In the grand tradition of Britain's Hammer low-budget horror films of the '60s, this Gothic and gory chiller is the third screen version of Gaston Leroux's tale The Wax Museum. The prologue is set in turn-of-the-century Paris at New Years. Just as the bells ring out, a young sleeping couple are attacked by a hooded figure whose hand has been replaced by a fearsome steel claw. Their gruesome deaths are witnessed by their unseen little girl. The story moves ahead 12 years and moves to a Roman brothel where Lucas, a young patron, accepts a bet to spend an entire evening in a particular wax museum filled with gruesome reenactments of the world's most horrible crimes. Though he knows the figures are only wax, they literally horrify Lucas to the point of death. The official cause is listed as heart failure, a fact that attracts considerable attention from the press causing the curator, Boris, to devise a new set of grim tableaux. His latest creations are chillingly real, mostly because they are real but for the special chemical Boris injects into them. The curator's diabolical schemes unravel shortly after he hires Sonia, the little girl from the prologue, as his new costumer. The museum exhibits bring her childhood trauma flooding back to the surface. Fortunately, her lover, an ingenious reporter has teamed up with a determined police inspector who has been investigating her parents' murder for the past 12 years. The film is dedicated to Lucio Fulci, one of Italy's premiere masters of schlock horror who died during production in March, 1996. He was replaced by first-time director Sergio Stivaletti. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Review
An interesting variation on the classic Gaston Leroux story, which was also the inspiration for the 1953 3-D classic House of Wax, Maschero di cera is an interesting footnote in the ushering of Italian horror into the new millennium. Though it shows little progress in development of plot over style (a notorious criticism of Italian horror), the fact that it was intended to be the first partnering of genre contemporaries Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento excited many genre diehards. With the death of intended director Fulci throwing the production an unexpected curve ball, frequent Fulci/Argento special effects collaborator Sergio Stivaletti was chosen as his successor. Displaying a competent handling of the material, as well as the stylistic excesses that have become synonymous with Italian horror, Stivaletti drenches the dark corridors of the wax museum with rich primary hues and keeps the story moving at a satisfying pace. Blending the conventions that defined Italian horror in the past decades with the modern, digital special-effects mentality that Stivaletti has been refining in recent years, M.D.C. isn't a breakthrough in any sense of the term, and though its final 30 seconds nearly destroy the redeeming qualities of the preceding 97 minutes, it ultimately serves its eerily entertaining purpose. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
