100 Scariest Movie Moments: #57 House of Wax

It almost causes me physical pain that the Paris Hilton “remake” of this film seems to be better remembered than the masterpiece that is the original. I do not say this out of any hatred of remakes. Hell, this movie is a remake of The Mystery of the Wax Museum from two decades earlier. I say it because one of Vincent Price's best performances seems to be so little remembered.

This was Vincent Price's first horror role, the beginning of what would prove to be an illustrious period in his career. He plays a wax sculptor named Professor Henry Jarrod, whose partner, Matthew Burke (Roy Roberts) tries to burn down his wax museum for insurance money. In the ensuing fight, Burke believes Jarrod to have been killed, and takes the money for himself.

Jarrod survived, but his hands were too damaged to continue as a sculptor, and his face was destroyed. (However, using the magic of a wax mask, he's able to look exactly like unburned Vincent Price until the climax.) So, he began murdering people with faces he liked, covering them with wax, and using them in his new wax museum, paid for with money taken from the soon-deceased Burke (natural causes not involved).

Now, it kind of goes without saying that Jarrod is crazy. He actually has two assistants (Charles Bronson and Nedrick Young) who could easily produce all the wax sculptures his museum requires. So, aside from murdering his partner, most of his actions are just ways of using his own obsessions to justify moving the plot along. However, that's why Vincent Price is so great, managing to make every scene entertaining. He's crazy without being unintelligent. He's arguably an early Hannibal Lector. If you met him, even knowing what he'd done, you'd still want him to like you.

The actual protagonists of the film, a young woman (Phyllis Kirk) who Jarrod wants to turn into Marie Antoinette, and her boyfriend (Paul Picerni) are extremely bland by comparison. They're there because... well... someone has to figure out the secret. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with them. There are, after all, very few cases in horror in which the protagonist is more interesting than the villains (the only case I know of in recent times being You're Next), and you can't expect them to compete with Vincent Price.

While I kind of doubt a human body covered in wax would be indistinguishable from a wax sculpture, the movie sells it. There are numerous scenes depicting people admiring the macabre nature of the statues. These scenes are morbidly hilarious, although some of the depictions of women as being unable to handle the sight come across as rather dated and sexist.

The climax is unbelievably rushed. The police find out the true nature of the wax museum by realizing that Leon, one of Jarrod's assistants (Young), is a petty criminal suffering from alcoholism. Apparently he'd had no problem assisting in murders before, but once the police offer him liquor in the interrogation room he declares “You've got to stop him before he kills again!” I'm not sure how intentional the humor of that scene is, although it's unquestionably the funniest moment of the film. On the one hand, the line is played as if sincere. But on the other, he starts pouring himself a drink as soon as the cops are out of the room, so maybe we're supposed to know he just wanted them gone.

This isn't to say that the film doesn't make use of its final moments. The heroine bound and struggling beneath a pot of boiling wax while the police rush to her rescue and her boyfriend makes a separate rescue attempt. Throw in a near-miss with a Guillotine, and you have a spectacular ending, following the first 80 minutes of showmanship and fun.

I will note as well that this movie seems to represent an early attempt at progressive depictions of heroines. It uses the role of “investigator” to give the woman some degree of agency, while still having her get in over her head and be captured, so that she needs a man to rescue her after she's discovered the secret. However, I don't think the trope originated here, since this is precisely Lois Lane's usual role in just about every Superman story ever written.

This is a movie I fully intend to show my kids if I ever have any. There's nothing overly bloody or sexual in it, but it can still give you the creeps. So it's perfect for younger viewers, scaring them without talking down to them the way RL Stine does. See this movie, and watch it every Halloween.