Review #230: House of Wax (1953)

This review was originally written in October 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #84: House of Wax (1953)

I saw the 2005 House of Wax movie many years ago, and spent most of the time since assuming that it was a remake of this film. That's not at all the case- the two movies have nothing in common except for the title (and I actually recommend both movies, if you have the time). This is also the first color movie I'm watching this month, which was a welcome detail! (Unfortunately I'm not done with black and white films, as there's still six more of those, including tomorrow's movie.)

House of Wax introduces us to Henry Jarrod, a wax sculptor whose passion for the medium outweighs his monetary ambitions. His business partner, Matthew Burke, feels differently and sets the museum and all of Jarrod's work on fire in order to collect insurance money, and Jarrod is assumed to be killed in the fire. But when Burke is killed shortly after by a grotesque burned individual- followed by Burke's girlfriend, as well as probably a bunch of other people offscreen- a loosely-connected young woman named Sue Allen gets caught up in a twisted web of murder, deception, and art that's getting hotter by the minute!

Sorry about the too-catchy description, I actually explained very little of the plot but the plot of the second half of this movie is really kind of convoluted and difficult to explain without giving several twists away (and I generally try not to give away twists in these reviews, especially if I think the movie is worth watching). House of Wax is interesting, and not at all what I was expecting. The characters are... good I suppose, the plotting makes sense (even if it's hard to describe succinctly), and there's enough spectacle in here to keep things interesting even if there's a couple lulls. Vincent Price puts in a great performance, of course, but nobody else really stood out. There's not really much negative to say about this film, it's solid and pretty fun. There's a lot of action in here and some of it (particularly the parts in the burning studio at the beginning) is really impressive!

I do think it's funny (and pretty obvious) that this was designed to be a 3D movie, because there are plenty of points where the actors will do some obvious exaggerated action that would make the audience jump (including a very long fourth-wall-breaking sequence where a barker hits a paddleball directly at the camera while talking to the viewer). So it's gimmicky at times, but still worth watching.

Overall Rating: 6/10 Wax John Willkes Booths

Deadly Trivia: One of the scenes in the House of Wax involves a guillotine, set up to show off the gruesome truth of its use in medieval France. At one point a character (no spoilers) has their head forced into it with the intention of being killed by it, and apparently, the blade on the guillotine actually was real (and if it had fallen on the actor's neck, it actually would have killed him). Initially the actor refused to do the scene, and was fired. Eventually the studio brought him back, beefed up the safety mechanism on the guillotine, and intended to go forward; the actor, still not feeling entirely safe, agreed to do the scene ONCE, and only once. (Everything went according to plan and he was not harmed.) So the scene in the film includes the only take done for that particular shot.