Customer Reviews

House of Wax

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Has anyone ever portrayed the Nice Man Gone Crazy as well as Vincent Price? Of course not, and in House of Wax, Price is in top form as a loving sculptor who emerges from a fire with a different, errr, method for creating his wax sculptures. I don't know about you, but just the thought of being alone in a wax museum after dark gives me the creeps. Add a dose of homicidal mania, and there's your recipe for terror.

Most people will find this movie creepy even today; those who love camp will enjoy the prolonged ping-pong paddle scene catered to the orginal 3-D audience.

All in all, one of Vincent Price's best films, proving once again that nobody goes horribly insane quite like Vincent Price.

I mananged to see a version of "House of Wax" on Turner Classic Movies and I thought that it was a great horror movie. Not being a big fan of horror films, I can't compare to other ones of that time, but this one was great. It stars horror movie legend Vincent Price and a young Charles Bronson who is credited as Charles Buchinsky. Having been to wax museums in the past, I can relate to the fact that after seeing the was figures for so long, you could begin to believe that all of the people around you who are not moving are actually made of wax, something that was briefly mentioned in the movie. A big problem with the movie was that it was made in 3D during its first release. This could create a problem for the present viewings because some things are pointless. They made things for the movie just so people can see the 3D effect. For example, a three minute sequence of women dancing, throwing their legs in the air. When it was made, it was cool seeing the legs come out of the screen, but while I was watching it, it was pretty much pointless.

The movie begins with Vincent Price as Professor Henry Jarrod. He takes pride in his wax figures which he often refers to as his friends. They speak to him, and he understands them well, and how they want to be made. In a way to make more money, an investor burns up the museum and flees the sight leaving Jarrod for dead. A couple of years later, people begin to disappear, kidnapped in the night. This happens at the same time that Jarrod, who is now in a wheelchair, wants to reopen his museum, with new figures that resemble some of the people that disappeared. He claims that he uses pictures of the missing people in the paper as a muse for the figures, but a women named Sue knows better. She swears that the figure of Marie Antoinette looks like her kidnapped friend Cathy Grey. Sue decides to make it her mission to find out what is going on at the house of wax.

Another great thing in "House of Wax" is the acting. In the recent Harry Potter film, the director has long takes. Scenes of about five minutes all in one take. The same happens in "House of Wax" except some scenes could be closer to eight or nine minutes. This is amazing considering some actors nowadays act for about thirty seconds before cutting away. The actors back then really had to act for many minutes at a time. "House of Wax" is a great horror film, and try and catch it on tv.

ENJOY!

Rated Approved back in 1953, but if I had to rated it probably a PG for brief violence.

1953's "House Of Wax" launched the career of horror film star Vincent Price. He would later become the king of classic horror films from the 50's, including House On Haunted Hill, the original The Fly and others. This is a remake of the 30's version, which on DVD, comes as an extra bonus. Vincent Price stars as a wronged artist whose wax figures, stunningly life like, cause a jealous rival to burn down his museum. I may be mistaken but I saw this film a while ago late night but I'm sure that's the plot. The fire also left Vincent Price's character horribly scarred so that he looks like the Phantom Of The Opera.

The wronged artist takes his revenge by creating a House Of Wax or Chamber Of Horrors in the style of today's Ripley's Believ It Or Not Museum. Wax figures pose in scenes of dramatic violence taken directly from history - the beheading of the wives of Henry the 8th in Tudor England, the burning of Joan of Arc, the guillotine executiones of the French Revolution, etc and a very impressive Ford's Theatre replica in which John Wilkes Booth shoots Abraham Lincoln. Vincent Price's character is killing his victims and then uses their corpses as wax statues. The heroine of the film picks up on his little scheme since the death of her friend (played by Carolyn Jones who would later play the role of the tv mom Morticia Addams in The Addams Family 1964-1966). Her body became encased in wax as the Joan of Arc statue. The film was originally made for 3-D, the current rage in the movies of the 50's especially for sci-fi films and monster movies. Much of the movie is scary because it's so subtle. The creepy, eerie sense of being alone in a wax museum, where the eyes of the figures watch you is very predominant. Suspense builds and there is a sense of mystery typical of a Gothic novel of the 19th century or an Edgar Allan Poe story. The film is set in 19th century New York City. A great film to watch and suited for fans of the older horror genre. Not exactly Alfred Hitchcock nor Bela Lugosi films but Vincent Price carries the movie with aplomb and this style of horror became his trademark. Five stars all the way. The performances by all the lead actors are well done. The movie is subtle, psychological horror drama with no blood but with a very scary sense of criminal madness. This "artist" is really the kind we don't want to have around these days.

Vincent Price gives a brilliant character study {even though he probably didn't mean to} of a man pushed into insanity when his life goes up in smoke, literally. as the film opens we see Jarrod {Price} at work, his greedy partner later arrives. after happily going over his plans for more sculptures, Price is in for a shock when his partner asks how much insurance the place is worth. the guy later sets the place on fire, and gets into a fight with Jarrod. The man escapes, leaving Jarrod to watch his "family" melt away and the museum going up in smoke. Jarrod, presumed dead, is actually alive. His assistant is a mute man named Igor {played by the action movie legend Charles Bronson in a very early role}. Jarrod is now wheelchair bound and he plots revenge on his assistant; but soon he begins to use dead bodies as wax sculptures. The "incredibly real" look to them amazes many except the woman played by Phyllis Kirk. The opening night of Jarrod's new museum is memorable for the paddleball man scene...hamming it up as the barker. Jarrod's face isn't real {he made one to look like his old face; his real one is hideous due to all the burns}. dressed all in black, he has a memorable street chase scene where he strolls around as if he were Quasi Moto from the Hunchback film. Vincent's radio peer, Frank Lovejoy, co-stars as the policeman on the case of several murders in town {the victim's likenesses all amazingly appear the next day as wax figures in Jarrod's museum}. Paul Cavanaugh, Paul Picerni, Angela Clarke, and Roy Roberts also make appearances. Carolyn Jones {Morticia Addams} has a memorable role in the beginning of the film. this is the role that forever linked Vincent with bad-guys, villains, and horror.

The transfer looks great, but I wish it was in widescreen. This is one of my favorite Price movies, so it's great to finally have it out on DVD. I heard early rumours that this would also be released in the original 3-D version. That would have been a nice option, but maybe it's something Warner Brothers has planned for later. I also like the addition of the 1933 movie "Mystery Of The Wax Museum". No Price fan should be without this DVD.

this movie maybe intorporopetie but its a fun movie i woild never get enouch of it its nothing but a perfect movie fun pictures but just because theres vilonce in this movie dosent mean that this movie sucks but im giving it 2 stars for rating very perfect movie if my friend watched it than he will watch it every day this can be on the horror channel because the actors in this movie does a graet job i have to watch it than ill be calling it one of my favrite movies i think i have to get it its like the movie freddyvs.jason i blooDy CANT WAIT TO own it on dvd

Wax museums have been used as a setting for thrillers in the movies at least as far back as Paul Leni's remarkable Waxworks in 1924. But the most memorable waxworks movie still remains Mystery of the Wax Museum made by Warner Bros. in 1933, shot in two strip Technicolor, and directed by Michael Curtiz. The studio apparently thought so too, since it remade the movie in 1953 as House of Wax, using the remake as a vehicle to show off the 3D process. Both films follow basically the same plot line, one that tells of a wax sculptor-Ivan Igor in Mystery of the Wax Museum/Professor Henry Jarrod in House of Wax-whose unscrupulous business partner sets fire to the museum they jointly own, leaving the sculptor horribly mutilated. Some years later, the sculptor, seemingly disabled but ambulatory in reality, reappears and opens a new museum. In the meantime, having become thoroughly crazed by the accident, Igor/Jarrod has become a psychopathic killer who uses the bodies of his victims for the wax figures in his museum.
The 1933 movie supplies an unusual, but mainly satisfactory blending of two distinct genres: the big city movie that was a Warner's staple of the era, and the classic thriller with a demented, hideously deformed villain lurking about in the shadows. The older movie, whose action begins in London in the1920s and then jumps forward to 1933, throws in any number of then up-to-date details, such as a bootlegging racket run by the sculptor's ex-partner, the suicide of a party girl, and the drug habit of one of Igor's minions. An array of familiar faces appears in Mystery of the Wax Museum, among them Glenda Farrell, as a wise-cracking forerunner of Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday, Frank McHugh, as her editor, and Fay Wray, once more as a damsel in deep distress. But it is Lionel Atwill, giving a first-class performance as the villainous Igor, who easily steals the show.
Mystery of the Wax Museum was directed by Michael Curtiz, who worked in nearly every kind of movie genre imaginable during his long tenure at Warners' Curtiz is mainly remembered today for Casablanca, a film which owes more to the chemistry of its performances and to a top-notch screenplay by Howard Koch, Julius and Philip Epstein, and Casey Robinson (uncredited) than to any cinematic ingenuity on the part of Curtiz. But this movie like Doctor X, made the year before, suggests, as do The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, and Mildred Pierce-everyone's favorite blend of soap opera and film noir-that Curtiz had a knack for translating morbid subjects to the screen.
Usually when a studio remade an older picture, the practice was to update the setting. But when Warners' produced House of Wax, it moved the action back into the1890s-not a very happy move, as far I am concerned. If the studio wanted a period setting, then why not have used that of Mystery of the Wax Museum itself? The remake was directed by André De Toth, a man shamefully neglected today, who first gained recognition with the thriller Dark Waters, before doing some memorable westerns. The cast is quite forgettable, with the exception of one name-the only one buyers of this DVD are likely to pay attention to. When he made House of Wax, Vincent Price was not as grandiloquently hammy as he was to become a few years hence as the star of Roger Corman's adaptations of assorted Poe stories. In his years at Fox in the 1940s, Price had given a credible display of his abilities as an actor in such pictures as Song of Bernadette and Leave Her to Heaven, and he had one outstanding performance to his credit, in Otto Preminger's Laura.
But in House of Wax, Price was tackling the kind of role no one could believe in any longer. A deranged genius like Igor was already anachronistic in 1933, as much so as Count Dracula, a latter day descendent of the dandy. Perhaps that's why the studio substituted the WASP-sounding Professor Henry Jarrod for the exotic Ivan Igor. To his credit, Price resists the temptation to camp up his part-later on, he gave up doing ineffectual imitations of old thespians and specialized in doing overripe imitations of himself-and he certainly gives the best performance in House of Wax, but it's a pale imitation of Atwill's. Otherwise, House of Wax is worth watching mainly for a couple of nocturnal chase scenes well staged by DeToth, and the effective color cinematography by the veterans Bert Glennon and Peverell Marley.
Warner Home Video has had the bright idea of bringing out the two movies together, on opposite sides of a single DVD, with results that I found unequal on first acquaintance. House of Wax looks very good indeed. As the 3D reissues of some years back demonstrated, the original color materials have held up very well. Mystery of the Wax Museum, however, was a real disappointment when I watched it using a conventional DVD player and television. Both the color and the picture definition were miserable in many scenes, which is particularly regrettable since the movie contains some beautiful compositions by Ray Rennahan, where blues and greens seem to jump off the screen. However, since I posted this review last year, I have recently looked at Mystery of the Wax Museum on my laptop with Power DVD, and the picture quality was astounding. As a result, I have revised my comments and given the DVD a higher rating. But anyone without the advantage of a program like Power DVD who plans on viewing the picture on a home entertainment center should be prepared to do a lot of fiddling with the controls.

The girl's never without her purse , err ....Phyllis Kirk that is! Just kidding but she does have that habit of clutching the darn thing to death. BUT what a find {!} and what a pair of screamers - this girl can hit the high notes correctly in this Great Double Bill [more later] version of this great clunker [never fails] in the remake Vinnie the P. [with apologies to Cassandra, err ... Elvira, Mistress of the Dank, err Dark] all is set for a great rollercoatser ride, PITY the DVD isn't in 3-D [was televised that way some time ago ..... ] HOWEVER, two plusses .... the hero's flawless caps, AND Carolyn Jones [later Morticia] - [sigh!] incredible waist-line [beats Scarlett O'Hara!], and then there's Charlie B. as the deaf mute, err sensory impaired hunk WITH eyeshadow and the full schmear ... one can go on forever - this is great stuff!!!!

BUT

The ORIGINAL? Side two - when Technicolor or 3 strip color was in its infancy ... now here's something - the Main Gal is a woman of her own circa 1933 [she refers to the "S" word!!} ... great costumes! AND holds up perfectly against the remake with Vinnie [the remake's set in 1900 - the USA original in 1932???] - perfect homage to Lange and Murnau all those great shadows, but the remake [1953] recreates some of the original shot-by-shot - no fair .... {original has this GREAT art-decco set!}

THIS ONE's a MUST for every horror fan [especially BABE Phyllis Kirk]

NOW why are we waiting for a DVD version of 'PHANTOM OF THE RUE MORGUE'? Double bill the Karl Malden version with the Bela Lugosi .... please!

More sreams!

"Mystery at the Wax Museum" is indeed not a musty relic of the 20's, but a wonderful film and the better of two great films. Among the many things it has going for it is Glenda Farrell, a wisecracking blonde who rated her own "Torchy Blaine" film series in that era and who is ace as the saucy girl-reporter going with gusto after her story. It also has the exquisitely beautiful Fay Wray as the heroine and a wonderful Lionel Atwill as the demented sculptor. The print looks wonderful and the dialogue is wonderfully sharp and vibrant, being pre-code. Another fascinating aspect is the look at Greenwich Village apartments in the 1920's with their skylights and fireplaces, and other New York City locations. The whole thing is a delight.

It's companion "House of Wax" is also a deliciously fun film, worthy of a big bowl of popcorn and a rainy night. Vincent Price is priceless (honk honk) as the disfigured sculptor and truly gives one of his best performances. Some of the horror films in which he appeared were at times unpleasantly sadistic, but here the fun is never overpowered by the menace -- it maintains the thrills and chills without getting gratuitous. Especially delightful is Carolyn Jones, best known as "Morticia" on "The Addams Family," as a golddigger. She's a hoot!

This is a great combination. I only wish it was possible to see "House of Wax" in 3-D (as it appeared on the screen) through DVD, because that would make this double bill perfect.

This marvelous DVD offers two versions of the same story! First, the 1953 "House of Wax" starring Vincent Price ... plus the original film on which it was based, the 1933 "Mystery of the Wax Museum" starring Lionel Atwill. Each film offered viewers a technological gimmick when first released to theatres: "House" was exhibited in 3-D, and "Museum" was filmed in early two-strip Technicolor.

The Vincent Price remake is arguably the scarier of the two versions. Although it duplicates many scenes and sections of dialogue from the earlier film, it adds a couple of effective sequences involving the villain of the piece. In one, the scarred fiend chases heroine Phyllis Kirk through dark, rain-slicked streets in the dead of night; in the other, he commits a gruesome murder. Price is deliciously hammy in the role. He constantly threatens to go over the top, but pulls back just in time (at least until the end, when he lets go with relish). Miss Kirk, with her china doll beauty and deep modulated voice makes a wonderful heroine, and Charles Buchinsky (later Bronson) stands out as a muscled and menacing deaf-mute who lurks among the shadows of the museum. The production's color and lighting are outstanding ... the viewer is often left wondering which figures are human and which are wax, and there are several shocks and surprises along the way. The DVD offers an exceptionally fine film-to-video transfer, and don't forget to watch the Original Theatrical Trailer! It's an example of Hollywood ballyhoo at its best, and features some gorgeous color graphics.

The legendary 1933 original version was believed, for decades, to be a "lost film". Film buffs all over the world rejoiced when a surviving print was finally located in the late 1970's; unfortunately, (and unsurprisingly) the actual film was unable to live up to the hype that built up around it during its absence. Despite its considerable virtues, including great performances from Lionel Atwill as the villain and Fay Wray as the gorgeous screaming heroine, "Mystery of the Wax Museum" is marred by an over-abundance of comic relief. Playing a hard-boiled newspaper "dame" who delivers her peppery dialogue in machine gun fashion, Glenda Farrell is neither comic nor a relief. She's simply obnoxious. Still, she's lovely to look at in early two-strip Technicolor. This process, which registers color most heavily in hues of blue and orange, was a crude forerunner of the three-strip "candy-box" Technicolor that made its feature-film debut two years later in the 1935 production of "Becky Sharp". It should be noted that this DVD offers the best restored version of "Wax Museum" yet seen; the color is more vivid and the sound much clearer than that featured on any TV prints or on the earlier MGM VHS version.

All in all, this is a DVD package that should please both horror buffs and film historians alike; it's certainly a great value to receive the 1933 version as a "bonus feature". Here's a double feature made to order for a chilly evening; enjoy it with a bowl of popcorn ... and maybe a burning candle.