Themes: Disfigured Criminals, Crime Sprees, Woman In Jeopardy
Main Cast: Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell, Frank McHugh, Gavin Gordon, Allen Vincent
Release Year: 1933
Country: US
Run Time: 77 minutes
Plot
The Mystery of the Wax Museum begins in London in the 1920s. Lionel Atwill plays Ivan Igor, a brilliant sculptor who manages a wax museum. Regarding his historical creations as his friends, Igor refuses the entreaties of his business partner, Joe Worth (Edwin Maxwell), to turn his labor-of-love museum into a more profitable "house of horror." Worth responds by setting fire to the museum, hoping to collect the insurance; as Igor looks on in horror, his effigies of Marie Antoinette, Queen Victoria, et al. grotesquely melt to the floor. Flash-forward to 1933: New York City is plagued by several disappearances -- not only of live people, but of recently deceased corpses from the morgue. Hard-boiled girl reporter Florence Dempsey (Glenda Farrell) browbeats her long-suffering editor Jim(Frank McHugh) into investigating these disappearances. Florence rooms with Charlotte Duncan (Fay Wray), the girlfriend of Ralph Burton (Allen Vincent), who works as a technician at a new midtown wax museum. This about-to-open attraction is run by Igor, who had survived the London fire but is now confined to a wheelchair. Igor's old enemy Worth is also in New York, his fingers in several crooked pies. It appears to Florence (and the audience) that somehow Worth is involved in the recent rash of disappearances; the guilty party could also be playboy George Winton (Gavin Gordon), Florence's boyfriend, who is deeply in debt to Worth. But once Igor decides that Charlotte is the living image of Marie Antoinette, the audience becomes uncomfortably suspicious that all those incredibly life-like statues in his museum are actually the paraffin-coated bodies of the missing people. Igor tips his hand when a terrified Charlotte, promised "eternal life" by being "transformed" into an Antoinette effigy, begins punching and clawing at his face -- revealing his countenance to be a mask, covering his hideously burned and gnarled features. Thus, the stage is set for the climactic race to prevent the strapped-down Charlotte from being permanently encased in wax. Long thought lost, The Mystery of the Wax Museum was rediscovered in Jack Warner's personal film collection in 1970. Its two-color Technicolor had faded to the point of monochrome, but fortunately its original hues were preserved by dedicated AFI technicians. The film was remade (and considerably simplified) as the 1953 3-D extravaganza House of Wax, with Vincent Price in the Atwill role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
One of the talkies' early horror classics, The Mystery of the Wax Museum is a crackling good thriller that's a great deal of fun. Wax Museum has its flaws: the identity of the villain is not especially hard to figure out, and the actors employed to impersonate wax figures (because real wax would have melted under the hot lights) do tend to move, which is certainly distracting. But on the whole, Wax Museum is tremendously effective. Some object to its odd mixture of comedy and horror, but this mixture contributes greatly to the film's unique appeal; rarely in horror films of the period does one find a wise-cracking, gin-slinging girl reporter like Glenda Farrell, whose cynical, hardboiled performance is a delight. Lionel Atwill is even better in what is perhaps his finest screen performance, and there's also good work from Fay Wray and Frank McHugh. Michael Curtiz directs stylishly and atmospherically, aided greatly by the stunning, dizzyingly impressionistic sets by Anton Grot, which are an orgy of distorted angles and contorted surfaces. Throw in some surprising pre-Code frankness in the area of sex and drugs, and you've got a horror flick with a real kick. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Anton Grot - Art Director, Orry-Kelly - Costume Designer, Lee Katz - First Assistant Director, Frank Shaw - First Assistant Director, Michael Curtiz - Director, George J. Amy - Editor, Cliff Hess - Composer (Music Score), Leo F. Forbstein - Musical Direction/Supervision, Perc Westmore - Makeup, Ray Romero - Makeup, Ray Rennahan - Cinematographer, Henry Blanke - Producer, Rex Wimpy - Special Effects, Carl Erickson - Screenwriter, Don Mullaly - Screenwriter, Charles S. Belden - Play Author
