House of Wax **½ (2005, Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, Paris Hilton, Brian Van Holt, Jared Padalecki, Jon Abrahams, Robert Ri’chard) – Classic Movie Review 1,111

A marketing campaign promoted the 2005 chiller film House of Wax as ‘See Paris Die’ in a gruesome fashion, and Hilton was sporting enough to create shirts with the slogan. She won the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actress.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra’s enjoyable 2005 chiller film House of Wax is a very loose remake of the venerable and revered old 1953 Vincent Price horror movie House of Wax, with the same situation but a considerably different plot.

In Chad and Carey Hayes’s screenplay, six students motoring to a football game decide to camp out for the night and continue driving the next day. The camp site is visited by a menacing stranger in a pickup truck. The next day the friends find that they are having car troubles when Wade (Jared Padalecki) find his car’s fan belt damaged.

Two of the friends, Wade and Carly (Elisha Cuthbert), accept a lift from a stranger to the deserted Louisiana small town of Ambrose and stray into a wax museum presided over by a crazy murderous twin brother owners Brian and Vincent (both Brian Van Holt). Can the six friends escape from being the next human wax exhibits in the House of Wax?

Elisha Cuthbert and Chad Michael Murray the main stars, as Carly Jones and her twin brother Nick, with Jared Padalecki as Carly’s boyfriend Wade, Jon Abrahams as their friend Dalton Chapman, and Robert Ri’chard as their friend Blake.

[Spoiler alert] And among the other stars is Paris Hilton, as their friend Paige Edwards, who meets a sticky end that had cynical audiences cheering in cinemas. A marketing campaign had promoted the film as ‘See Paris Die’ in a gruesome fashion in the film and Hilton was sporting enough to create shirts with the slogan.

She might have been happy with that, but she wasn’t happy with this. Hilton says: ‘The directors wanted me to do nudity but I said no. I won’t do it, ever.’ Gruesome death fine, nudity not, then, okay.

She won the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actress.

Based on the story The Wax Works by Charles S Belden, this fun Dark Castle production is also a remake of an even older movie, the venerable 1933 Mystery of the Wax Museum. Even in 2005, the jolts and chills in House of Wax are still fairly effective. It had a lot of flack from some critics, and it may just be another formulaic teen slasher movie. But it is a professional job of work, entirely well and efficiently made by Collet-Serra. The actors are fine and professional too, including the maligned Hilton.

It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was released in the US on 6 May 2005 by Warner Bros.

The OK box office brought in $70 million worldwide plus $42 million in DVD rentals (on a $30 million budget).

The soundtrack features music by Deftones, My Chemical Romance, and Interpol.

Spanish director Collet-Serra is also known for Orphan (2009), Unknown (2011), Non-Stop (2014), Run All Night (2015) and The Shallows (2016).

The cast are Elisha Cuthbert as Carly Jones, Chad Michael Murray as Nick Jones, Brian Van Holt as Bo and Vincent Sinclair, Damon Herriman as Lester Sinclair, Paris Hilton as Paige Edwards, Jared Padalecki as Wade, Jon Abrahams as Dalton, and Robert Ri’chard as Blake.

It is shot at Warner Bros Movie World, in Queensland, Australia, with the town set built a few miles away, off Hollindale Road, in the Guanaba area. A fire took place on the set during production.

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).

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