House Of Wax (1953) Movie Review
This movie is actually a remake of "Mystery of the Wax Museum" and was the first Warner Brothers movie to be featured in 3-D.
Vincent Price's character (Professor Henry Jarrod) recreate his wax museum using dead bodies as the base for the sculpts or "subjects taken from life" as he says. Newspaper events depicted in wax in exhibits of violence. When Sue's (Phyllis Kirk) roommate ends up dead, Sue thinks that she is actually the Joan of Ark wax sculpture.
There are several interesting things about this film. The first one was watching all the wax figures burn during the fire in the beginning scenes. I love how it showed the wax starting to drip down until the fire was so large that all of the statues just collapsed in on themselves. I also wasn't aware until I looked up the movie after I had watched it but Cathy is played by Carolyn Jones (better known as Morticia in The Addams Family). She did such a fantastic job with the voice and the attitude of her character that I didn't even know it was her. The main girl Sue is much more of a likable character than Cathy and has a very Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins look to her.
The movie shows its age with the 3-D effects. Without even knowing that this was supposed to be a 3-D film (the poster that I saw was a different one than featured above) I figured it out when the man playing with the paddle board kept bopping it towards the screen while he talked right to the camera. Also when the dancers are on stage it was very obvious that the only reason that scene make it into the movie was because of the 3-D effect. The effects didn't take away from the movie but since 3-D has come such a long way since 1953, it didn't add anything to the movie either. Also I'm not sure why in the middle of the movie there was an intermission screen. Usually that's not seen in a movie whose run time totals around an hour and a half.
Overall I would recommend this movie to anybody who (like me) is a fan of Vincent Price or just wants a good 50s era scary movie.
Grade: B
Check back tomorrow for a horror movie review from a 1982 title!
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