House of Wax

As I was watching Andre De Toth’s House of Wax with Vincent Price, I can completely understand just why he went so mad. Just imagine being there and watching all your hard work, your art, that great passion that comes from such talent and patience, just go up in flames and melt away. It is a powerful scene, too, watching those wax figures destroyed. De Toth goes out of his way to hit the ground running with a potent, shocking kick-off to the movie. Vincent’s character not only loses what he holds so dear, but his body, his visage, suffers severe burns. Such a harrowing experience would damage anyone.

I just love wax museum movies in the horror genre. Anytime an oldie pops up a wax museum, my heart is content and overjoyed. I have to say besides the knock-out opening where pre-mad brilliant sculptor, Professor Henry Jarrod (Price), endures seeing his greedy insurance-hungry partner, Matthew (Roy Roberts) set afire his museum of historical figures (uncorrupted by the shock and awe theatrics of chambers of horrors museums so popular among patrons), is the darkened House of Wax Chamber of Horrors with Sue Allen (Phyllis Kirk) discovering that her murdered gal pal, Cathy (Carolyn Jones; a hoot, and she has a giggle that is highly memorable, often in conversation it turns into a deep voice to a high-pitch; she’s a treat, really) is represented as Joan of Arc. Among the wax figures is Sue Allen, not knowing that her pursuit to see if in fact what her intuition tells her is accurately correct regarding Cathy actually being Joan of Arc, is that she is to be Jarrod’s Marie Antoinette. He isn’t immune to her interest in proving that an earring specifically a characteristic of Cathy (one lobe, not two), and Allen just is too undaunted; her being in jeopardy is no surprise, but it produces a terrific scene where Allen smashes at Jarrod’s face, breaking it off to reveal the burned visage underneath the “wax”.

Chuck Bronson is terrifically used as this skilled sculptor who can’t speak, and is built like a brickhouse, completely under the influence of Jarrod. Sue is in need of a good friend, and sculptor (yep, New York City is full of them), Scott Andrews (Paul Picerni) is right there for her. He’ll try to come to her rescue but Bronson’s dumb mute will not only overpower him but attempt to use a guillotine prop (gotta love guillotine props in wax museums!) to behead Scott! I love this little moment that has Bronson’s head among a group of wax dummy heads and his eyes slowly turn towards Sue walking past…really cool. It takes a talented artist who suffers from alcoholism that gives the police the break in their case they need; keeping a timepiece that belonged to a victim was a key piece of evidence that would break it all wide open.

Then there’s Price with that burn face make up (looks like a mask) in his Jack the Ripper get up skulking the streets looking for bodies to be made up as “life-like” wax figures for Chamber of Horrors. This is one macabre movie, really. The way he awaits his nemesis, Matthew (earlier Matthew talks to Cathy about the truly sad loss of his dear friend Jarrod in the fire; he is really a repulsive piece of trash in a suit and tie, all business-minded about profit any way he can get it and totally guilt-less about his involvement in Jarrod’s tragedy), strangles him with a rope, then later lynches/drops him in an elevator shaft, is just one example among many regarding just how macabre House of Wax can be. Sue naked and bolted with Jarrod informing her of his plans to use wax on her (alive!) so he can once again return Marie Antoinette to life in his museum. His “factory” with a vat and network of machinery that creates the wax and lays it on bodies gets the big action sequence at the end. Price will attempt to fend off the police and fall right in the vat of hot wax…just great stuff.

This is the kind of movie always on my television in October. This is perfectly fit for the season. It isn’t deep and does resemble the old Warner Brothers Mystery in the Wax Museum (featuring the great Lionel Atwill), with 3D heralded for audience reception of the time. It has those colorful period studio sets that bring the film to life; the police detectives investigating a series of missing bodies and their murders have some fun exchanges and dialogue, Frank Lovejoy and Dabbs Greer. Greer, particularly, is equipped with amusing phrases to describe situations and characters. I thought Kirk was a little stiff as the heroine, but Jarrod’s chase of her from Cathy’s apartment into the New York City streets provides some early highlights. That grotesque burn mask for Price has his face all warped and eskew. His eyes stood out to me, both in that creepy mask and under the “human face”. I think Price nailed the quiet insanity and I like how he conveys Jarrod’s barely holding it together while in the wheel chair with his fake injured legs. When talking of Antoinette, I think Price is at his best; that yearning to have her back is all there in his tortured eyes. A good viewing tonight of the film.

I was thinking about House of Wax the next day, and the scene where Jarrod’s wax figures melt into nothing thanks to the fire, it was almost like a homicide of sorts. While Matthew doesn’t look at them as anything more than objects to profit from, Jarrod saw them as his family. So De Toth shoots each of them on fire, his camera lingering on their demises. It has stuck with me, I must say. I truly can see why he went mad.