House of Wax
by Andr? De Toth, Michael Curtiz
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Carolyn Jones, Frank Lovejoy, Paul Picerni, Phyllis Kirk, Vincent PriceDirector: Andr? De Toth, Michael Curtiz
Brand: Warner Brothers
Producer: Bryan Foy
Producer: Henry Blanke
Writer: Carl Erickson
Writer: Charles Belden
Writer: Crane Wilbur
Writer: Don Mullaly
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); French (Dubbed), Unknown; Spanish (Dubbed), Unknown
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 165 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-08-05
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Warner Home Video
Movie Reviews of House of Wax
Movie Review: Price's 'Full Hollywood' Horror
Summary: 5 Stars
It's not often in Essville that a Vincent Price version of a story is pushed to the margins, but this marvellous dvd proves the rare exception.
It's simplistic to state that Michael Curtiz was a visionary film-maker and Andre de Toth a journeyman but de facto; the original 1933 version - 'the Mystery of the Wax Museum' is superior to it's 3-D successor - 'House of Wax' in every respect.
'Museum's cast is headed by Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray but the film is pinched from under them by a super performance from the scattily sexy Glenda Farrell.
Atwill is believably sinister and distant as the mad wax murderer and Wray duly decorative as the object of his psychosis but Farrell as a chirpy newshound drives the film.
This kind of wise-a** comedy character has broken many a picture, but Farrell - with a head-full of whip-snake ripostes and one-liners - takes the film by the Buster Browns and doesn't let go.
She's feisty, a certifiable heart-breaker but carries the requisite gracile vulnerability insisted upon by the uber-conservative phallocratic culture of the 30's. (Ladies; Know Your Place {!})
Plot-wise there isn't much to choose between the two films; brilliant sculptor, burnt to insanity, takes to using real 'models' to re-stock his museum, but unlike the glitzy but workmanlike de Toth on 'House' - Curtiz is sagacious and naturally, grandly stylish.
Stridently mixing chic American modernism with European gothic (there's one startling shot lifted directly from Weine's masterpiece of expressionism: 'Cabinet of Dr Caligari') on a beautiful colour palette; each scene, particularly those in Atwill's laboratory, hued and visualised like dynamic geometric sci-fi and the sets (by Anton Grot (!) ) are outstanding. Art Deco architecture and ornaments decorate the fabulously tinted two-strip frames giving the film a defining visual edge over other 'Industriels Modernes' classics like 'the Black Cat' or 'King Kong'.
Yes yes, but what you really want to know is; how much nancy-boy PC butt does it kick!?
Loads. The behaviour of the slow but agreeably aggressive NYPD is particularly admirable; they shoot suspects on sight, refer to disabled people as 'freaks' and think nothing of slapping a junkie for info while he's cold-turkeying.
Even spitfire Glenda can't get a word in among the put-downs and brutality.
'Museum's also much sleazier; opiate addiction, sordid coercion, racist language you'd NEVER get away with today, as well as delightful police oppression - merely hinted at in the remake - are presented in fine, brusque glory and without a sliver of guilt or shame.
'House of Wax' is a decent remake. A high-gloss, Folies Bergere version with the always excellent Price as the maniac with the paraffin brain - but Curtiz account is something special.
The only minor fault I can find with 'Mystery of the Wax Museum' is Atwill and Wray being billed above the vivacious Farrell - despite the fact they can't hold a candle to her......
Summary of House of Wax
Museum fire turns handsome man into human monster who steals bodies from morgue to create lifelike images in wax.House of Wax brought Vincent Price into the horror genre, where he fit as snugly as a scalpel in a mad scientist's hand. A remake of the 1933 film Mystery of the Wax Museum, this entertaining Gothic shocker casts Price as a sculptor of wax figures; his unwilling victims--er, "models"--lend their bodies to his lifelike depictions of Marie Antoinette and Joan of Arc. The film was one of the top 10 moneymakers of its year, thanks in part to the 3-D gimmick, which explains why so many things are aimed at the camera (why else would the paddleball man be there?). Footnote to history: director Andre De Toth was blind in one eye, and thus could not see in three dimensions.
Not at all a musty relic of the early-sound era, the original Mystery of the Wax Museum (shot in a soft, trial version of Technicolor) is saucy, pre-Code fun. As corpses disappear from the morgue, Lionel Atwill's wax museum adds to its displays. Coincidence, or the work of the hideously deformed fiend stalking the Manhattan night? Most of the snappy dialogue comes courtesy of reporter Glenda Farrell, a vintage wisecracking dame. --Robert Horton
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