House of Wax (1953 film)

House of Wax
House of Wax original film poster
Directed by	André de Toth
Produced by	Bryan Foy
Written by	Charles S. Belden (play) Crane Wilbur (screenwriter)
Starring	Vincent Price Frank Lovejoy Charles Bronson Carolyn Jones Phyllis Kirk
Music by	David Buttolph
Cinematography	Bert Glennon J. Peverell Marley Lothrop B. Worth
Editing by	Rudi Fehr
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date(s)	April 10, 1953 (premiere) April 25, 1953 (nationwide)
Running time	88 min.
Language	English
Budget	$1,000,000
Box office	$23,750,000

House of Wax is a 1953 American horror film starring Vincent Price. It is a remake of Warners' Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) without the comic relief featured in the earlier film, and was directed by André de Toth. The 1953 House of Wax was an early example of the 3-D film craze of the early 1950s.

The film was the first 3-D color feature from a major American studio, and premiered just two days after Columbia Pictures's Man in the Dark, the first 3-D feature released by a major studio. It followed the very successful premiere months earlier of the independent production, Bwana Devil, both sparking the 3-D film boom of the 1950s. House of Wax premiered nationwide on April 10, 1953 and went out for a general release on April 25, 1953.

Plot summary

Professor Henry Jarrod (Vincent Price) is a devoted wax figure sculptor with a museum in 1910s New York. When his financial partner Matthew Burke (Roy Roberts) demands more sensational exhibits to increase profits, Jarrod refuses. Unwilling to wait to be bought out, Burke deliberately sets the museum on fire, intending to claim the insurance money. He fights off Jarrod in the process, who is desperately attempting to save his precious sculptures, and splashes kerosene over his body, leaving him to die in the fire. Miraculously, Jarrod survives with severe injuries, and builds a new House of Wax with help from threatening deaf-mute sculptor, Igor (Charles Bronson).

The museum's popular "Chamber of Horrors" showcases both notable crimes and more recent ones, including the murder of Jarrod's former business partner by a cloaked, disfigured killer. Burke's fiancée, Cathy Gray (Carolyn Jones) is also killed. But when Cathy’s friend, Sue Allen (Phyllis Kirk), visits the museum, she makes a discovery that leads to the horrifying truth behind the House of Wax - that all of the waxworks are the wax-coated bodies of Jarrod's victims. Allen herself almost becomes an exhibit, but in the end it is the disfigured Jarrod who falls into the waxworks.

Cast

• Vincent Price as Professor Henry Jarrod
• Frank Lovejoy as Lt. Tom Brennan
• Carolyn Jones as Cathy Gray
• Phyllis Kirk as Sue Allen
• Paul Picerni as Scott Andrews
• Roy Roberts as Matthew Burke
• Angela Clarke as Mrs. Andrews
• Paul Cavanagh as Sidney Wallace
• Dabbs Greer as Sgt. Jim Shane
• Charles Bronson (credited Charles Buchinsky) as Igor
• Reggie Rymal as the paddleball barker

Production

Stereoscopic 3-D was an alternative technology (like Cinemascope and Cinerama) used by 1950s studios attempting to compete with the new threat of television. Just over 50 titles were released in the 3-D process during its 2½ year heyday. House of Wax was always shown in dual interlocked 35 mm projection with polarized glasses. The film was re-released in the period of 1975 through 1980 in both single strip 35mm Stereovision 3-D and in Stereovision's pioneering (first commercial success) 70mm 3D process, where it played in major venues like Grauman's Chinese Theater, in Hollywood, and the huge Metropolitan Theatre in Boston (seating 4300 patrons). This effort pre-dated the first IMAX 3D (also on 70mm film) by nearly 12 years.

House of Wax, originally titled The Wax Works, was Warner Bros. answer to the 3-D hit Bwana Devil, which had been released the previous November. Seeing something big in 3-D's future, WB contracted the same company, Natural Vision, run by the Gunzberg Brothers, Julian and Milton, to shoot the new feature. The film is ultimately a remake of the studio's 1933 film, The Mystery of the Wax Museum, which in itself was written and based on Charles Belden's three-act play, The Wax Works.

Among the scenes featured in the film that make the best use of 3-D are a museum fire, a paddleball man, and can-can girls. Ironically, the director de Toth was blind in one eye, and unable to experience stereo vision or the 3-D effects. “It’s one of the great Hollywood stories,” Price recalled. “When they wanted a director for [a 3-D] film, they hired a man who couldn’t see 3-D at all! Andre de Toth was a very good director, but he really was the wrong director for 3-D. He’d go to the rushes and say, ‘Why is everybody so excited about this?’ It didn’t mean anything to him. But he made a good picture, a good thriller. He was largely responsible for the success of the picture. The 3-D tricks just happened—there weren’t a lot of them. Later on, they threw everything at everybody.”

Home Media Releases

• The movie was released on DVD by Warner Bros. Home Video on August 5, 2003.

See also

• Mystery of the Wax Museum
• List of 3-D films
• House of Wax (2005 film)
• Carry On Screaming! - A horror spoof which shares a similar plotline to House of Wax
• Vincent Price filmography

External links

• House of Wax at the Internet Movie Database
• House of Wax at AllRovi
• House of Wax 3-D Expo: Q&A with Actor Charles Picerni at Hollywood Gothique
• Cinefantastique retrospective article