House of Wax (1953)

I've heard it called a classic with the hearing of the ear, but now I've seen it and know that it's primarily the presence of Vincent Price that makes House of Wax of any interest at all.

Vincent Price plays Mr. Jarrod, an obsessive wax sculptor. He begins by treating his wax figures as people, having invested them with such personality in the creative process, having shared his lifeforce with them, as it were. He is a true creator.

Enter capitalism in the form of a fellow named Burke, who decides the lack of profits from the artsy wax museum warrants its destruction for insurance money. So the wax figures, and Jarrod's face, are melted in Burke's flames.

The creator god becomes a destroyer god: Jarrod, now hideously disfigured both within and without, decides that since pouring life into wax only got him hurt he should reverse the process and start encasing living people in wax. This results in very lifelike figures, but lifeless, dead inside, like Jarrod.

Jarrod himself becomes a sell-out, using his wax figures in lucrative displays of torture scenes in his new museum, including Joan of Ark burning at the stake.

The fiancee of a young sculptor who will be apprenticing with Jarrod discovers Joan of Ark looks too much like her recently murdered friend to be a coincidence, and she pursues this lead to its horrifying conclusion.

Punctuating this action are moments designed to exploit the stereoscopic technology (i.e. 3d!), such as bottles being thrown at the camera mid-fight and a man with a paddle-ball beating the ball virtuosically toward the camera. If capitalism vs. true creativity is the conflictual thrust of the film, we can see which side the creators of this film come down on with this gimmicky 3d.

Ultimately I found the plot of this film to be standard fare, its pacing somewhat mismanaged, the characters uninteresting, and the whole of the proceedings to be mostly unengaging.

There is some good, however. Vincent Price's performance is, as usual, fun in itself. An added bonus is a young Charles Bronson playing Igor, the distinctly hunchback-free mute servant of Jarrod. And the machine Jarrod and Igor use to turn living people into wax figures is itself one of those fantastic, wonky masterpieces of set design American horror films are great for.

The greatest moment of the film is an early chase scene between the disfigured Jarrod and our pretty heroine. This sequence in particular, as well as other parts of this film, is without a doubt a direct inspiration for Mario Bava's superior Baron Blood.

In sum, House of Wax is a mixed bag. Watch for some cheesy, breezy, forgettable entertainment, but don't expect the classic you may have been misled to think you'll be seeing. In double feature with Baron Blood, you may derive some extra enjoyment in noting the similarities.