Waxworks is a 1924 German silent anthology film directed by Paul Leni. Its stories are linked by a plot thread about a writer (William Dieterle) who accepts a job from a waxworks proprietor to write a series of stories about the exhibits of Caliph of Baghdad (Emil Jannings), Ivan the Terrible (Conrad Veidt) and Jack the Ripper (Werner Krauss) in order to boost business.

Plot

A young nameless poet (Dieterle) enters a wax museum where the proprietor works in the company of his daughter Eva. The proprietor hires the poet to write a back-story for his wax models of Harun al-Rashid (Jannings), Ivan the Terrible (Veidt), and Jack the Ripper (Krauss) in order to draw an audience to the museum. With his daughter by his side, the poet notices that the arm of Harun al-Rashid is missing and writes a story incorporating the missing arm.