House of Wax **** (1953, Vincent Price, Frank Lovejoy, Phyllis Kirk, Carolyn Jones, Charles Bronson) – Classic Movie Review 1,110

The venerable and revered 1953 chiller film House of Wax is best remembered for Vincent Price’s gloriously camp and flamboyant performance, but it is also fondly recalled for its 3D effects.

Director André de Toth’s venerable and revered old 1953 chiller film House of Wax finds the great Vincent Price taking the horror movie route that provided his fame and fortune for the next four decades, right up to end with Edward Scissorhands in 1990. Horror movies served him well, but then he served horror movies well.

Based on the story The Wax Works by Charles S Belden, this great fun Fifties schlock favourite is an enthusiastic and faithful remake of the 1933 Mystery of the Wax Museum, with a similar plot but without the comedy relief. Along with Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder and Kiss Me Kate (1953), it is perhaps the best-known film from the short-lived 3D movie craze of the early/mid Fifties. By the mid-1960s it had achieved the status of being a classic horror film, even though most audiences were seeing it in 2D on TV.

It was the first colour 3D feature from a major American studio, following the premiere of Bwana Devil in November 1952 and Man in the Dark, the first major-studio black-and-white 3D feature. It was the first 3D film with stereophonic sound presented in a regular cinema. Around only 50 features were released in 3D during the format’s brief heyday 1952-55, ending with the spring 1955 release of Revenge of the Creature.

Price gives every impression that he’s enjoying himself enormously as Professor Henry Jarrod, the artistic owner of a wax museum who specialises in lifelike historical figures such a Marie Antoinette or Joan of Arc. But he has an altercation with his business partner, Matthew Burke (Roy Roberts), who wants to increase revenue by adding a chamber of horrors. When Jarrod refuses, Burke burns down the wax museum to claim the insurance with Professor Jarrod inside. But he unexpectedly survives as a vengeful killer and, now completely crazed, he uses real people as his wax figures.

This high-profile starring part as a mad maniac deservedly and happily transformed and revitalised Price’s career, elevating him from character parts to star roles as fiendish villains.

House of Wax is best remembered for Price’s gloriously camp and flamboyant performance, but it is also fondly recalled for its 3D effects of boiling wax pouring into audiences’ laps and the stereo sound effects shooting from various parts of the cinema. Bizarrely, de Toth seems the wrong choice as director as he only had one eye and so he couldn’t see the 3D!

Price recalled: ‘It’s one of the great Hollywood stories. When they wanted a director, they hired a man who couldn’t see 3D at all! André de Toth was a very good director, but he really was the wrong director for 3D. He’d go to the rushes and say “Why is everybody so excited about this?” It didn’t mean anything to him. But he made a good picture, a good thriller. He was largely responsible for the success of the picture. The 3D tricks just happened – there weren’t a lot of them. Later on, they threw everything at everybody.’

Supporting player Carolyn Jones (as Cathy Gray) found fame 11 years later as Morticia Addams in TV’s The Addams Family. Charles Bronson, still billed as Buchinsky, plays the servant Igor.

House of Wax was one of the biggest hits of 1953, earning an estimated $5.5 million in rentals from North American box offices alone.

Happily, on one-D home screens, the old-style jolts and chills are still entertaining and fairly effective, but it is at its very best seen in 3D.

Though it is now a PG, it originally had an X certificate. It was successfully re-released in cinemas in 3D in 1971 and 1982.

To celebrate the 60th anniversary re-release of the film on 3D Blu-ray, it was screened for a theatrical audience for the first time digitally by the Santa Fe Film Festival and the Jean Cocteau Theatre in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at Halloween 2013. Vincent Price’s daughter, Victoria Price, attended.

It was remade loosely as House of Wax in 2005 with Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, Brian Van Holt and Paris Hilton.

Charles S Belden wrote screenplays for several 1930s Charlie Chan films, notably Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936). He married Joan Marsh who starred in Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937).

http://derekwinnert.com/edward-scissorhands-classic-film-review-102/

http://derekwinnert.com/house-on-haunted-hill-1958-vincent-price-classic-film-review-1090/

http://derekwinnert.com/house-of-wax-2005-elisha-cuthbert-chad-michael-murray-classic-film-review-1111/

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1,110

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com