House of Wax

(1953) ***1/2

I remembered a third of the way into this movie that it was shot in 3-D. According to IMDB it was "the first feature produced by a major studio in 3D." (Warner Bros.) I remembered because it was the scene when the new Wax Museum opens and there is an entertainer out front who is playing with two paddle-balls and shooting them right at the camera and talking to the audience, "Look there's someone with some popcorn." What a hoot!

Vincent Price stars as Professor Jarrod, a gifted artist who has a small wax museum where he lovingly recreates figures from history. None of that sensationalist "chamber of horrors" stuff for him. His partner, Matthew, wants out though and decides to set the place ablaze to collect the insurance money. Matthew ensures the museum is going to be destroyed and leaves the poor professor for dead. The scenes of all the wax figures melting are pretty cool.

Burn, baby burn.

Strange occurrences begin to happen: Jarrod's old partner is found hanging in an elevator shaft; suicide or something more sinister? Then his body disappears from the morgue. We see Cathy, (partner Matthew's former fiance), a ditsy blond getting ready for a date with a real "swell." Later that night Cathy's roommate Sue returns to find her dead and a horribly disfigured man chases Sue from the room. We see the same creepy guy steal Cathy's body from the morgue.

Who is the mysterious creepy guy?

At this time Professor Jarrod shows up to open his new and improved wax museum. He is as handsome as ever but confined to a wheelchair and his hands are burned and useless to him so he has his pupils doing the wax work. He has decided to give the people what they want and puts in a terrifying display of the "horrors" he disdained of earlier. Here are macabre sights of death and mayhem. Sue and her beau Scott come to the museum and she is struck by how much the figure of Joan of Arc looks like her dead friend Cathy. Jarrod explains it away easily but Sue is not convinced. The Professor is enamored of Sue as she looks exactly like his previous figure of Marie Antoinette.

We finally learn what deviltry the professor has been up to when he traps Sue and admits what she has suspected. His figures look so real because they are dead bodies covered in wax. This revelation comes after a great scene of Sue wandering through the darkened museum and into the back room where all these random heads and odd body parts are kept. The lighting during this is incredible and the colors are so intense and vivid.

As she wanders through the exhibits she is also being stalked by Igor, a deaf-mute who is one of the professor's henchmen. I mention this because he is played by a young actor making his big screen debut, Charles Buchinsky. Who would later change his name to Charles Bronson.

How far am I going to get with a name like Buchinsky?

While obviously not super scary by today's standards, this movie has it's chilly moments. The dramatic music is great and I cannot say enough about that amazing 50's technicolor. Vincent Price is wonderful as the deranged professor. I could have lived without the ten minute scene of Sue and Scott at the Sunday matinee can-can show - definitely not as good without the 3-D, but it was worth it!