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House of Wax (1953 film)

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Wikipedia article




{{Infobox film

| name = House of Wax

| image = House of Wax (1953 film poster).jpg

| alt =

| caption = Theatrical release poster

| director = Andre DeToth

| producer = Bryan Foy

| screenplay = Crane Wilbur

| based_on =

| starring =

| music = David Buttolph

| cinematography =

| editing = Rudi Fehr

| distributor = Warner Bros.

| released =

| runtime = 88 minutes

| country = United States

| language = English

| budget = $1 million

| gross = $23.75 million

}}

'House of Wax' is a 1953 American period mystery-horror film directed by Andre DeToth. A remake of Warner Bros.' 'Mystery of the Wax Museum' from 1933, the film stars Vincent Price as a disfigured sculptor who repopulates his destroyed wax museum by murdering people and using their wax-coated remains as displays. It premiered in New York on April 10, 1953, and had a general release on April 25.

'House of Wax' was the first color 3D feature film from a major American studio and premiered two days after the Columbia Pictures film 'Man in the Dark', the first major-studio black-and-white 3D feature. It was the first 3D movie with stereophonic sound to be presented in a regular theater.

In 1971, it was widely re-released to theaters in 3D with a full advertising campaign. Newly struck prints of the film in Chris Condon's single-strip StereoVision 3D format were used. Another major re-release occurred during the 3D boom of the early 1980s. In 2005, Warner Bros. released a remake of the film, but its plot was very different from the other films and was met with poor reception.

In 2014, the movie was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress, and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Plot



Professor Henry Jarrod is a talented sculptor who runs a wax museum in early 1900s New York City. He creates historical wax figures such as John Wilkes Booth, Joan of Arc, and Marie Antoinette. His business partner, Matthew Burke, wants to end their partnership, frustrated with Jarrod's refusal to add more sensational exhibits to increase profits. Renowned art critic Sidney Wallace is interested in buying Burke out in about three months after financing some excavations in Egypt. Impatient, Burke sets the museum on fire to obtain the insurance money. Jarrod attempts to stop Burke and save his life's work, only to be doused in kerosene and left to die in the fire. Sometime after acquiring the insurance money, Burke is garroted by a disfigured man in a cloak, who stages the murder as an act of suicide, throwing Burkes body and noose from a nearby fire-escape. Burkes body later mysteriously disappears from the morgue.

Burke's fiance, Cathy Gray, is strangled to death by the cloaked figure weeks after Burke's body vanishes from the morgue. Cathy's friend and roommate, Sue Allen, stumbles upon the murderer before he can finish arranging the scene and escapes, running to her friend Scott Andrews' home. That night, the disfigured man steals Cathy's body from the morgue by lowering it out of the window on a length of rope to two accomplices. Wallace meets with Jarrod, who miraculously survived the fire but now uses a wheelchair, and his hands are too damaged to sculpt. Jarrod intends to build a new wax museum with his assistants, the deaf and mute Igor and Leon Averill, conceding to popular taste by including a chamber of horrors. It showcases historical acts of violence such as Anne Boleyn's decapitation, Anne Askew's torture and recent events including William Kemmler's electrocution and Burke's apparent suicide.

Sue attends the museum's opening and is troubled by the strong resemblance that the Joan of Arc figure has to Cathy. Jarrod claims that he used newspaper photos of Cathy to make the sculpture. Jarrod hires Scott as an assistant and says Sue would be a good model for a new Marie Antoinette sculpture. Sue believes Cathys body was used for the Joan of Arc sculpture and tells police that the sculpture has exactly one ear pierced, an oddity shared by Cathy, and one which she does not believe would be discernible from a newspaper photo. The police agree to investigate the museum, and recognize Averill from his criminal background. Sue arrives after hours to meet with Scott, whom Jarrod sent on an errand, and pulls off the Joan of Arc figure's brunette wig, exposing Cathy's blonde hair underneath. Sues fear is realized that the figure is indeed Cathy's wax-coated body. Jarrod observes her discovery and gets up from his wheelchair, revealing he can walk with a slight limp. Sue strikes him, shattering his wax mask concealing his disfigured face that identifies him as the murderer, and faints in shock. Jarrod heats wax to make her into a Marie Antoinette sculpture. The police, having learned from Averill that most of the wax-sculptures are really the bodies missing from the morgue, arrive at the museum and arrest Igor, who attempts to murder Scott using a guillotine featured in a display before they storm into Jarrod's workshop. Jarrod fights them off single-handedly but is knocked into the vat of hot wax. The police pull away the table Sue is bound to before the wax can spill over her.

Cast



* Vincent Price as Professor Henry Jarrod

* Frank Lovejoy as Lieutenant Tom Brennan

* Phyllis Kirk as Sue Allen

* Carolyn Jones as Cathy Gray

* Paul Picerni as Scott Andrews

* Roy Roberts as Matthew Burke

* Paul Cavanagh as Sidney Wallace

* Dabbs Greer as Sergeant Jim Shane

* Charles Bronson as Igor (credited as Charles Buchinsky)

* Angela Clarke as Mrs. Andrews

* Nedrick Young as Leon Averill (uncredited)

Production



'House of Wax', filmed under the working title 'The Wax Works', was Warner Bros.' answer to the surprise 3D hit 'Bwana Devil', an independent production that premiered the previous November. Seeing promise in 3D's future, Warner Bros. contracted Julian and Milton Gunzburg's Natural Vision 3D system, the same one used for 'Bwana Devil', and filmed a remake of their thriller 'Mystery of the Wax Museum' (1933), based on Charles S. Belden's three-act play 'The Wax Works'. Among the significant changes: The earlier film was set in the year it was released (1933) whereas 'House of Wax' was moved to circa 1902; the entire newspaper angle in the earlier film and the characters played by Glenda Farrell and Frank McHugh were eliminated; and although the masked figure was seen sparingly in 'Mystery,' he is shown early and often in this remake.

Among the foregrounded uses of 3D in the film were scenes featuring a wax museum fire, can-can girls, and a paddleball-wielding pitchman. In what may be the film's cleverest and most startling 3D effect, the shadowy figure of one of the characters seems to spring up out of the theater audience and run into the screen. Director Andre DeToth was blind in one eye and unable to experience stereo vision or 3D effects. "Its one of the great Hollywood stories," Vincent Price recalled. "When they wanted a director for [a 3D] film, they hired a man who couldnt see 3D at all! Andr de Toth was a very good director, but he really was the wrong director for 3D. Hed go to the rushes and say 'Why is everybody so excited about this?' It didnt mean anything to him. But he made a good picture, a good thriller. He was largely responsible for the success of the picture. The 3D tricks just happened—there werent a lot of them. Later on, they threw everything at everybody."Steve Biodrowski [http://cinefantastiqueonline.com/2007/12/09/retrospective-house-of-wax-1953 "House of Wax (1953) A Retrospective"] , Cinefantastique website; accessed November 1, 2016. Some modern critics agree that DeToth's inability to see the depth is what makes the film superior because he was more concerned with telling a thrilling story and believable performances from the actors than simply tossing things at the camera.

Release



'House of Wax' was one of the big hits of 1953, topping the charts for 5 weeks and earning an estimated $5.5 million in rentals from the North American box office alone. To accompany its stereoscopic imagery, 'House of Wax' was originally available with a stereophonic three-track magnetic soundtrack, although many theaters were not equipped to make use of it and defaulted to the standard monophonic optical soundtrack. Previously, films with stereo sound only were produced to be shown in specialty cinemas, such as the Toldi in Budapest and the Telecinema in London.Eddie Sammons, 'The World of 3D Movies', Delphi, 1992 p 32R.M. Hayes, '3-D Movies: A History and Filmography of Stereoscopic Cinema', McFarland & Company, 1989 p 42 Only the monophonic soundtrack and a separate sound-effects-only track were said to have survived. As of 2013, no copy of the original three-channel stereo soundtrack is known to exist. A new stereo soundtrack has been synthesized from the available source material.

The 3D screenings of the film included an intermission, which was necessary to change the film's reels, because each projector of the theater's two projectors was dedicated to one of the stereoscopic images.

The film premiered in Los Angeles at the Paramount Theatre on April 16, 1953. The film played at midnight with a number of celebrities in the audience that night (Broderick Crawford, Gracie Allen, Eddie Cantor, Rock Hudson, Judy Garland, Shelley Winters, Ginger Rogers and others). Producer Alex Gordon, knowing actor Bela Lugosi was in dire need of cash, arranged for the aging actor to stand outside the theater wearing a cape and dark glasses, holding an actor named Steve Calvert (costumed as a gorilla) on a leash, later allowing himself to be photographed drinking a glass of milk at a Red Cross booth there. Lugosi was interviewed by a female reporter (Shirley Thomas) afterward, who messed up the interview by asking the prearranged questions out of order, thoroughly confusing the aging star. Embarrassed, Lugosi left without attending the screening. Footage of Lugosi in front of the theater appeared in a Pathe Newsreel released on April 27, 1953 in theaters.Gary Don Rhodes (1997). Lugosi. His Life in Films, on Stage, and in the Hearts of Horror Lovers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. Pg. 198. ISBN 978-0-78640257-1.

Reception



Initial reception

Early reviews were mixed to negative. Bosley Crowther of 'The New York Times' found the film "disappointing," writing: "This picture, apart entirely from the fact that it is baldly, unbelievably antique in its melodramatic plot and style, shows little or no imagination in the use of stereoscopic images and nothing but loudness and confusion in the use of so-called stereoscopic sound. The impression we get is that its makers were simply and solely interested in getting a flashy sensation on the screen just as fast as they could." 'Variety' was considerably more excited, writing: "This picture will knock 'em for a ghoul. Warners' 'House of Wax' is the post-midcentury 'Jazz Singer'. What the freres and Al Jolson did to sound, the Warners have repeated in third dimension." 'Harrison's Reports' called the film "a first-class thriller of its kind," and "the best 3-D picture yet made," though it felt that "the added value of depth is not significant enough to warrant the annoyance of viewing the proceedings through the polaroid glasses, and that the picture would have been as much of a chiller if shown in the standard 2-D form, and probably even a greater thriller if shown on a wide screen." 'The Monthly Film Bulletin' wrote that as a 3D film it was "a smoother effort than its predecessors, obviously made with more care and less tiring to the eyes," but that "[i]n all but technical respects, the film is a childish and inept piece of work."

Richard L. Coe of 'The Washington Post' wrote: "It's supposed to be a horror movie and it's horrible alright... The novelty has some appeal especially through its long shots into depths, but there is also a feeling of limitations once what novelty there passes. Then it is we go back to the gaga script devised by Crane Wilbur from a story which served one of the early talking films and one is inclined to shudderingly ask: Are we to go through all that again?" John McCarten of 'The New Yorker' also hated the film, writing that he thought it had "set the movies back about forty-nine years. It could have set them back further if there had been anything earlier to set them back to," concluding that "when Mr. Price started clumping around and choking ladies with knots that wouldn't pass muster at a Cub Scout meeting, I took off my glasses once and for all, put on my hat, and left."

Later reception



On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 93% based on 45 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads "'House of Wax' is a 3-D horror delight that combines the atmospheric eerieness of the wax museum with the always chilling presence of Vincent Price."

Impact



'House of Wax' revitalized the film career of Vincent Price, who had been playing secondary character parts and occasional sympathetic leads since the late 1930s. After this high-profile role, Price was in high demand to play fiendish villains, mad scientists and assorted other deranged characters in genre films such as 'The Tingler', 'The Masque of the Red Death' and 'The Abominable Dr. Phibes'. Supporting player Carolyn Jones, whose career had begun when she appeared in 'House of Wax', gained a much higher profile more than a decade later in the TV comedy horror spoof 'The Addams Family' as Morticia Addams.

Home media releases



* 'House of Wax' was released in 2-D on DVD by Warner Home Video on August 5, 2003. As a bonus, the DVD included 'Mystery of the Wax Museum', the 1933 version of the story, starring Fay Wray and Lionel Atwill, and filmed in the early two-color version of the Technicolor process.

* A 3D Blu-ray disc was released in the U.S. on October 1, 2013, to celebrate the film's 60th anniversary. Like the DVD, it includes the original 1933 'Mystery of the Wax Museum' (though in standard definition).[https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=11327 House of Wax (1953)] . 3D Blu-ray (June 03, 2013). Retrieved August 24, 2013 A reissue of this format was released through Warner Archive Collection on June 23, 2020.[https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/House-of-Wax-3D-Blu-ray/253892/#Overview House of Wax 3D Blu-ray] . 3D Blu-ray. Retrieved May 31, 2020

* Shown on the MeTV show Svengoolie on May 7, 2022.

See also



* 'House of Wax' (2005 film)

* List of 3D films of the era

* Mystery of the Wax Museum

* Waxwork (film)

* Vincent Price filmography

* Terror in the Wax Museum

References




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