Themes: Wax Museums, Disfigured Criminals, Double Life
Main Cast: Vincent Price, Frank Lovejoy, Phyllis Kirk, Carolyn Jones, Paul Picerni
Release Year: 1953
Country: US
Run Time: 88 minutes
Plot
This simplified (but lavish) remake of the 1933 melodrama The Mystery of the Wax Museum was the most financially successful 3-D production of the 1950s. In his first full-fledged "horror" role, Vincent Price plays Prof. Henry Jarrod, the owner of a wax museum, whose partner, Matthew Burke (Roy Roberts), intends to burn the place down for the insurance money. When Jarrod tries to prevent Burke from torching the museum, he himself is trapped in the conflagration. Years pass: though now confined to a wheelchair, Jarrod manages to open up a new museum in New York, boasting the most incredibly lifelike wax statues ever seen. At the same time, a masked prowler has been stalking the city, murdering people and then stealing their bodies from the mortuary. One of the victims is Jarrod's old nemesis Burke; another is Cathy Gray (Carolyn Jones), the roommate of art student Sue Allen (Phyllis Kirk). On a visit to the wax museum, Sue can't help but notice that the wax likeness of Joan of Arc is a dead ringer for her deceased friend Cathy -- while the courtly Jarrod declares joyously that Sue is the living image of Marie Antoinette. Guess where this is going to wind up? Frank Lovejoy and Paul Picerni co-star as the nominal heroes, while Charles Bronson -- still billed as Charles Buchinsky -- is a menacing presence as Jarrod's deaf-mute chief sculptor (appropriately named "Igor"). No opportunity to show off the 3-D process is wasted during House of Wax; the most memorable stereoscopic moments are provided by garrulous "paddle-ball man" Reggie Rymal. Ironically, Andre De Toth, the film's director, had only one good eye, and had to constantly ask his cast and crew if the various 3-D effects had come off properly. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Even without the fabled 3-D photography that ballyhooed its theatrical run, this horror classic can still churn up chills decades after its release. While not as intense as the film that provided its template (1933's Mystery of the Wax Museum), nor as gory as its lamentable 2005 remake, House of Wax scores with eerie set design, dark humor, and a great cast. As the quietly mad Henry Jarrod, Vincent Price stars in the role that would seal his fate as a horror icon. He's in excellent form both with and without the grotesque scar makeup he's encased in while gathering corpses for his ghoulish artwork. Carolyn Jones stands out among Price's co-stars as a lively good-time girl whose resemblance to Joan of Arc leads to her demise, and a mute Charles Bronson provides one of the best "Igor" performances in horror cinema. The opening images of melting wax statues are still disturbing, and there's a certain irony in watching the wax museum's audience gawk at frightful tableaus of torture and mayhem in much the same way the film's audience enjoys the spectacle in 3-D. The success of House of Wax ensured that its theme of homicidal artists would be recycled over and over by future horror filmmakers (Bucket of Blood, Color Me Blood Red, and Nightmare in Wax are just a few examples), although its use of 3-D technology did not help the gimmick become industry standard. ~ Fred Beldin, All Movie Guide
The film is the first 3-D color feature from a major American studio, and premiered just two days after Columbia Pictures's Man in the Dark, the first 3-D feature released by a major studio. It followed the very successful premiere months earlier of the independent production, Bwana Devil, both sparking the 3-D film boom of the 1950s. House of Wax premiered nationwide on April 10, 1953 and went out for a general release on April 25, 1953.
Professor Henry Jarrod (Vincent Price) is a devoted wax figure sculptor with a museum in 1910s New York. When his financial partner Matthew Burke (Roy Roberts) demands more sensational exhibits to increase profits, Jarrod refuses. In retaliation, Burke deliberately sets the museum on fire, intending to claim the insurance money. He fights off Jarrod in the process, and splashes kerosene over his body, leaving him to die in the fire. Miraculously, Jarrod survives with severe injuries, and builds a new House of Wax with help from threatening deaf-mute sculptor, Igor (Charles Bronson).
The museum's popular "Chamber of Horrors" showcases both notable crimes and more recent ones, including the murder of Jarrod's former business partner by a cloaked, disfigured killer. Burke's fiancée, Cathy Gray (Carolyn Jones) is also killed. But when Cathy’s friend, Sue Allen (Phyllis Kirk), visits the museum, she makes a discovery that leads to the horrifying truth behind the House of Wax - that all of the waxworks are the wax-coated bodies of Jarrod's victims. Allen herself almost becomes an exhibit, but in the end it is the disfigured Jarrod who falls into the waxworks.
Production
Stereoscopic 3-D was an alternative technology (like Cinemascope and Cinerama) used by 1950s studios attempting to compete with the new threat of television. Just over 50 titles were released in the 3-D process during its 2-1/2 year heyday. House of Wax was always shown in dual interlocked 35 mm projection with polarized glasses. The film was re-released in the period of 1975 through 1980 in both single strip 35mm Stereovision 3-D and in Stereovision's pioneering 70mm 3-D process, where it played in major venues like Grauman's Chinese Theater, in Hollywood, and the huge Boston Music Hall (seating 4300 patrons).
House of Wax, originally titled The Wax Works, was Warner Bros. answer to the 3-D hit Bwana Devil, which had been released the previous November. Seeing something big in 3-D's future, WB contracted the same company, Natural Vision, run by the Gunzberg Brothers, Julian and Milton, to shoot the new feature. The film is ultimately a remake of the studio's 1933 film, The Mystery of the Wax Museum, which in itself was written and based on Charles Belden's three-act play, The Wax Works.
Among the scenes featured in the film that make the best use of 3-D are a museum fire, a paddleball man, and can-can girls. Ironically, the director De Toth was blind in one eye, and unable to experience stereo vision or the 3-D effects. “It’s one of the great Hollywood stories,” Price recalled. “When they wanted a director for [a 3-D] film, they hired a man who couldn’t see 3-D at all! Andre de Toth was a very good director, but he really was the wrong director for 3-D. He’d go to the rushes and say, ‘Why is everybody so excited about this?’ It didn’t mean anything to him. But he made a good picture, a good thriller. He was largely responsible for the success of the picture. The 3-D tricks just happened—there weren’t a lot of them. Later on, they threw everything at everybody.”[1]
