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For a 1953 feature, it boasts some pretty creepy subject matter, what with bodies covered in wax, and some pretty graphic melting sequences. The film itself is a remake of the 1933 Lionel Atwill-Fay Wray thriller Mystery of the Wax Museum but achieves so much more than its predecessor on the strengths of its sharp color, excellent performances, and yes, the 3-D effects. However, Jerrod isn’t quite dead, he opens a new museum with a new partner Wallace (Paul Cavanaugh; Jungle Jim), and changes his tune on the paying public’s demands, but not after first dispatching those who wronged him. Upon its release, House of Wax, despite being trashed by critics, was a resounding box office hit, earning almost $24 million on a $1 million budget (in adjusted numbers). Audiences were thrilled by the lavish colors and the surprisingly effective 3-D, as well as with the reemergence of the “master of menace” Price. The scene where 'Picerni, Paul' is rescued from the guillotine by Frank Lovejoy seconds before the blade came down was filmed in one take, using a real guillotine blade.
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In the mid-1990s, Dario Argento approached an ailing Lucio Fulci to direct one last movie. Initially, the two began working on a new version of The Mummy, which eventually became a remake of… you know. Sadly, Fulci died before filming began, so special effects artist Sergio Stivaletti (Opera, Demons, Cemetery Man) took over, making his feature-directing debut. The result was Wax Mask, a retelling of House of Wax that marries Gothic atmosphere with giallo gore.
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Blu-ray Review: Jaume Collet-Serra’s House of Wax Joins the Shout! Factory - slantmagazine
Blu-ray Review: Jaume Collet-Serra’s House of Wax Joins the Shout! Factory.
Posted: Sun, 11 Jul 2021 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Averill is then taken in by Shane for being in possession of a pocketwatch belonging to a missing deputy city attorney, though he states that he found it. Instead of one cultured sculptor, we get formerly conjoined brothers who wouldn’t be out of place at a Sawyer Family reunion. Due to the surgery that separated them, one brother (named “Vincent”) is grotesquely disfigured and hides behind a mask; the other is physically normal but far more sadistic. Together, the beastly brothers repeople their desolate town with visitors they lured to their waxy graves. One by one, they pick off the aforementioned college kids in grisly fashion. With Museum representing early cinema’s expressionism and the 1953 embracing the Gothic, it’s only fitting that we have a remake done in the biggest subgenre of the last 40 years.
Set Decoration
The film was eventually found in Jack Warner’s private vault, yet it remains relatively obscure, almost entirely overshadowed by the Vincent Price remake (I’ll get to that). Though the 1953 retelling is an undeniable classic, I feel that the original doesn’t receive the appreciation it deserves. I won’t say which is the superior version, but the pre-code Wax Museum is certainly darker and a bit more unsavory (Wax Museum features a character who is a junkie; the 1953 film turns him into an alcoholic). Featuring some superior storytelling by director Andre De Toth, an amazing musical score from David Buttolph and a near-perfect cast, House of Wax holds up really well today.
Here you will find an overview of the cast of the movie House of Wax from the year 1953, including all the actors, actresses and the director. When you click on the name of an actor, actress or director from the movie House of Wax-cast you can watch more movies and/or series by him or her. The month ahead will bring new films from Alex Garland, Luca Guadagnino, Dev Patel, and more.
Arriving just in time to apprehend Igor and save Scott, the police break into Jarrod's workshop. Jarrod attempts to fight them off, but he ultimately dies after being knocked into the workshop's vat of boiling wax and Sue is saved. In 1971, House of Wax was re-released to theaters in 3D with a full advertising campaign.
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Sue attends the grand opening of the museum with Scott and is troubled by how the Joan of Arc wax figure resembles Cathy. Jarrod overhears her and claims he based the figure on photos of Cathy he saw in the newspaper. He then hires Scott, who is a sculpting protégé of Wallace, as an assistant and asks Sue to model for a new Marie Antoinette wax figure, as she strongly resembles his earlier one. Believing Cathy's body was used to create the figure, Sue talks to Detective Lieutenant Tom Brennan. He agrees to investigate Jarrod and his museum and Sergeant Jim Shane recognizes Averill as criminal Carl Hendricks, who is wanted for breaking parole.
Movie Editing
She again approaches the figure of Joan of Arc and still troubled by it, climbs up for a closer look. When she inadvertently knocks off the brown wig, she finds blonde hair underneath and exclaims to herself that it is Cathy's body. Jarrod, whose dependence on a wheelchair was feigned, sneaks up behind her and, after confirming her suspicion, chases her around the museum. When her struggling causes a plaster mask to break off from his disfigured face, she faints. Meanwhile, at the police station, after being plied with drinks, Leon confesses that Jarrod uses real corpses dipped in wax for his exhibits and that the body of the missing city official is on exhibit as Booth. Leon goes on to confess that Cathy was killed for her resemblance to Jarrod's vision of Joan of Arc and that Burke was killed in revenge for setting fire to the original wax museum.
A New York sculptor who opens a wax museum to showcase the likenesses of famous historical figures runs into trouble with his business partner, who demands that the exhibits become more extreme in order to increase profits. Although the entire newspaper angle of the earlier film was eliminated and Mystery was set in the year it was released, whereas House of Wax was set in circa 1902, the two films have many similarities in plot and dialogue. Wallace receives a letter that indicates Jarrod had miraculously survived the fire, though he is now bound to a wheelchair and his hands are crippled, leaving him unable to sculpt. Jarrod gives Wallace a proposition to invest in his new wax museum, which will feature statues made by his assistants, deafmute Igor and alcoholic Leon Averill.
As he can no longer sculpt, Jarrod has hired assistants, the deaf-mute Igor and talented sculptor Leon Averill, to help him recreate his wax figures, and using a new procedure he has devised, build another museum. Jarrod says that, as he can no longer create beauty, he plans to make a horror museum and expects that the museum will be profitable. After being shown Jarrod's basement laboratory, where plaster-of-paris figures are dipped in a vat of boiling wax, Wallace agrees to finance the museum.
Her iconic scream is a considerable boon to the production, especially during the infamous unmasking scene. Rather than simply remove the mask à la Phantom of the Opera, Wray’s character smashes Igor’s false face until his gargoyle visage is revealed. Presented without music, it’s a powerful bit of horror, with gruesome makeup that can still stop a heart. Based on an unpublished short story by Charles S. Belden titled “The Wax Works” and directed by Michael “Casablanca” Curtiz, Mystery of the Wax Museum was the first of the wax-weirdies and possibly the eeriest. It was released by Warner Bros. in 1933 as a companion to their 1932 chiller-diller, Doctor X. Like its predecessor, Mystery of the Wax Museum was shot in two-color Technicolor (it was the last feature film to be filmed in that process). With unearthly color and surreal set design by Anton Grot, the film is an expressionistic nightmare unlike anything before or since (and that includes the subsequent Wax films).
Jarrod, horrified to see his exquisite wax figures of famous historical people, which he considers "friends," melt away, fights Burke and tries to put out the flames, until gas fumes unite with the fire and the building explodes. Later, Burke receives all of the insurance money, as Jarrod is believed to be dead, but Burke is then killed and left dangling in an elevator shaft. At a boardinghouse, a giddy, promiscuous blonde, Cathy Gray, who was dating Burke, is found dead in her room by her friend and fellow boarder, Sue Allen. Sue is chased out the window and through the streets by a man in black, until she takes refuge with friends of her family, Mrs. Andrews and her son Scott. The next day, when the Andrewses and Sue visit the police, Lt. Tom Brennan mentions that Cathy's body, as well as several others, have disappeared from the morgue. Meanwhile, Sidney Wallace, a wealthy financier, is contacted by a wheelchair bound Jarrod, who has survived the fire, but claims that he suffered permanent loss of his hands and legs.
In New York City during the early 1900s, Professor Henry Jarrod is a talented sculptor who runs a wax museum that features wax figures of historical figures that have met grisly demises. However, his business partner, Matthew Burke, is frustrated over Jarrod refusing to make more sensational exhibits, like those that draw crowds to their competitors, and wants to end their partnership. Wealthy art critic Sidney Wallace arrives to see the museum and indicates he may be interested in buying Burke out when he gets back from Egypt in three months. Growing impatient, Burke suggests burning down the museum to collect its twenty-five thousand dollar insurance money. To Jarrod's horror, Burke then starts a fire, which spreads rapidly, and the duo fight while Jarrod's work is destroyed. Burke gets the better of Jarrod and leaves him for dead as the building explodes.
Museum had some levity, but it mostly came from the reporter’s zingers; the majority of the film is mood and shadows. House, on the other hand, is a comparatively light picture with a campy sense of humor and the lush spectacle one expects from a major studio. It also exchanges expressionism for a Gothic aesthetic that anticipates Hammer. Fay Wray, the OG scream queen, co-stars as the woman Igor intends to turn into a wax Marie Antoinette.
Newly struck prints of the film in Chris Condon's single-strip StereoVision 3D format were used for this release. Another major re-release occurred during the 3D revival of the early 1980s. Definitely, one of my top films from the 50s, House of Wax is now widely regarded as a classic. Apparently, the viewing public has changed its mind in the past 70 years as House of Wax now has a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, and was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress in 2014.
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