House of Wax (1953)
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House of Wax Movie Review
House of Wax is a 1953 horror film directed by Ande DeToth and starring Vincent Price. It’s a flawed, but overall highly memorable genre flick.
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“Once in his lifetime,
every artist feels the hand of God,
and creates something that comes alive“
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It follows a disfigured sculptor who repopulates his destroyed wax museum by murdering people and using their wax-coated corpses as displays. For the fifties, this is a rather out there storyline, and surely it was rather grotesque, even really sickening some viewers. For today’s audiences, it’s not that scary, but it truly is a lot of fun in some scenes, and it’s an undeniably memorable 50s horror flick with a great Vincent Price performance.
Yes, Price is terrific here. He is always great, but this is the movie that brought him to fame as a horror actor renowned for his great, menacing voice and terrific baddie roles. He is undoubtedly the best reason to see this movie as his performance is excellent and the character is a whole lot of old-fashioned theatrical villain fun. Others fail in comparison to him, though Phyllis Kirk is quite good as this very likable girl in peril Sue Allen.
Above anything else really, House of Wax is famous for its 3D, and I personally cannot comment upon that as obviously I cannot see it in 3D almost a century after its release, but I did see that some scenes were clearly made for the 3D treatment, including the title letters in the beginning.
The movie itself looks splendid, there is no denying that. The cinematography is superb, the score is pretty good, the attention to detail is great as it recreates the 1900s so well (the time period choice was brilliant for this particular material), and I particularly found the production design fantastic, especially the laboratory and the wax figures which all looked terrific and quite eerie.
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The film is unfortunately flawed in its structure. The first act somewhat starts out of nowhere while the second act is much slower and much less plot-driven, though the characterization there is solid. The third act is the best and most thrilling, especially in the final confrontation with the villain in a wonderfully cartoony conclusion. I just wish it were less simplistic and more engaging as a whole.
House of Wax is structurally uneven and less interesting in the second act, but the third act is thrilling, the movie looks excellent in its production design and the central performance from Vincent Price is per usual terrific as he’s so much fun here. It’s a flawed, but fun genre flick.
