Nightmare in Wax

I'm not sure what the 80's repackaging with the burning skull has to do with it but............ It's like someone filmed a community play. What's wrong with that? Definitely some good shoe clicking foley artist work. It's good to see a movie where people smoke cigarettes as they work/act - improv smoking. Cameron Mitchell movies are always watchable. Especially when there is an eye-patch involved. Some people called this a "Z" Movie and that's what it is, but good still under proper conditions. Would be good in IMAX 3-D. Gave it a "5" because it's definitely one of those get it or not movies. I think I bought a lawnmower from that detective guy in scene 29 over at ACE in 1974. Would actually be good at a drive-in with a six pack.

I love this flick. It's sleazy and mean without being xplicict. It's tacky and way entertaining. If you want Citizen Kane, look elsewhere, otherwise this House of Wax rip -off is a clunky blast! Cameron Mitchell is an eyepatch wearin' wax museum curatin' psycho who "freezes" various Hollywood hacks...if you can find it and you like bad movies it's well worth 90 minutes of your life.

I enjoyed Nightmare in Wax, taking it on the pulpy level that it intends and achieves. It's fun. It's not mindlessly sadistic (so if you want that, look elsewhere). Not hopelessly incompetent, either (just a bit, maybe, but hope is there).

I admit that at first I confused it with a wax museum horror featuring a curator with a false hand, which is interchangeable with a hook or a cleaver. Were there two versions of this film? No; the man with the cleaver was Patrick O'Neal in Chamber of Horrors (1966). It gave me a restless night figuring that one out. These things worry horror fans.

The Patrick O'Neal film is a classier offering. The photography is much glossier, and Wilfred Hyde-White adds his own charm to the proceedings. But Cameron Mitchell in Nightmare in Wax adds his own special (if not too refined) touch of wickedness, pursuing Anne Helm through his Faustian workshop, hypodermic in hand. That chase between tottering dummies and bubbling vats doesn't quite elevate the film into the realms of horror achieved by Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray... but it's pretty good, all the same.

A couple of years before Nightmare in Wax, Cameron Mitchell starred in a Spanish/West German co-production of Island of the Doomed (1967) (a.k.a. The Bloodsuckers, The Maneater of Hydra, etc.) I was fortunate enough to see that sharing a double-bill with Slaughter of the Vampires. That was in my long-ago teens. Much more recently I bought it on DVD (with the widescreen sadly cropped). Now wouldn't it be great if someone had the discrimination (I shan't say the taste) to bring out a restored widescreen double-DVD of both Nightmare in Wax and Island of the Doomed. We can only hope!

The career of Cameron Mitchell is fairly typical of a good, but second line actor after the collapse of the studio system. Left adrift they took work where they found it and Mitchell appeared in some awful films after the Fifties. Nightmare In Wax could be considered one of them, but the screenplay makes this film a camp delight with Mitchell leading an entire cast in an object lesson in overacting.

Cameron Mitchell is our protagonist in this film, he plays a former studio makeup artist who was burned and lost an eye as a result of an accident. He starts a Hollywood Wax Museum, but this man through a combination of drugs and hypnosis is using live subjects as his exhibits. He's planning revenge on those he felt wronged him. Scott Brady is a cop who suspects, but can't prove his involvement in the disappearance of some Hollywood notables.

Anne Helm is the girl Mitchell once loved, Berry Kroeger does a great caricature of a studio head, casting couch and all. Kroeger's latest squeeze is blond bimbo Victoria Carroll. Carroll in her own way gives the best performance in the film.

Nightmare In Wax is a fun black comedy, not to be taken seriously. It's hardly a great film, but far more enjoyable than I thought.

Definitely not a good film but nowhere as bad as some would paint it to be. Nightmare in Wax tells the story of a man, having had his face disfigured in a typical flashback scene, wreak his vengeance on those directly responsible and those indirectly for the losses in his life - most notably the love and companionship of a beautiful young actress. Cameron Mitchell plays the artist with his typical flair, albeit limited flair. Actually, I thought he gave one of his better performances. What exactly does that mean? Mitchell wears an eye patch, endlessly smokes cigarettes, wears a motley tunic, and talks to his creations in wax. They are not your ordinary wax dummies, but rather people still alive controlled by some serum that makes them lose control of all neurological function. They become zombies in effect. I thought the premise here was inventive if nothing else. It has some ludicrous explanation, but does serve the plot. This is a film of the 60s to be sure with some psychedelic camera-work by Bud Townsend and company. The acting is mediocre but Mitchell, Scott Brady, and Barry Kroeger give interesting turns. The wax figures of Hollywood's bygone era are done very effectively and most of the location shooting was very credible. The end of the film dissipates into something not quite real - either another example of 60s cultural cinema or the end of the scriptwriter's creativity. I'm banking on the latter. Despite its many flaws, I enjoyed the film. The opening scene showing an actor being needled was effectively done as was a police chase on the waterfront.