House of Wax

Perhaps I've been lucky. I've only seen this film twice in the past 15 years, but both times were in 3D, the second time last night. The crowd just loved it, with a big round of applause at the end.

The paddle ball scene is a highlight, but the reprise of the paddle ball is even more hilarious. It's completely over the top, and helps to create the carnival atmosphere that makes the film so effective in a large group.

The really dramatic 3D effects in this film are played for laughs, and I think that's one of the keys to its overall success. Director André De Toth treats the gimmick as a gimmick, and doesn't try to get more out of it than that. Hitchcock, in "Dial M For Murder", tried to use the technology for dramatic effect, but that was a complete failure. The gimmick gets in the way of real drama. The attempted murder of Grace Kelly in "Dial M" is more shocking in 2D. In 3D, you're completely jolted out of your involvement in the scene when Grace's grasping hand comes lunging halfway out into the audience at you.

In "House of Wax", the effect found its real home, a melodramatic thriller, played by everyone with tongue firmly in cheek.

De Toth composes his shots really nicely, I think. There's some foregrounding of chandeliers and other props, but never too much. He mostly holds back on the effect until he can make the best use of it -- the paddle ball, the can-can dancer's round bottom, the bust of Charles Bronson at the end. There is one great 3D thrill, the shot where Bronson, playing Vincent Price's evil mute assistant, has to grapple with policeman Frank Lovejoy. Bronson appears to leap out of the audience and onto the screen; it's an unexpected moment, and a real treat.

"Professor" Henry Jarrod (Vincent Price) is a sculptor who works in wax. He's living in New York City in the late 19th Century, and he's displaying his handiwork in a wax museum. When his partner, Matthew Burke (Roy Robert)--really his primary investor--balks at Jarrod's receipts and tries to talk him into moving in a more commercial direction, perhaps with a "Chamber of Horrors", Jarrod protests that he's creating meticulous works of art, not cheap sensationalism. Jarrod tries to interest a new investor, but when the prospect says he can't make a decision for a few months, Burke says he can't wait. He suggests torching the place and collecting the insurance money. When Jarrod refuses, Burke torches the museum anyway, and the two fight. Jarrod supposedly dies in the fire, leaving Burke to collect. However, when a mysterious, disfigured stranger shows up, the resolution may not be so simple.

The debate that Jarrod and Burke have in the opening scene of this remake of Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) is particularly ironic in light of the film's history. House of Wax was made as a 3D film--a fact made more than obvious from the film's opening credits, which are presented in a font made to look like it is bursting forth from the screen.

In the early 1950s, movie theater box office receipts were down because of television. Film studios and movie theaters were looking for gimmicks that would make films seem more special. They were looking to do things that television couldn't do. According to film editor Rudi Fehr, "The House of Wax was made because the theaters were empty, people were staying home to watch television. In order to lure the audiences back to the theaters, Warner's came out with 3D." While this wasn't the first commercial 3D film--1952's Bwana Devil holds that honor, this was certainly one of the more popular ones.

Studio head Jack Warner told Fehr that he would have five weeks to edit the film after shooting was done. Fehr said they could get it done even quicker if director Andre De Toth would shoot the film in sequence. So Warner demanded just that, despite De Toth's protests. Shooting in sequence is unusual and can make the on-set crew's job much more difficult. But it certainly didn't negatively affect the performances or De Toth's direction, which are both outstanding despite a couple strangely truncated bits of exposition.

Like many 3D films, there are a few shots in House of Wax that might otherwise be inexplicable. The most prominent example here is a huckster who stands in front of the revamped House of Wax doing tricks with three paddleballs. We linger on him much longer than we normally would so that he can bounce the ball into our face. This shows part of the difficulty of 3D--it's difficult to reconcile the most impressive effects from the audience's perspective with narrative needs. Viewed now, in simple 2D on a television screen, the obligatory 3D shots of House of Wax play as quirky, campy curios. For me, that adds to the charm of the film.

Price has an unusual role here in that he plays a good portion of the film with disfigurement makeup, half-limping, hunched over, covered in bulky black cloaks in a manner that somewhat prefigures John Hurt's turn as John Merrick in The Elephant Man (1980). De Toth is excellent at building atmosphere, especially in the "external" shots, which frequently feel more like we're watching a version of the Jack the Ripper story set in London.

Most of the script by Crane Wilbur, based on a play by Charles Belden (which also served as the basis for 1933's Mystery of the Wax Museum, of course), is deliciously flagitious--degenerate in a more over the top manner than was usual for the period. The conflagration at the end of the opening is particularly unexpected and twisted, as is Jarrod's modus operandi throughout the film. It's only too bad that the self-enforced Hollywood "moral code" at the time could not have allowed for a more nihilistic ending. I for one was cheering on Jarrod and his assistant Igor, played by none other than Charles Bronson in one of his earlier roles, when he was still using "Charles Buchinsky".

Although it's difficult to say whether Belden, Wilbur or De Toth intended a message or subtext, it's easy to read a number of interesting angles into the film. To begin, the use of the name "Igor" for the assistant suggests a number of twisted turnabouts on Dr. Frankenstein. Jarrod is even more depraved than the good doctor as he "creates death" out of life, in the service of art. At least it seems depraved if you're not an artist. If you are, you might simply note that one must suffer to be beautiful. That's more than just a flippant remark, as Jarrod suffers financially for beauty early in the film, and Cathy Gray (Carolyn Jones) suffers physically for beauty as she nearly suffocates herself to make herself thin. And of course there's the literal, sinister sense in which the artist makes others suffer to create his beauty. There are also very interesting subtexts available related to goals of realism in art, and of course, the ironic messages noted earlier in the beginning of the film, where we are debating aesthetics versus financial, or more material considerations.

Although House of Wax was popular at the box office in 1953, there was no shortage of critical devaluations of the film as a cheap gimmick, and no shortage of complaints about image quality and eyestrain when trying to view the film in 3D. 3D was only prominent for another year or so (to make periodic returns later, often for "number 3" films in series), but House of Wax is a much better film than it was given credit for at the time. It's not Vincent Price's best, but it's well worth viewing.

HOUSE OF WAX established Vincent Price as a horror film icon. He's never hammy here. He's best when describing gruesome details (like torture or murder) with a slight grin, as if he's building to a punchline. Crane Wilbur's screenplay has well researched details (regarding how wax sculpting works, the effects of chemical burns for example) improves on the 1933 original. Here Vincent Price plays Henry Jerrod, a wax sculptor whose first try at a wax museum meets the same infernal end as Atwill's museum in the first film. 12 years later, Jerrod opens a new museum. One of his intern sculptors dates a model, Sue (Phyllis Kirk) who is hounded by a mysterious man with a distorted face. In the original film version, made in 1933, Fay Wray plays a beautiful, but uninteresting damsel in distress. Phyllis Kirk fills Fay Wray's part here, and man, is she even more boring! But don't worry, you have plenty of Vincent to make this DVD worthwhile. It's easy to find in a bit part, young Charles Bronson (billed here as Charles Buchinsky) as one of Jerrod's s interns. HOUSE OF WAX's most famous element is that it was made in 3-D. This new gimmick, meant to lure television viewers back to the box office was novel, but it had it's kinks. (Warner Brothers improved the process a year later with the 3-D release of Hitchcock's DIAL M FOR MURDER, and yet another period horror film, PHANTOM OF THE RUE MORGUE.) The most amusing 3-D moment in HOUSE OF WAX has almost nothing to do with the story. A carnival barker, (played with crowd-pleasing energy by Reggie Rymal) constantly whacks a paddle-ball outside the wax museum, while heralding the museum's opening night thrills. He faces the camera (meaning us) and says `You! With the popcorn. Hold still.' and he proceeds to repeatingly whack the ball at the camera. HOUSE OF WAX is a lot of fun, and was a big hit at the time. The DVD does not come with a 3-D Process, but it does come with coverage of HOUSE OF WAX's Hollywood Premier. It's attended by Bela Lugosi and friend, Jack Warner, and Ronald Reagan (See, even Presidents watch horror movies!)

My great uncle was in this movie, being the barker. Watch this movie and get out of the way of his ''tricks''. His name was Reggie Rymal. I'm Larry...

My uncle was an entertainer and comedian in the early 1950s and was well known for his paddle-ball skills. He performed standup comedy and paddle-ball at hotels around the country. He appeared on many television shows during the early days of TV including "The Eddie Cantor Show, You Asked For It, and Ladies Choice.

I have always felt he was chosen for this movie due to the contribution in content for the 3-D effects. He was simply an amazing guy.

I love Vincent Price, my all time favourite horror actor. 'House Of Wax' is an important movie in his career, because it was his first legitimate horror film, after thirty something pictures in a variety of genres. This really is where the Price persona fans know and love began. He made non-horror pictures after this, it was a few years later that he made 'The Fly' and the William Castle movies which made him a horror star, something cemented later in the 60s with Roger Corman's Poe movies. But you can see Vincent Price horror icon right here. He's terrific as Jarrod and he would draw upon this role for 'The Mad Magician', and later, the Phibes movies and 'Theatre Of Blood'. 'House Of Wax' is a remake of 'Mystery Of The Wax Museum' made twenty years earlier. In that one Lionel Atwill played the Price role (different name, but same character). Atwill was great but Price is even better, as is the movie overall. 'House Of Wax' sticks pretty much to the earlier movie, but with a few changes, most notably the absence of the girl reporter character that Fay Wray played in the original. In this, the policeman played by Frank Lovejoy ('In A Lonely Place') takes on a similar role. Phyllis Kirk is good as the female lead, better in my opinion than Glenda Farrell in the earlier picture. The supporting cast also includes Carolyn "Morticia Addams" Jones, and an early appearance by Charles Bronson, who plays a deaf mute named Igor. 'House Of Wax' was made specifically for 3D, so there's a few gimmicky shots, but that doesn't spoil the movie, which to me is a horror classic that every fan of the genre should see.