Masques de cire

She has been so sorely maligned. Despite what has been claimed by others here, Glenda Farrell was not a bad actress. A little broad sometimes perhaps, but not bad. She is a dynamo of live energy, which the film badly needs, for the only other energetic character in the film is Atwill, and only Farrell has the force to bring him down(that the script does not let her do so personally betrays the character). It is not Farrell's performance or even her character which is the problem of the film, but the script which makes that character necessary. Chock Full O' undeveloped characters (only Atwill and Farrell qualify as more than ciphers)whose paths cross coincidentally,Farrell's reporter is the one in the middle bringing the disparate elements together. A reporter or policeman had to be the central character, for only one of those two would be privy to all or even enough of the info needed to solve the puzzle, or to even recognize that the puzzle existed. And only a female reporter could be Fay Wray's roommate, as female police detectives or beat cops didn't exist(at least not in Hollywood). And only a fast-talking, wisecracking, brash and fierce female reporter able to beat the stereotypical fast-talking, wisecracking, brash 1930's male reporter at his own game could find the story AND crack the case before the police. Others have objected to the attention given the comic relief, apparently misunderstanding the term. Comic relief characters are supporting characters, and in this film, despite third billing, Glenda Farrell is the female lead. Fay Wray was a freelancer and able to negotiate better billing even though her role doesn't deserve it. Had she not had a real lead in the companion film DR.X, it's unlikely she would have been asked to take such a small part. Charlotte is needed in the story only for a face, and her face and scream are all Wray is allowed to bring to the role. As outstanding as those two attributes are, they don't add up to a real character. And while Farrell cracks wise, she is doing serious work central to the tale. A role with comedic content is not automatically a comic relief part. The script is a mess, letting down the great concept. HOUSE OF WAX is a much tighter script, more linear, combining ingenue and snoop into one role, and beefing up the part of the disfigured sculptor. It drops the very extraneous playboy character and the loose ends which trail in his wake. But most agree that HOUSE is boring compared to MYSTERY, and in addition to the direction and editing, much of MYSTERY's drive comes from the girl reporter and the crack actress who played her. Even if you do find her grating, Glenda Farrell is never boring.

MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (Warner Brothers, 1933), reunites director Michael Curtiz with his DOCTOR X (First National, 1932) co-stars, Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray, in another two-strip Technicolor horror/comedy mystery. A carbon copy of DOCTOR X with a few alterations and improvements thrown in, it ranks the finest and most noteworthy of the Atwill-Fay collaborations (1933's THE VAMPIRE BAT for Majestic was their second), as well as the most eerie and mysterious of them all. While Atwill and Wray had equal status in their initial two outings, Atwill this time dominates while Wray, interestingly, has little to do, not making her screen presence until 30 minutes from the opening titles. She's gone for long stretches and is not visible in the fade-out while Glenda Farrell, the secondary female character, comes close to being the lead, or so it appears. Regardless of Wray's limitations, her character is quite crucial to the story and to Atwill's mentally unbalanced character.

Opening with a prologue set in 1921 London introduces Ivan Igor (Lionel Atwill) as a brilliant sculptor of wax figures of noteworthy figures as Joan of Arc, Jack the Ripper, Disraeli, and his most favorite, Marie Antoinette, hoping for his museum to become successful once it opens to the public. Because he's invested more money than anticipated, Joe Worth (Edwin Maxwell), his partner whom he owes back salary, comes upon a plan to get back some of his investment by burning down the museum and collect on the fire insurance. A fight ensues between the two partners, with Worth breaking away, locking Igor inside the museum surrounded by flames where he's left to burn along with his wax figures. Move forward, New Year's Eve, 1933, in New York City. Ivan, who has survived the burning flames, is wheelchair bound. Unable to recreate his wax figures due to his severely burned hands, he hires assistants, Ralph (Allen Vincent); D'Arcy (Arthur Edmund Carewe) and Hugo (Matthew Betz) to sculpt wax figures for him under his supervision. Successfully reproducing his original creations, Igor is unable to do the same with Marie Antoinette, that is, until he meets her replica, Charlotte Duncan (Fay Wray), Ralph's fiancée. In the meantime, a series of murders have taken place with bodies mysteriously disappearing from the morgue from some figure in a cloak. Millionaire playboy Harold Ritten (Gavin Gordon), who happened to be with Joan Gale on the night of her murder, is suspected and jailed. Florence Parks (Glenda Farrell), Charlotte's roommate and gal reporter for the New York Express, is assigned by her editor (Frank McHugh) to investigate. Following her interview with Harold leading to her constant snooping around Igor's 14th Street wax museum, she discovers something quite startling in connection to the murder, hence "the mystery of the wax museum."

If the story sounds at all familiar, it was reworked more famously as HOUSE OF WAX (Warners, 1954) starring Vincent Price in the Atwill role. Due to the popularity of the remake, the original from which it was based, was virtually unknown, especially since no prints of MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM have survived. Fortunately, an original print was discovered, according to sources, in Jack L. Warner's private vault around the late 1960s. WAX MUSEUM finally turned up on commercial television, notably on New York City's WPIX, Channel 11's "Chiller Theater" on February 10, 1973, where it broadcast annually until 1978, only in black and white format only. It would be another decade before two-strip Technicolor prints surfaced and distributed on home video and DVD, with broadcasts on Turner Network Television (1988-1993) and finally Turner Classic Movies (1994-present).

With Glenda Farrell assuming the wisecracking reporter role Lee Tracy enacted in DOCTOR X, her performance in this venture seems right and warranted, improving over Tracy's lackluster buffoonery. Even if Farrell's character disappoints, the script does not and neither does Atwill. Who could forget his key scenes as the bearded Igor conversing with his favorite wax figure of Marie Antoinette, and his outlook as he witnesses the melting of his "children" in a blazing fire (very realistically done and effective in color), along with his unforgettable confrontation with the screaming Wray as he offers her "eternal life" in the manner that would have done 1925s "Phantom of the Opera" star Lon Chaney proud had he lived to see this.

In some ways, THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM is perfect, in others it's not, but must have been good enough to acquire a remake, find the missing negative for the original and have it displayed as one of the finer horror classics to come out from the 1930s. (**1/2)

Classic horror movie directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Lionel Atwill as a deranged sculptor with an "interesting" method of making the statues on display at his wax museum. The last (and best) of the three horror movies Lionel Atwill did with Fay Wray. Atwill is fantastic here and Wray is, as always, delightful. Nice support from Frank McHugh, Gavin Gordon, and Edwin Maxwell, among others. The scene stealer of the movie is Glenda Farrell as the fast-talking reporter heroine. She really has fun with the part. A few years later she would star in the Torchy Blane series and play a character very similar to the one she plays here.

It's a good-looking movie, filmed in two-color Technicolor with nice atmospheric direction from Curtiz. The sets are great, especially Atwill's art deco laboratory. The makeup effects are terrific. It's a juicy Pre-Coder, as evidenced by the gruesome plot and the junkie character played by Arthur Edmund Carewe. Some viewers might be put off by the fact that a large chunk of the middle of the picture is more like a crime story/newspaper movie but I was always entertained, particularly by the back & forth between Farrell and McHugh. So it's not a straight horror movie from beginning to end but, so what, it's still a great film and worth a look. Remade in the '50s as House of Wax with Vincent Price. That version is more well-known than this one but I like rewatching this one more. It's just more fun.

A genuinely frightening film from Michael Curtiz, jack of no trades and master of all. Many of the tricks of classic 1930's horror are here, including the opening scene set in a dark, rainy London street, the long shadows on the wall, lengthy periods of silence, and all timed to perfection. Only the faster-than-the-speed-of-sound dialogue of Glenda Farrell truly lets the film down. But other than that it is a gothic masterpiece, an underrated movie probably due to the fact that it lay undiscovered, thought lost, for over half a century. Far more inventive and imaginative than the majority of horror films made today.

This film, which was remade as "House Of Wax" 20 years later (as if you didn't know), might not enjoy quite the reputation it does today had it not been the basis for the better-known later film and, more importantly, believed lost for over 30 years, which made it something of a legend for many people who'd never even seen it. Legendary status can be rather difficult to live up to, and unless a viewer is approaching it with no advance knowledge of its history, MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM may not be quite what one expects.

It is, nevertheless, an energetic and entertaining amalgam of genres: horror film meets newspaper crime drama. Dropping a rather Gothic tale of body-snatching, a mad sculptor and a museum of wax-covered corpses into the streamline-moderne milieu of fast-talking, wise-cracking reporters on the trail of a hot story makes for interesting contrasts.

Lionel Atwill, as Ivan Igor, the artist driven to insanity and murder by the destruction of his wax "children" in an arson fire, was an immensely enjoyable performer whose best work came a bit later (see "Son Of Frankenstein" for his portrayal of the one-armed Insp. Krogh). His natural screen presence carries him through, though he never quite generates either the pathos or the smooth menace that Vincent Price displayed in the remake. But from the moment of her entrance, it's Glenda Farrell as Florence Dempsey, the reporter out to save her job by bringing in a scoop - barreling onto the screen with a full head of steam - who propels the story all the way to its finish.

There's an awful lot going on here beyond the basic premise; bootlegging, a "dope fiend," a suicide and a falsely implicated millionaire playboy are thrown into the mix, packing quite a lot into the 77 minute running time (the remake improved the story by eliminating extraneous characters and subplots). A pre-"King Kong" Fay Wray (in her naturally red hair sans the "Kong" blond wig) is the damsel in actual distress, but despite her billing, she's basically a supporting player and has little to do - beyond enduring roommate Florence's snide comments about her penniless boyfriend - until the climactic confrontation between all the bad guys and good guys (and girls).

MYSTERY is well-served by the direction of Michael Curtiz ("Adventures Of Robin Hood," "Casablanca"), who was something of a jack-of-all-genres, and there's plenty of snappy dialogue, some of which (Florence asking a cop, "How's your sex life?") wouldn't have made it to the screen a year later under the newly re-written Production Code. Depending on one's point of view, it could be said that the very effective production design either benefits, or suffers, from the pale pastels of the two-strip Technicolor photography. For my part, I'm guessing that the subdued tones we see today result from the lack of first-rate film elements available. Having seen far superior two-strip from years earlier, I'll wager that the original prints were much more vivid.

If you're any kind of a fan of the remake, you do owe it to yourself to see this one, if only once. There are many things to enjoy in MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM, not the least of which are the fabulous ensembles worn by Farrell. Just how does a newspaper reporter one step away from the breadline afford a wardrobe like that?