3D FRENZY - HOUSE OF WAX (1953)

DIRECTED by Albert DeToth.

SCREENPLAY by Crane Wilbur based on "The Waxworks" by Charles Belden. 

STARRING  - Vincent Price as Prof. Henry Jarrod,  Frank Lovejoy as Det. Lieut. Tom Brennan,  Phyllis Kirk as Sue Allen,  Carolyn Jones as Cathy Gray,  Paul Picerni as Scott Andrews,  Roy Roberts as Matthew Burke,  Dabbs Greer as Sergeant Jim Shane,  Charles Bronson as Igor,  Reggie Rymal as Carnival Barker,  Nedrick Young as Carl Hendricks/Leon Averill,  Paul Cavanagh as Sidney Wallace.

PLOT - Henry Jarrod is an eccentric sculptor of wax, his figures have a lifelike quality which is strange to behold, he is a truly gifted artist, his sculptures are more than mere wax to him, they are his friends...

Henry's business partner, Matthew Burke, doesn't quite see it this way. To him the wax figures are a liability that are holding back his future business ventures and losing him money.

One night, Matthew attempts to burn Henry's wax museum down in a bid to claim back the insurance money. Henry tries to stop him. The two men fight. Henry is knocked out and the museum burns to the ground. Henry is presumed dead...

But Henry survived. Alive but now insane, Henry seeks his revenge. Revenge upon the man who betrayed him...and more. For Henry wants to rebuild his museum, the only problem is Henry's hands don't work properly any more due to his burns, so to rebuild his wax museum Henry must fashion his new exibits from new materials...human materials...

DIALOUGE  - Henry - "To you they are wax, but to me, thier creator, they live and breath."

PERFORMANCES  - Once again Vincent Price knocks it out of the park playing the role of Henry Jarrod. To begin with, he's quite a sympathetic character. He's obviously got a bit of a screw loose but at this point he's pretty much a harmless eccentric. You really do feel for the poor man when you see his beloved wax museum burnt to the ground by his corrupt and unscrupulous partner Matthew (Roy Roberts playing an utter sleazebag).

Even when Henry starts his vengence trail, you're still rooting for him (of course you are, you've just watched him get screwed over and seen his heart brake). You really want to see him get his own back on Matthew and he does...in spectacular style. 

It's only once Henry gets a taste for killing that his character becomes more sinister and cynical. Matthew is despatched very early on in the story and for the rest of the film Henry goes about the sinister business of rebuilding his museum. Unable to sculpt anymore due to his burnt hands, Henry turns to other means - murdering people and coating thier corpses in wax to create his new "lifelike" figures.

Price plays this switch over in Henry's morals brilliantly, it's so subtle that it's difficult to tell at what point he's crossed over into outright malevolence. A great screen villain that straddles that line of being an anti-hero as well.

Phyliss Kirk is good too playing Sue Allen. Sue is the film's heroine, earlier on Sue's roommate Cathy (Carolyn Jones playing a ditzy gold digger with an annoying laugh and a heart of gold) is murdered by Henry. Henry steals her body from the morgue, coats it in wax and turns it into his new Joan of Arc figurine. Sue is troubled by the "wax" figures uncanny resembelence to her dead friend and resolves to find out what is going on.

Along the way she is aided by a hard bitten cop - Tom Brennan (Frank Lovejoy) who also suspects Henry may be up to no good, and her wet blanket of a boyfriend Scott (Paul Picerni) who has started working for Henry. Kirk gets some great scenes with Price, she seems both fascinated and repulsed by him and she puts over how creeped out her character is by him very well. Especially seeing as Henry makes it obvious that he wants Sue to become his next exibit...

Henry is aided and abetted in his nefarious deeds by his two henchmen. A deaf mute called Igor (is being ''Igor"an essential job qualification for working as an evil genius's assistant or something ?). Igor is played by a young Charles "Death Wish" Bronson. It always seems to be horror movies that give future "A list" stars thier early roles for some reason.

Nedrick Young plays Henry's other assistant Leon/Carl - an escaped alcoholic murderer living under an alias. Leon crumbles like a deflated punchbag under police interrogation after they deprive him of booze for a few hours and sells Henry out for a drop of whisky. You just can't get the staff these days...

SFX - Aside from the then pioneering 3D technique, the main effect in this movie is the makeup job we get for Henry's burnt face. It's quite an effective piece of work. It looks really good when it's shot under subdued lighting. Especially in the scenes where Henry is stalking the foggy back alleys of old New York.

We're at first not meant to realise it's Henry (in the other parts of the film Henry wears a skin like wax mask to make him appear non disfigured - his hands couldn't have been THAT burnt then...). It's still blatantly Vincent Price under the makeup though...

Not a special effect as such, but I love the scene where the wax dummy's melt in the opening arson attack. It's really quite creepy and gruesome looking, in the absence of any actual gore it makes for a good substitute...

It's just the way thier features drip, distort and melt - it perfectly captures that unnerving "uncanny valley" feeling that wax figures always seem to possess.

COMING AT YA - From the opening credits this movie throws the 3D gimmick at you front and centre. We get a title sequence where the credits leap out of the screen at us (as we will see this becomes a bit of an ongoing trope for 3D movies).

Then we get the fight scene in the blazing wax museum - chairs get hurled into the camera whilst other bits of rubble drop to the ground around us. They missed a trick when the museum explodes though (the explosion is shot from the side rather than facing us), Aw well...you can't have everything I suppose.

The most famous 3D moment is when the Carnival Barker is doing his spiel to entice punters into the new museum. He has a table tennis bat with a ball attached to it by string which he bats towards our eyes. He even breaks the fourth wall, threatening to knock our bags of popcorn out of our hands. It's cheesy as hell but I love it...

During the course of the film we get corpses sitting up on mortuary slabs, Can-Can dancing showgirls kicking thier legs and wiggling thier arses in our faces and a brilliant end fight scene in Henry's lair where more chairs get thrown, test-tubes get smashed and a plastic skeleton gets swung towards our faces.

The final shot is of somebody holding a wax dummy's head directly into camera. Always end on a high...

SEX & VIOLENCE  - This being a 50's film we don't get a lot in the way of either. Most of the murders Henry commits happen off screen. Except for Matthew's death where we see Henry garrot him and then hang his corpse from a liftshaft to make it look like a suicide...

RATING  - House Of Wax is a film I always enjoy whenever I watch it. It's melodramatic and slightly camp but I love it's carnival atmosphere and the way it sells you on it's 3D technique. It's movie making as fairground showmanship.

Price is great as always, it's cheesily atmospheric and lots of fun.

I'm giving it 4 melting Marie Antoinette's out of 5. Well worth a watch.

POSTER/VHS/DVD ART  - As you'd probably expect, the movie posters really push the 3D aspect...and I mean REALLY push it...