Review of House of Wax (1953) by Rafael C — 23 Dec 2009

Horror with a touch of class!

Vincent Price plays Professor Henry Jarrod, a renowned wax sculptor turned vengeful psycho when his business partner decided to set fire to their wax museum in order to collect on the insurance money. Price's character in an attempt to thwart his partner / arsonist is beaten and left for dead in the inferno. Jarrod re-emerges sometime later having survived the fire but with his hands permanently burned and his body partially confined to a wheelchair. This however served as a new source of inspiration, Horror, as Price opens a new wax museum "The House of Wax" which is dedicated to the macabre, featuring wax figures reinacting some of the most greusome murders, suicides and dispicable acts by men, but as people in town start dying and their bodies begin to mysteriously disappear from the morgue, some start to question if the lifelike wax figures in the museum are really made of wax.

I really enjoyed this film which was derived from the earlier 1933 "Mystery of the Wax Museum". I have this 1953 classic ranked up there with other great popculture films of that era like "Invaders from Mars" and "The Horror of Dracula". The acting was really good, Vincent Price is a horror legend! The whole cast was great including a small supporting role from an unknown actor at the time called Charles Bronson.

This movie might not be frightening by today's standards by I'm sure it freaked a lot of people out back then. It had suspense, drama and an all around good directing job from director Andre De Toth who shows us that there doesn't always have to be gore, dismemberment or even blood in a movie to make it creepy and/or scary. It's what I call classy horror (lol).