Actually, two houses of wax for the price of one (House Of Wax [1953] (DVD))

Name: hogsflesh

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Product:	House Of Wax [1953] (DVD)
Date:	16.09.07 (192 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The 1930s version is very good

Disadvantages: The 1950s version is less good

This is a DVD of the original 1953 horror movie rather than the recent remake in which Paris Hilton has oral sex with her boyfriend (is that right? Or am I thinking of a different Paris Hilton film?) The 50s House of Wax was itself a remake of a 1933 film called Mystery of the Wax Museum, which is included as an extra on this DVD, and is the reason I bought it.

The 1933 version concerns a kindly sculptor, Ivan Igor, who runs a waxworks museum. On the verge of great acclaim as an artist, his entire life’s work is destroyed by his greedy business partner, who torches the museum for the insurance. Igor survives the fire but is a physical wreck, confined to a wheelchair and unable to work. He opens a new wax museum which somehow uses dead bodies covered in wax in place of real waxworks – his helpers, who include some kind of grotesque creature, murder people who look right so that they can be turned into waxworks. Igor needs only to find his Marie Antoinette and his collection will be complete – and then he meets pretty young Charlotte…

This is good stuff, especially for its time. The idea is perversely weird enough to work, although I’m not too sure that coating a corpse in wax is going to keep it fresh for long. Igor is played very well by Lionel Atwill, a largely forgotten horror star of the era, who makes you feel sympathy for the character until you realise just what a warped maniac he is. Charlotte is played by 30s scream queen Fay Wray – she looks fetching and screams well, which is all that’s needed. The film was made before the Hollywood Production Code made all films blandly unthreatening, and it’s surprisingly frank about casual sex, drug use and bootlegging (this was made during prohibition). Fay Wray reveals far more of her legs than she’d be able to even a year later, and there’s a good scene where the police cold turkey a junkie to get information.

The film’s shot in a weird early Technicolor process (the same as is used in the silent Phantom of the Opera, if you’ve seen that). It emphasises reds far too much (I think it could only use two colours) but it adds an unworldly wash to the film that I found quite alluring (although I suppose it also cements its place as a period piece). There are even a couple of good suspense moments and a nicely macabre bit of business in a morgue. It also has one of the great unmasking sequences in film history. It was directed by Michael Curtiz, who later gave us Casablanca and The Adventures of Robin Hood.

There are problems with the film, though. Universal had pretty much cornered the market in horror in the early 30s, so when Warners made this they decided to make it as different as possible. So they fill it with fast-paced, slangy dialogue of the kind they used in their gangster movies. Not an entirely bad thing necessarily, but the character who spouts most of the dialogue, and sadly who acts as the main plot engine, is a profoundly tiresome journalist played by Glenda Farrell. Two minutes after she first appeared I found myself ardently hoping she’d find herself waxed pretty damn quickly – and I’m not talking about those mysterious cosmetic treatments that ladies from Brazil go in for. But in spite of this deeply trying journalist, I’d still recommend the film for anyone with a taste for old horror. It’s from an era where almost all the major horror films have *something* going for them, but it stands out in a crowded field.

And then they remade it in 1953. It’s almost exactly the same, plot-wise. Characters’ names have changed, and the journalist is thankfully missing, but otherwise it’s the same. Sculptor, wax museum, fire, crippled, corpses dipped in wax, Marie Antoinette. But this one just isn’t as good.

The film was Vincent Price’s first starring role in horror, which automatically makes the film a rather camper affair (he is, to be fair, quite restrained by his later standards, only really letting rip in a scene where he’s *meant* to be showboating). A very young Charles Bronson also appears as a sinister mute. But although the film is a little gorier and there are more hints of nudity, it comes across as far more naïve than its earlier, pre-Code incarnation. The sexuality is a played down, and the junkie character has become an alcoholic. It’s all somehow cosier. Things just don’t play as well. The creepy morgue scene, the unmasking, the climax are all pretty much the same as in the first film, but here they just lack something, as if everyone’s going through the motions without really caring what they’re doing. Even the waxworks look rubbish.

Probably the main problem with the film was that it was made in 3-D, which was enjoying a brief vogue at the time. Which means that, viewed flat, it’s often a pretty unrewarding experience. The Technicolor and the way scenes are obviously set up to play in 3-D sometimes adds a rather charming oddness to certain shots, but there are quite a few things-thrown-at-the-camera moments that don’t work. These culminate in a sequence where a man hits a ping pong ball on a bit of elastic at the camera over and over again for what feels like about ten minutes – for no reason whatsoever! And then, a bit later on, he does it again! I’m sure this all helped distract 50s Americans from the cold war for a few minutes, but it made me shake my fists at the television in impotent rage.

The one thing both films get right is how creepy waxworks can be – the scene early on where the museum burns down is magnificent in both films, the dummies distorting and melting in some pretty horrible ways. Plot-wise effectively a knock-off of Phantom of the Opera, both films were hugely influential in their incidental details – as well as other waxworks horrors like Mill of the Stone Women, you can see their influence in films that range from the obscure (Horror Hospital) to the well-known (Tim Burton’s Batman shamelessly borrows the film’s most famous moment, as does Carry On Screaming).

The DVD itself has only one extra (apart from the second film) – some old newsreel footage of House of Wax’s premiere, attended by what I assume were celebrities of the day (I only recognised Ronald and Nancy Reagan). But it lacks sound, instead having the film’s rather uninspired main theme played over it. The picture quality on House of Wax is very good, that on The Mystery of the Wax Museum rather less so, with fairly substantial scratching. For some reason you have to go to Mystery’s chapters page to play it – there’s no option to just play the whole thing. The DVD also loses points for making me sit through a stupid anti-piracy advert (here’s a hint, Hollywood – make films that are worth paying full price for and people will stop ripping you off).

So two films for the price of one (although you wouldn’t know it from looking at the DVD box). The more obscure is certainly the better of the two, and this should really have been released as a double feature. But it costs less than a fiver on amazon, and is worth a look if you’re into these kinds of things.

Summary: An old Vincent Price movie upstaged by its DVD features