The Mystery of the Wax Museum 1933 Vs. House of Wax 1953 Vs. House of Wax 2005
This Double Vision pulls into perspective the original The Mystery of the Wax Museum that starred Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell, and Monica Bannister and House of Wax that starred Vincent Price, Carolyn Jones, and Phyllis Kirk and the more literal House of Wax with Elisa Cuthbert, Paris Hilton, and Chad Michael Murray. All are Warner Brother’s films and all are credited to be based on the story, The Wax Works by Charles S. Beldon, but all is not as it seems. Join us as we solve The Mystery of the Wax Museum!
The Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933 Warner Brothers)
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Screenplay by Don Mullaly & Carl Erickson based on the Short Story, The Wax Works by Charles S. Beldon.
CAST: Lionel Atwill (Ivan Igor), Fay Wray (Charlotte Duncan), Glenda Farrell (Florence Dempsey), Frank McHugh (Jim), Allen Vincent (Ralph Burton), Gavin Gordon ( George Winton), Edwin Maxwell (Joe Worth), Holmes Herbert (Dr. Rasmussen), Arthur Edmund Carewe (Sparrow/Professor Darcy), Claude King (Mr. Galatain), Monica Bannister (Joan Gale).
Released in an early Technicolor process, The Mystery of the Wax Museum was also a Pre-Code film that was more daring than the 1953 release, House of Wax.
ABOVE: Fay Wray in The Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)
The script for The Mystery of the Wax Museum was based on the story Wax Works by screenwriter Charles Beldon, but Beldon did not write the screenplay for any of the films based on his story. More horror fans are familiar with the 1953 version than they are with this first film based on the Beldon short story. In this version there are elements of romance and comedy that do not appear in the 1953 version, House of Wax. For that reason, I will spend more time reviewing the first film’s narrative.
The film was directed by Michael Curtiz who began his career in silent films in 1912, and later directed such well know classics as Casablanca and Passage to Marseilles. We can see his talent in the opening shots of the film. The beginning is very like the remake of 1953, but the montage in this film is much more cinematic. When the film opens we see a shot with title, London–1921, and then through a rain drenched mew a Wax Museum. Then, inside of the museum the camera pans the displays as we hear the storm that continues outside. Finally we find Ivan Igor (Lionel Atwill) at work before cutting back to the outside and hear and see an approaching carriage, and next a cut to a man in the shadows. We see two men in the carriage wearing top hats. The men dismount and go to the museum door as the man in the shadows watches.
ABOVE RIGHT: Joe Worth (Edwin Maxwell)
Ivan welcomes the two men, one of whom is a patron and the other is a distinguished art critic. Upon viewing Ivan’s work, the critic announces that he will submit the works to the Royal Academy. When they depart, the man in the shadows is watching and he walks through the rain and into the museum. He is Igor’s silent partner, Joe Worth (Edwin Maxwell), and he grumbles that he is there to go through the books. The museum has lost money, he complains because Igor does not do the kind of displays the public wants. Igor’s distaste for the macabre has kept him from sculpting the type of wax figures that are the stock and trade of most wax museums. The horrific displays of murder and depravity are what draw crowds, but Ivan finds this type of art abhorrent.
BELOW: Ivan Igor (Lionel Atwill), and Joe Worth (Edwin Maxwell) just before Worth sets the museum on fire.
Although the critic is going to submit Igor’s work to the Royal Academy, Igor’s silent partner wants to burn down the museum to collect the insurance money. He and Igor argue and there is a fight, during which, his partner sets the museum ablaze. We see the burning wax figures as they fight and the fire spreads. Ivan is knocked out and left for dead as Worth leaves the building, locking Igor in.
Next the scene switches to New York, 1933 as the clock strikes 12 on New Years Eve. It is as he watches this celebration that we see Ivan Igor, peering out of a window, unscathed by the fire and very much alive.
Then we see a newspaper article about the suicide of Joan Gale (Monica Bannister). Then a shot of the aftermath of the New Years Eve madness as a shadowy figure walks across the ticker confetti littered street, and into a building.
It is not until he has entered his rooms and sitting at a desk that he turns to the camera and we recognize Joe Worth. He’s on the phone and there is something that he is anxious to get, but we don’t know what it is, and we cut to the morgue where a new body is being wheeled in by two attendants. A man is hiding under a sheet on one of the other tables and his face is horribly scarred. Once the attendants leave, he gets up and begins looking for a particular body.
He looks until he finds the body that he wants and wheels it over to a window and having tied the body to a rope, tips the table until the body slides out to go down to his unseen accomplices.
BELOW: Glenda Farrell plays Florence Dempsey, brassy reporter & Frank McHugh is her stern but good hearted editor, Jim. Their animosity belies their love.
In the cast Frank McHugh and Glenda Farrell provide both the comedy and the romance, her as a brassy blonde reporter and he as a quick tempered newspaper editor. They are little more than a plot device to add romance and move the investigation along. In stereotypical roles with what is now dated dialogue, the two make the best of it. Fay Wray does a good job as the slightly more fleshed out heroine, but could have done wonders with more screen time. It is here that she begins her notoriety as a scream queen that will be fully blown in the film for which she is best known, King Kong.
ABOVE: Lionel Atwill & Fay Wray.
We learn from Florence (Glenda Farrell) that eight bodies have been stolen from the morgue in the last 18 months. Meanwhile, we see the workshop of Ivan Igor’s new museum. He is wheelchair bound and shows one of his sculptors his hands that were badly damaged in the fire. He is no longer able to sculpt the beautiful wax figures that he so loved and lost, and he is unable to replace on his own. We see a large casket shaped box brought in and opened by his assistants. It is the body of the woman that was stolen from the morgue that has been made into a wax figure, Joan Gale (Monica Bannister).
Allen Vincent (Ralph Burton), one of Igor’s assistants calls his girl, Charlotte Duncan (Fay Wray) and arranges to meet her for lunch, and we see that she shares her rooms with Florence Dempsey. When Charlotte arrives at the wax museum to meet Ralph for lunch with Florence in tow, he explains that he can’t go to lunch because the old man (Igor) is getting the museum ready for the opening that night. Florence rushes into the museum and sees the exhibits. She looks at the Joan of Arc that has been made from the body of Jane Gale (Monica Bannister), and she thinks she recognizes the missing Judge Ramsey in the wax figure of Voltaire, but is caught by Igor, who promptly asks her to leave. Then, though the open door, he sees Charlotte and envisions a wax figure for his museum and asks Ralph to introduce him to her.
He tells her that she resembles one of his works, and then he asks her if she would pose for him. He welcomes her to the opening. The reporter finds the connection between Joan of Ark and Joan Gale. After they leave, one of Igor’s assistants asks if he’ll have the pleasure of Miss Duncan posing for him. When Charlotte shows up at the opening, he welcomes her as his little Marie Antoinette. He decides that the weather had dampened the opening, and he will close early. The reporter breaks in and asks about the Joan of Arc display. Igor explains that he didn’t sculpt it due to his mangled hands and introduces his assistance, Sparrow (Arthur Edmund Carewe). The reporter follows him and gets into Joe Worth’s building and thinks she has stumbled onto another stolen body when a terribly deformed man in a dark hat and long cape comes down the basement stairs. He pushes the oblong box a few feet before he is disturbed by a sound. He then shuts off the lights and goes back up the stairs.
Florence flees the basement and gets the police to search the building. She gives them an unbelievable description of the caped intruder. Then the police open the oblong box to find only excelsior packed bottles of whiskey: her credibility is completely gone. Turns out Joe Worth is a bootlegger. The raid leads to the arrest of Sparrow, who turns out to be a junkie, and the pocket watch of the missing judge is found on him. Now, the reporter has the support of the police.
Meanwhile, Charlotte goes looking for Ralph at the museum and is tricked by Igor into getting herself locked into a room that leads to the sinister waxworks and her screaming begins in earnest before she is saved just in time.
Although dated in parts due to moving from late 1921 to the current time of 1933, the film does have its strong points. Atwill and Wray are exceptional, and another stand out performance is given by Arthur Edmund Carewe as Sparrow the junkie. All things considered, a film worth revisiting. It is a little more difficult to find on DVD than most films from the same period due to copyright issues. There is a Warner’s House of Wax DVD that includes The Mystery of the Wax Museum.
While Mystery of the Wax Museum had color before it was the norm, House of Wax was the first feature film released in the 3D process. The film also solidified Vincent Price’s reputation as one of the great horror thespians.
House of Wax (1953 Warner Brothers)
Directed by Andre De Toth
Screenplay by Crane Wilbur based on the Short Story, The Wax Works by Charles S. Beldon.
Rated GP / 128 minutes
Cast: Vincent Price (Professor Henry Jarrod), Frank Lovejoy (Detective Tom Brennan), Phyllis Kirk (Sue Allen), Carolyn Jones (Cathy Gray), Paul Picerni (Scott Andrews), Roy Roberts (Matthew Burke), Angela Clarke (Mrs. Andrews), Dabbs Greer (Sgt. Jim Shane), Charles Bronson (Igor), Reggie Rymal (Paddleball barker).
The big hype for the 1953 version of House of Wax was that it was shot in 3D. With the growing popularity of television across the country film-makers tried a number of gimmicks to bring in customers to movie houses which were feeling the impact of the new medium.
It worked to some extent and film goers were treated to everything from 3D to vibrating seats (The Tingler 1959 William Castle) to special glasses to see ghosts (The 13 Ghosts 1960 William Castle), and in the 1960 film, Scent of Mystery (Mike Todd Jr.), smell-o-vision.
In House of Wax, a barker is hired for the grand opening of the wax museum and he has a paddle ball that he uses to draw the attention the public into the museum and emphasizes the 3D effect to the film’s audience.
The best known version of Beldon’s story, House of Wax opens with a static shot of a dark rainy street as the titles flash in wonderous SteroVision 3D. As the credits end, the camera pans slowly to a window of the wax museum. Then we are inside the building where there is the distinct shadow of a woman holding a knife and seconds later we see that it is being cast by a wax figure. The pan continues past more displays, but they are not of horrors, but of an historical nature. Finally we come to Jarrod (Vincent Price) working in his studio. The opening is very similar to The Mystery of the Wax Museum.
His business partner, Matthew Burke (Roy Roberts) shows up and he is concerned with the losses that his investment has taken. Jarrod tells him of a possible investor that may be interested in buying him out. When the prospective investor arrives, Jarrod’s partner goes up to his office. He is discouraged when he returns from his office as Jarrod tells him that it will be months before they will have the investor’s contribution, so he shows Jarrod an insurance policy and suggests that they burn down the museum for the cash. As Burke attempts to set the figures on fire, Jarrod intercedes and a fight ensues as the wax figures burn wildly.
The story is simplified and moves more smoothly without the shift in the time period which dates the earlier version. There is not the added drama of the newspaper reporter or the intrigue of Joe Worth being a bootlegger. Although Atwill gave a solid performance in the lead of Mystery of the Wax Museum, Vincent Price’s performance in House of Wax was such that he became one of the brightest of the horror film stars who’s light like a true star, has not diminished and we still see clearly long after his death.
ABOVE: Carolyn Jones & Vincent Price in House of Wax (1953)
Phyllis Kirk is excellent as the heroine and Carolyn Jones delivers a comic triumph as her roommate that usually won’t say no and ends up as Jarrod’s Joan of Arc display in an obvious homage to 1933’s The Mystery of the Wax Museum.
ABOVE: Carolyn Jones, Roy Roberts, & Phyllis Kirk in House of Wax (1953)
2005’s House of Wax takes Charles Beldon’s premise to an extreme. A literal house of wax!
House of Wax (2005 Warner Brothers)
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
Screenplay by Chad Hayes & Carey W. Hayes based on the Story by Charles S. Beldon.
Rated R / 113 minutes
Cast: Elisha Cuthbert (Carly Jones), Chad Michael Murray (Nick), Brian Van Holt (Bo), Paris Hilton (Paige), Jared Padalecki (Wade), Jon Abrahams (Dalton), Robert Ri’chard (Blake), Dragicia Debert (Trudy Sinclair).
The latest version of Charles Belden’s story is much different from its predecessors and has a very dark sense of humor. The best way to begin a review of this version of House of Wax is to acknowledge that it is a bad slasher movie dropped into a gothic horror setting! We have six teens on their way to a big game stop on the way and camp and end up going into a town that is more than a little mysterious to get a replacement fan belt for their car. It appears that everyone in the town is a wax figure.
The producers of this film include Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis, and they went all out and built the entire town. Not just studio sets, but a free standing town. Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis have produced a number of remakes of old horror classics including, The House on Haunted Hill, and 13 Ghosts. Both of which have also been set pieces. The most extreme being the house/ghost containment box in Thir13en Ghosts. None of these films have lived up to the original films. House of Wax is no exception. The production values can’t save the film from the mindless script, but it is funny and in some parts very frightening.
ABOVE: Elisha Cuthbert in House of Wax (2005)
The lead in the film is Elisha Cuthbert best know for The Girl Next Door and the television series 24. Giving a good performance is not a problem for her and she delivers here in what were some grueling scenes to film. Kudos also go to Paris Hilton along with a good sport award for best scream queen death scene ever.
ABOVE: Paris Hilton in House of Wax (2005)
I know that there are those among you that would have me dipped in hot wax for just daring to include the 2005 version in this piece, but the author of Waxworks is credited because the film does use the main idea of the original story. Someone insane is murdering people to create wax figures. That and the title pretty much end the connection.
The 1953 version, House of Wax is the enduring classic and will remain so for many more years. Unless of course, Guillermo Del Toro or Jordan Peele decide to remake it.