Masques de Cire

In the early 1930's Jack Warner was under contract to use the Two-strip technicolor process on a Warner Brothers film. Unfortunately, this primitive form of color cinematography had a limited pallet of colors. Everything had an unnatural pastel look. Warner wisely choose a genre not dependent on reality- the horror film. Their first color horror film was DOCTOR X, a wild and macabre who-dunnit complete with scary murders, truly mad doctors and a cannibal. DOCTOR X, released in 1932, was enough of a success, that Warner Brothers reunited it's director, Michael Curtiz, the two leads, Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray, and the two strip Technicolor process for yet another horror film. The new film, simply titled WAX MUSEUM during production was a fast moving creepy chiller that mixed the gloom of Depression era New York with the creepy going-ons of a wax museum. The film begins in 1921. Sculptor Ivan Igor (a bohemian looking Lionel Atwill), so obsessed creating his wax museum, that he ignores that he and his partner, Worth (Edwin Maxwell) are in deep financial trouble. Worth sets fire to the museum to collect on a fire insurance policy. The museum is destroyed, and Igor is left a cripple with useless hands.

Twelve years later, in Manhattan, Igor opens a new wax museum. At the same time, a wisecracking reporter, Florence (Glenda Farrell) tracks a hot case of the corpse of a recently murdered socialite stolen from the morgue. She begins to suspect that creepy wax museum downtown of stealing bodies and posing them as wax statues. What makes things worse, is that her best friend, Ruth (Fay Wray) is dating the most innocent of the questionable wax-workers. THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM is a DVD shelf must-have.

A genuinely frightening film from Michael Curtiz, jack of no trades and master of all. Many of the tricks of classic 1930's horror are here, including the opening scene set in a dark, rainy London street, the long shadows on the wall, lengthy periods of silence, and all timed to perfection. Only the faster-than-the-speed-of-sound dialogue of Glenda Farrell truly lets the film down. But other than that it is a gothic masterpiece, an underrated movie probably due to the fact that it lay undiscovered, thought lost, for over half a century. Far more inventive and imaginative than the majority of horror films made today.

This film, which was remade as "House Of Wax" 20 years later (as if you didn't know), might not enjoy quite the reputation it does today had it not been the basis for the better-known later film and, more importantly, believed lost for over 30 years, which made it something of a legend for many people who'd never even seen it. Legendary status can be rather difficult to live up to, and unless a viewer is approaching it with no advance knowledge of its history, MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM may not be quite what one expects.

It is, nevertheless, an energetic and entertaining amalgam of genres: horror film meets newspaper crime drama. Dropping a rather Gothic tale of body-snatching, a mad sculptor and a museum of wax-covered corpses into the streamline-moderne milieu of fast-talking, wise-cracking reporters on the trail of a hot story makes for interesting contrasts.

Lionel Atwill, as Ivan Igor, the artist driven to insanity and murder by the destruction of his wax "children" in an arson fire, was an immensely enjoyable performer whose best work came a bit later (see "Son Of Frankenstein" for his portrayal of the one-armed Insp. Krogh). His natural screen presence carries him through, though he never quite generates either the pathos or the smooth menace that Vincent Price displayed in the remake. But from the moment of her entrance, it's Glenda Farrell as Florence Dempsey, the reporter out to save her job by bringing in a scoop - barreling onto the screen with a full head of steam - who propels the story all the way to its finish.

There's an awful lot going on here beyond the basic premise; bootlegging, a "dope fiend," a suicide and a falsely implicated millionaire playboy are thrown into the mix, packing quite a lot into the 77 minute running time (the remake improved the story by eliminating extraneous characters and subplots). A pre-"King Kong" Fay Wray (in her naturally red hair sans the "Kong" blond wig) is the damsel in actual distress, but despite her billing, she's basically a supporting player and has little to do - beyond enduring roommate Florence's snide comments about her penniless boyfriend - until the climactic confrontation between all the bad guys and good guys (and girls).

MYSTERY is well-served by the direction of Michael Curtiz ("Adventures Of Robin Hood," "Casablanca"), who was something of a jack-of-all-genres, and there's plenty of snappy dialogue, some of which (Florence asking a cop, "How's your sex life?") wouldn't have made it to the screen a year later under the newly re-written Production Code. Depending on one's point of view, it could be said that the very effective production design either benefits, or suffers, from the pale pastels of the two-strip Technicolor photography. For my part, I'm guessing that the subdued tones we see today result from the lack of first-rate film elements available. Having seen far superior two-strip from years earlier, I'll wager that the original prints were much more vivid.

If you're any kind of a fan of the remake, you do owe it to yourself to see this one, if only once. There are many things to enjoy in MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM, not the least of which are the fabulous ensembles worn by Farrell. Just how does a newspaper reporter one step away from the breadline afford a wardrobe like that?

Classic horror movie directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Lionel Atwill as a deranged sculptor with an "interesting" method of making the statues on display at his wax museum. The last (and best) of the three horror movies Lionel Atwill did with Fay Wray. Atwill is fantastic here and Wray is, as always, delightful. Nice support from Frank McHugh, Gavin Gordon, and Edwin Maxwell, among others. The scene stealer of the movie is Glenda Farrell as the fast-talking reporter heroine. She really has fun with the part. A few years later she would star in the Torchy Blane series and play a character very similar to the one she plays here.

It's a good-looking movie, filmed in two-color Technicolor with nice atmospheric direction from Curtiz. The sets are great, especially Atwill's art deco laboratory. The makeup effects are terrific. It's a juicy Pre-Coder, as evidenced by the gruesome plot and the junkie character played by Arthur Edmund Carewe. Some viewers might be put off by the fact that a large chunk of the middle of the picture is more like a crime story/newspaper movie but I was always entertained, particularly by the back & forth between Farrell and McHugh. So it's not a straight horror movie from beginning to end but, so what, it's still a great film and worth a look. Remade in the '50s as House of Wax with Vincent Price. That version is more well-known than this one but I like rewatching this one more. It's just more fun.

Considering the fact that this 1933 movie was produced during the depression, when moviegoers expected pure entertainment, the results were exactly what they wanted. Glenda Farrell's hard-boiled Florence Dempsey was what filmgoers were looking for. Please note that many of the movies of the period had male and female stars who were fast talkers and wise-crackers. Such stars as Cary Grant, Carole Lombard, Rosalind Russell, Bette Davis, James Cagney, Mae West, W. C. Fields, William Powell, Myrna Loy, etc. were the norm and not the exception.

This wonderful movie was way ahead of its time. It's two-color look was also something very different for the 1930s and its washed-out looked helped give it a more sinister appearance. The later "House of Wax" used 3-D and having seen it in the movies I can tell you it was probably the best of the 3-D movies. Even better than "The Creature from the Black Lagoon".

Fay Wray was pure candy and she practiced her scream well for the upcoming "King Kong". I have seen most of Lionel Atwill's work and I believe the underplaying of Ivan Igor helped make him a more credible monster. The movie was well cast and one can not help but notice the uncanny fact that most of the actors in "The House of Wax" were chosen because they looked like the earlier actors except for the difference between Charles Buchinsky (Bronson) and Matthew Betz as the loyal mute assistant.

Although enjoyable, "The House of Wax" was no match for the earlier edition. It's understandable that "The House of Wax" did not use the characters of Florence Dempsey and Gavin Gordon. Sidekicks didn't work as well as in the 50s.

I wonder what the movie critics of the 30s thought of the "Mystery of the Wax Museum?"