turned, Jack the Ripper begins moving.
The following day, Martin discovers Emma's corpse in the basement, having been stabbed to death. He is upset, of course, but he turns to "Jack" and scolds him on his sloppiness, such as leaving blood on the knife. Realizing that the police wouldn't believe that a waxwork did killed his wife, Martin is forced to drill a hole in the basement's concrete floor, bury Emma underneath, and lay a fresh layer atop her. Dave comes over asking about his sister, as well as whether Martin has gotten rid of the figures. Martin lies that Emma left to visit his sister and the waxworks are gone. Realizing Martin never mentioned a sister before, the suspicious Dave breaks into the basement by picking the lock. That's when Hicks comes to life and cleaves Dave's skull with his axe. Martin returns to the basement to find his brother-in-law dead, now having to dig a second grave. Again, he scolds Hicks on his sloppiness, treating the murder as something no more offensive than a rude joke at a party.
Mr. Ferguson come by the home with good news: Marchand's, a wax museum in Brussels, has agreed to buy the waxworks, granting them a good home in one of the finest museums of the world. Instead of being elated, Martin acts like he'll be watching his old friends move far away and he will never see them again. Ferguson is more sympathetic to Martin than his wife and brother-in-law were, but he tells Martin that this is for the best. He sends Martin upstairs to make some tea while he takes measurements of the figures. As soon as Martin heads upstairs and shuts the door, Landru comes alive, lowers his garrote, and strangles Mr. Ferguson to death. Martin comes in with the tea, but drops the tray in shock when he sees his employer dead on the floor, scolding his "friends" for going too far this time. He grabs a crowbar to start smashing them, when all five figures come to life. They tell him that he was the one who killed everyone, not them. Martin screams and tries to fight them off, but they all close in on him.
Sometime later, Marchand's is hosting their new arrivals: Albert Hicks, Burke and Hare, Jack the Ripper, Henri Landru... and Martin Senescu. The guide explains that Martin was a very inventive triple murderer, killing his wife with a knife, his brother-in-law with an axe, and his employer with a garrote.
The New Tropes:
- Ambiguous Situation: The plot of the episode works in both supernatural and realistic ways. The supernatural explanation is that the waxworks are capable of coming to life and performed the murders. But it could have just as easily been Martin going insane and murdering his wife, brother-in-law, and boss, which is what the ending presents.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Played with. Emma, Dave, and Mr. Ferguson are respectively seemingly killed by the wax figures of Jack the Ripper, Albert Hicks, and Henri Landru, but the ending raises the possibility that Martin himself may have killed them all.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Martin sympathizes with the killers, calling them ordinary people who would otherwise be forgotten over time had they not commit the infamous murders for history to remember. The tone of his voice suggests that Martin wishes to be remembered for something forever and projects that desire onto the wax figures. If you go by the supernatural explanation, the wax figures grants his wish by killing his friends and family, then set up Martin as the killer, ensuring that he'll be immortalized as an infamous Serial Killer wax figure himself.
- Disposing of a Body: After Emma is killed by Jack the Ripper, Martin buries her body under the basement floor. He does the same to Dave when he looks for his sister and gets axed by Albert Hicks.
- Fame Through Infamy: Martin laments how good, ordinary men would be forgotten in history while serial killers live on for generations to their infamy of murders. The ending hints that Martin, wishing to be remembered forever, murdered his family and friends, then blames the wax figures for the murders to delude himself as a moral person.
- Idiot Ball: Dave suspects that Martin did something to Emma when he checks up on her. Whether Martin or the waxworks actually did it, he still goes down to check on her rather than call police. This decision gets him killed.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Were the waxworks living killers the whole time? Or did Martin commit the murders himself and only hallucinated that the waxworks did it?
- Mistaken for Insane: Zigzagged. It's left ambiguous whether Martin, his wife, and his friends were killed by the wax figures of Jack, Albert, Henri, and Burke and Hare, or if he really did go insane, kill everyone himself, and commit suicide after being told that the wax museum would be torn down and replaced with a supermarket.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Martin loves to talk about the serial killers and has an unhealthy obsession with their wax figures after the original exhibit was closed. In fact, he cares more about their well-beings than the well-beings of his wife, his brother-in-law, and even his former boss. All of this adds credence to the idea that Martin was the murderer all along.
- Psychological Projection: Martin dotes on the wax sculptures of infamous serial killers he's been maintaining for 30 years. Considering that he's seen as a nutcase and is hinted to have killed everyone himself, he cares for the wax figures because he sees himself, a burgeoning murderer, in them.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: If you listen closely at the beginning, as Martin is giving a tour of Murderer's Row, you can hear "Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ
" by Johann Sebastian Bach. - Shout-Out: At one point someone asks, "Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of the man standing next to you?"
- Skewed Priorities: Martin cares more about maintaining the wax statues than taking care of his wife, spending all their money on an air conditioner to maintain them, and when one of them kills her, he buries her in the basement because there'll be no one to take care of them if he's in jail.
- Even after Emma and Dave are discovered dead, Martin's first response is to berate the killers for their sloppiness in the crime instead of going into a panic.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: The final scene suggests that Martin is the murderer, and we've been seeing the events of the episode through his psychotic mind, imagining that the waxworks were the killers.
- Wax Museum Morgue: Inverted. The waxworks aren't the victims, they're the killers. Maybe.
- Possibly played straight in Martin's case, as it's implied that his corpse is housed within the wax figure of himself.
