Professor Henry Jarrod (Vincent Price) is a very talented sculptor in the early 1900s. He runs a wax museum in New York City, where his work features historical figures who have all met with some kind of terrible fate. There’s just one problem: his work isn’t “sensational“ enough for his business partner Matthew Burke, who wants to draw in bigger crowds. Lucky for Burke, there’s a wealthy art critic who wants to buy him out in three months after he returns from Egypt. A great deal, except…Burke is way too impatient. He wants the money now, and three months is too long for him to wait. He decides to set fire to the museum to get the insurance money instead, but Jarrod tries to stop him. Burke overpowers him and leaves him inside the museum to die. And in this scene you can really feel the full inferno going on as there’s real (yes, real) flames everywhere.
So while all seems to go well for Burke afterwards with a good slump of insurance money in his bank account, a disfigured man in a cloak one day strangles him and sets it up to look like a suicide. Hmm…who could that mysterious man be, I wonder. He also kills Burke’s fiancée, Cathy Gray, but her roommate Sue comes in before he can make that look like a suicide too. Cathy’s body is later found missing from the morgue. Where could she possibly have ended up…
And here’s an early plot twist: Jarrod survived the fire. But not without a cost…he’s bound to a wheelchair, and his hands have become crippled so he is unable to sculpt anymore. Instead he has hired several assistants: a deaf-mute whose name is Igor and an alcoholic named Leon Averill. He has now opened a new wax museum, and meets with a man named Wallace who might be interested in becoming an investor. And this time, Jarrod has decided to go with what’s popular and have started showcasing acts of murder and violence, and even has one exhibition featuring Burke’s “suicide“. Not only that, but at the museum’s grand opening which Sue decided to attend, she notices that a wax figure of Joan of Arc looks very much like Cathy Gray…
House of Wax is a horror film from 1953, directed by Andre de Toth and starring Vincent Price. It was also the first 3D film with stereophonic sound to be presented in a regular theater, and also the first 3D Feature film in color from a major American Studio. What’s a little amusing, though, is that the director was actually blind on one eye, and thus couldn’t experience the film’s 3D effects at all…
On the film’s premiere in Los Angeles at the Paramount Theatre, it was shown at midnight with several celebrities amongst the audience. The film’s producer, Alex Gordon, decided to make use of Bela Lugosi’s desperate need for cash so he arranged for him to stand outside the theater wearing a cape and some dark glasses, holding a leash with actor Steve Calvert in a gorilla suit. He was going to be interviewed by a reporter and had received some prearranged questions, but the reporter (Shirley Thomas) asked them out of order and confused the hell out of him. It ended with Lugosi feeling so embarrassed that he left without even attending the screening. Poor guy.
The movie was topping the box office for five weeks, and became one of the biggest hits in 1953. It still received mixed reviews, but (as sometimes happen) modern audiences are looking at it in a much more positive light. The movie also bounced up Vincent Price’s career considerably, as he had mainly been playing secondary character parts since the late 1930’s. He later got several high-profile roles as villains of all kinds. And yes, there’s no doubt that Vincent Price is the highlight of the film, doing an excellent portrayal as Henry Jarrod who is the typical good-guy-turned-villain. The opening of the movie where Jarrod’s wax museum is set on fire, where you can see there’s actual fire all over the place while the characters are fighting each other, must have been a literal inferno to film. I’m sure Vincent Price didn’t really have to act that much during the filming of that scene, since anyone except a pure psychopath would feel terrified in a situation like that. And the fire did in fact get out of control, but because they couldn’t afford to re-shoot the scene they had to keep filming despite firemen actually entering the place. Jeez!
There’s a good amount of old-fashioned atmosphere here, with some obvious Jack the Ripper influences where our mysterious killer is seen stalking the dark, narrow streets for his victim. The story is somewhat mystery based, where it isn’t entirely clear who the killer is and why the wax dolls in the museum look so much like the recently deceased people. Yeah, yeah…we know, of course. It’s just that most of the characters in the movie don’t, and it’s all set up for a nice little old fashioned horror film.
House of Wax is a nice watch, especially if you want to see Vincent Price in one of his earlier roles as the typical elegant villain.
Director: André De Toth
Writers: Crane Wilbur, Charles Belden
Country & year: USA, 1953
Actors: Vincent Price, Frank Lovejoy, Phyllis Kirk, Carolyn Jones, Paul Picerni, Roy Roberts, Angela Clarke, Paul Cavanagh, Dabbs Greer, Charles Bronson, Reggie Rymal
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045888/
