Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, it's Monday, so
Speaker 1: we have a classic episode of Weird House Cinema here
Speaker 1: for you. This one is going to be our episode
Speaker 1: on House of Wax from nineteen fifty three. This is
Speaker 1: a three D cinema classic starring the fabulous as always,
Speaker 1: Vincent Price. It is the movie that made him a
Speaker 1: horror icon. It also features performances by Charles Bronson and
Speaker 1: Carolyn Jones. It originally published four twenty eight, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: Let's have It.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 3: we're back with week two in our series of three
Speaker 3: weeks of three D. Last week's movie was the three
Speaker 3: D adventure Treasure of the Four Crowns. Today's film is
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifty three horror classic House of Wax, starring
Speaker 3: Vincent Price. Now, since we're going to inevitably be tempted
Speaker 3: to compare and contrast with last week's film, Treasure of
Speaker 3: the Four Crowns, I want to write off the bat
Speaker 3: and mention some big differences that at least are my opinion.
Speaker 3: Maybe your opinion will be different, Rob, But I'm gonna
Speaker 3: say House of wax is in almost every way a
Speaker 3: much better movie than Treasure of the Four Crowns. Both
Speaker 3: are great, can't be fun, but House of Waxes is
Speaker 3: actually a really solid horror movie, clever stylish in a
Speaker 3: way that that Treasure is not.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, a House of wax is in a league
Speaker 1: all its own compared to Treasure of the Four Crowns.
Speaker 1: And we'll get into that. I mean, it's an important
Speaker 1: three D film. It is a three D film that
Speaker 1: very much holds up to subsequent viewing and subsequent decades,
Speaker 1: regardless of whether you're watching it in three D or
Speaker 1: two D.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's another thing I was gonna say, So very
Speaker 3: different approaches to three D here. As we mentioned last time,
Speaker 3: we were watching these three D movies the same way
Speaker 3: almost everybody does today, meaning in two D. Most people
Speaker 3: do not have the requisite home video playback equipment necessary
Speaker 3: to experience high quality three D at home. So and
Speaker 3: we even looked into that, it's like, what do you
Speaker 3: need to watch most of these movies in three D today?
Speaker 3: I mean, with a lot of them, you actually need
Speaker 3: the three D Blu ray player, the three D TV,
Speaker 3: and the glasses or I don't know. So we didn't
Speaker 3: mess around with all that because most people are not
Speaker 3: going to see the movies like that today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now we tried. I went to Atlanta's only video store,
Speaker 1: Video Drome, and I was talking with Matt there, the
Speaker 1: guy runs it, and we were looking at we were
Speaker 1: looking at DVD cases and Blu ray cases. He had
Speaker 1: a tub of three D glasses he was getting out,
Speaker 1: and we basically just came to the realization that you
Speaker 1: have most of these that are available on Blu ray
Speaker 1: or DVD, you can't even use any kind of like
Speaker 1: at home glasses scenario. Your only option for at home
Speaker 1: three D viewing with most of the titles is to
Speaker 1: get yourself a big, big, fancy three D Blu ray player,
Speaker 1: three D television. And even then those are bits of
Speaker 1: technology that are going that are kind of out of
Speaker 1: fad at the moment. So we're already past that particular
Speaker 1: at home three D boom or so it.
Speaker 3: Seems maybe they'll come back. I mean three D, as
Speaker 3: we've said, always seems to come in waves. It'll ebb
Speaker 3: and flow but for the most part, I think it
Speaker 3: makes sense to consider three D movies as pieces of
Speaker 3: media that have multiple lives. So they might have an
Speaker 3: initial run of three D in the theaters and that
Speaker 3: is how people see them in the theaters, but then
Speaker 3: after that they have an afterlife. They sort of haunt
Speaker 3: our world as a two D shadow of their former selves.
Speaker 3: And the essential question to ask about a movie like
Speaker 3: this is does it hold up in both forms or
Speaker 3: is this something that's really only enjoyable in the three
Speaker 3: D format where it was originally intended. Treasure of the
Speaker 3: Four Crowns was fun for I don't know if you
Speaker 3: have the right ironic spirit, but it is also the
Speaker 3: most three D movie ever made. It is so overrun
Speaker 3: with three D gags. If you take out the three
Speaker 3: D element, you are left with an incredibly strange film experience,
Speaker 3: Like half of the runtime is just things poking at
Speaker 3: the camera for no reason and not actually coming out
Speaker 3: of the screen at you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, Four Crowns is basically an amusement park ride
Speaker 1: with some resemblance to cinema, whereas this film is an
Speaker 1: illegitimate but piece of cinema that also has three D
Speaker 1: elements that are not just little extras, but also add
Speaker 1: to the immersion factor.
Speaker 3: I agree House of Waxes is not like Treasure. There
Speaker 3: are a handful of what I would call utterly gratuitous
Speaker 3: three D effects shots, such as the paddleball Man. We'll
Speaker 3: get to that later. On the paddle Ball Man, there
Speaker 3: are some dancers that I imagine were put in just
Speaker 3: so they could fulfill a desire for a sort of
Speaker 3: titillating three D sequence. But for the most part, the
Speaker 3: movie functions on home video as a normal piece of cinema.
Speaker 3: You could forget that it was a three D movie
Speaker 3: except for a couple of little moments.
Speaker 1: Absolutely yeah, It's also a movie that captured and continues
Speaker 1: to capture people's imaginations outside of the three D scenario.
Speaker 1: Just one quick example of this, and this was brought
Speaker 1: up in an excellent documentary that's on the Blu ray
Speaker 1: for a House of Wax that I watched that have
Speaker 1: rented from Video drum It. It's titled House of Wax
Speaker 1: Unlike anything You've seen before. It was produced in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: and like one of the people they interviewed there pointed
Speaker 1: out that like the magazine Famous Monsters of Film, Land
Speaker 1: had this really gorgeous painting illustration of the monstrous Vincent
Speaker 1: Price character on the front. You know it was. It
Speaker 1: really resonated with with film fans and horror enthusiasts of
Speaker 1: the day and subsequent generations to follow you and today
Speaker 1: as well. So it created an iconic villain, iconic character. Really,
Speaker 1: as we'll discuss, he's not you can you can. He's
Speaker 1: a little more complicated than just a pure villain, but yeah,
Speaker 1: capture people's imagination. And then the three D added to
Speaker 1: the immersion experience when you actually went and saw it
Speaker 1: in the initial three D run or one of the
Speaker 1: subsequent three D runs, either in theater or on home
Speaker 1: the home video.
Speaker 3: To pick up on your villain or not comment, I
Speaker 3: would say Vincent Price is a villain in this, but
Speaker 3: he's a tragic villain. It's one of those cases where
Speaker 3: you can see how he was made villainous by some
Speaker 3: by by having been wronged in the first place.
Speaker 1: Right. It's one of the things that makes especially Gothic
Speaker 1: horror films more impactful. I mean, it's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that so many of the Paul Nashi Spanish horror
Speaker 1: films are so great. It's because you know, there are
Speaker 1: obviously budget limitations in those films, and plenty of other
Speaker 1: limitations as well. But Nashi loved the gothic horror films.
Speaker 1: He loved the monsters that you also felt sympathy for,
Speaker 1: that you related to on some level, that had this
Speaker 1: outsider status. And so that's very much in play in
Speaker 1: this film.
Speaker 3: And while I don't really even mean this as a criticism,
Speaker 3: this is one of those films, like some Batman films
Speaker 3: in the past, where the villain is really the most
Speaker 3: charismatic character on the screen. The villain is in the
Speaker 3: sense who the one you have no choice but to
Speaker 3: root for, because the villain is Vincent Price and the heroes,
Speaker 3: I don't know, or are you going to be like, Wow,
Speaker 3: I'm really rooting for the cop who's trying to catch him.
Speaker 3: I'm really rooting for Scott the Sculptor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Vincent Price had that special kind of energy that
Speaker 1: certainly in a film like this, he ends up attracting
Speaker 1: all of your sympathy and attention. But even in later
Speaker 1: for films we've discussed in the show before, even if
Speaker 1: he has a smaller part versus other noteworthy character actors
Speaker 1: and horror icons. There's just something about Price that no
Speaker 1: one else can can equal. You know, there's a likability
Speaker 1: factor there that is missing in some of the even
Speaker 1: some of the other greats of the of the era,
Speaker 1: you know, like a Christopher Lee or something. You know,
Speaker 1: like there's a charm, there's a set. I mean, Christopher
Speaker 1: Lee had his own charm, his own charisma going on.
Speaker 1: But Price had something a little special.
Speaker 3: Well, even as Prince Prospero in the Mask of the
Speaker 3: Red Death or he is an utterly satanic, aristocratic torturer,
Speaker 3: he just kind of can't help but like him absolutely.
Speaker 1: Now. That documentary House of Wax unlike anything you've seen before,
Speaker 1: great job breaking down the picture's place in cinema history
Speaker 1: and includes some great interview clips from the likes of
Speaker 1: Martin Scorsese, who holds this up as one of the
Speaker 1: greatest three D pictures ever made. Rick Baker, of course,
Speaker 1: the special effects makeup Wizard, Wes Craven, Joe Dante, Larry Cohen,
Speaker 1: and also Victoria Price and surprises Doctor and I think
Speaker 1: some of the key facts that they drive home about
Speaker 1: three D in this film from the documentary are as follows. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, this was produced to this film nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty three. House of Wax was produced during a time
Speaker 1: in which city audiences were moving out to the suburbs
Speaker 1: away from the big theaters, and on top of that,
Speaker 1: more people were staying home to watch things on TV.
Speaker 1: So three D in this case was the big studio gamble,
Speaker 1: in this case from Warner Brothers, to get people back
Speaker 1: in the theater, give them a well funded, artistically solid,
Speaker 1: technologically groundbreaking, full color gothic horror picture.
Speaker 3: To give them something they could not get on the
Speaker 3: TV set at home.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, and you know, this is something that theaters
Speaker 1: would come back to and continue to do and have
Speaker 1: done in recent years as well. In this case in
Speaker 1: fifty three, it absolutely worked. This film was a big hit.
Speaker 1: It ushered in a three D boom that would prove
Speaker 1: profitable for according to the documentary, at least a year
Speaker 1: and a half. So even then it's still kind of
Speaker 1: a flash in the pan, but enough for some films
Speaker 1: to come in to make some money, and then it,
Speaker 1: you know, three D dies back down again, but comes
Speaker 1: back up in the seventies and the eighties, et cetera. Now,
Speaker 1: this was also the first three D film with stereophonic
Speaker 1: sound to be presented in a regular theater, and in
Speaker 1: regular we'll put an asterix by that. And it was
Speaker 1: also the first color three D feature film from a
Speaker 1: major American studio. The sound on This Baby was supposedly
Speaker 1: amazing if you saw it in the right theater. It
Speaker 1: even had its own screen track that was projected from
Speaker 1: the back of the theater, which I can kind of
Speaker 1: imagine what that was like. But the way they were
Speaker 1: describing it is that like it made any screams in
Speaker 1: the film like throw you off a little bit more
Speaker 1: just because of the way the sound was orchestrated.
Speaker 3: It sounds like it's coming from some like the audience
Speaker 3: behind you or something. Yeah, Vincent Price is in the theater.
Speaker 3: That almost sounds like a William Castle kind of gimmick.
Speaker 1: Sometimes Vincent Price was in the theater, According to way
Speaker 1: too much, But yeah, a couple of interviews I think
Speaker 1: I think this is one from his daughter pointed out
Speaker 1: that as this was showing in New York City, he
Speaker 1: was in a play in New York and he would
Speaker 1: sometimes go to the theater to see how people were reacting,
Speaker 1: and something he enjoyed doing was was seating himself behind
Speaker 1: some like it, like a pair of young women who
Speaker 1: were watching the show and were, you know, freaking out
Speaker 1: at all the scares. And then afterwards he would lean
Speaker 1: forward and say did you enjoy it? And and freak
Speaker 1: them out. So sometimes you got that additional level of
Speaker 1: three D.
Speaker 3: Oh that's so good. Oh hey, listeners, were you in
Speaker 3: the theater in nineteen fifty three and startled by Vincent
Speaker 3: Price in person?
Speaker 1: Right in? If so, certainly I'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: anyone who has experiences from watching you know, yeah, anybody
Speaker 1: saw any of these three D films back in the fifties,
Speaker 1: definitely right in, but also subsequent generations of three D.
Speaker 1: They also included a lot of technical information about it
Speaker 1: that I found really interesting. So this shoot. The shoot
Speaker 1: for this film utilized Julian and Milton Gunsberg's Natural Vision
Speaker 1: three D system, the same one that was used for
Speaker 1: Buana Devil in fifty two. This is one that we
Speaker 1: actually referenced this briefly in the last episode because Ebert
Speaker 1: alluded to it as being like a very gimmicky, throw
Speaker 1: stuff at the camera sort of three D picture. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the rig for this involved two cameras aimed at each
Speaker 1: other with mirrors then positioned at around the distance of
Speaker 1: human eyes facing forward towards what you're filming. And this
Speaker 1: was like a big rig. You can look up images
Speaker 1: of it. It's a monster of a like a double camera.
Speaker 1: And then in theaters you had to have two projectors
Speaker 1: going at once, each projecting one of these two reels
Speaker 1: of film the resulting film of course, after editing and
Speaker 1: so forth. Scorsese commented on just how complex in the documentary,
Speaker 1: commented on just how complex this was for projectionists because
Speaker 1: if you had you had an air occur on one projector,
Speaker 1: then you had to stop the other, and then you
Speaker 1: had to make sure they were syncing up, because, according
Speaker 1: to Scorsese, was just absolutely brain breaking to watch if
Speaker 1: you got those two reels out of sync. And of
Speaker 1: course the audience was wearing glasses for all.
Speaker 3: Of this, watching the movie in double but one is
Speaker 3: like a half second behind the other. That's hilarious.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now. House of Wax was later reissued in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one using Chris Condon's single strips stereo vision three
Speaker 1: D format, and the film is very well shot, makes
Speaker 1: great use of depth that you can certainly get just
Speaker 1: watching the film in two D, but was apparently even
Speaker 1: more impressive than three D. And yeah, it gets a
Speaker 1: little gimmicky in a few places. They don't completely they're
Speaker 1: not too good for three D. They embrace the spectacle
Speaker 1: of three D where appropriate, incorporating three D elements where appropriate.
Speaker 1: But more than anything, they use the three D as
Speaker 1: an immersive element of the cinematic storytelling. All right, Joe,
Speaker 1: what's the elevator pitch for this one? What do you got?
Speaker 3: All right? Vincent Price plays Professor Henry Jared, a man
Speaker 3: who renders exquisitely beautiful in lifelike sculptures of the human
Speaker 3: form in wax. But when his artworks are destroyed in
Speaker 3: a fire by a scheming business partner, a disfigured and
Speaker 3: devastated Jared emerges from the ashes to turn his genius
Speaker 3: to the domains of exploitation and revenge and murder.
Speaker 1: All right, we're going to listen to just a little
Speaker 1: tiny bit of this trailer. But this is one of
Speaker 1: those trailers that features no voiceover, no dialogue, no sound
Speaker 1: from the film, just music, and not even pictures or
Speaker 1: images from the film, just some cards that come up
Speaker 1: that say you heard about it, and then you take
Speaker 1: that in you read about it, and then you take
Speaker 1: that in you may even think you've seen it, and
Speaker 1: that I think maybe an allusion to the fact that
Speaker 1: this is a remake, and we'll get into that in
Speaker 1: a bit. But anyway, it goes on and on. Let's
Speaker 1: just hear just a little bit of that music, all right,
Speaker 1: all right, that's enough. That's enough. That's all you need
Speaker 1: to hear.
Speaker 3: What were people reading about this movie in nineteen fifty three?
Speaker 3: Were they actually like reading the reviews in the newspapers?
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess you know they're reading the newspapers.
Speaker 1: They're getting excited about about this film. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: lord knows Warner Brothers was promoting it, trying to get
Speaker 1: people excited coming back to their theaters.
Speaker 3: So yeah, there wasn't like a fangoria blog in nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty three.
Speaker 1: All right, where is this playing? If you want to
Speaker 1: go out and watch it before listening to the rest
Speaker 1: of this episode, Well, it's highly available to rent or
Speaker 1: stream digitally, and I think it's streaming on Turner Classic
Speaker 1: Movies service. I honestly, I didn't think they even had
Speaker 1: a service, but they do apparently based on what I
Speaker 1: was looking at the Blu ray for this is great,
Speaker 1: but as we'll discuss, the tragedy is that this film
Speaker 1: was made to be experienced in three D in the theater,
Speaker 1: and it's just not an option for most viewers of
Speaker 1: the film today. Luckily, as we've been saying, it's still
Speaker 1: very enjoyable and historically important regardless of how you're seeing it,
Speaker 1: So it totally holds up into V and it's a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. All right, Well, let's get into the
Speaker 1: cast and crew behind this picture. First of all, at
Speaker 1: the top directing it is Andre de Toff, who lived
Speaker 1: nineteen thirteen through two thousand and two.
Speaker 3: Now that name has come up on Weird House Cinema before,
Speaker 3: but not as a director from what I recall.
Speaker 1: No, he has a brief cameo in Wes Craven's Spontaneous
Speaker 1: Combustion from nineteen ninety starring Brad Doriff that we watched
Speaker 1: on the show Wes Craven.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, Spontaneous Combustion was Toby Hooper?
Speaker 1: Wasn't. Oh I'm sorry, I'm sorry Toby Hooper. I think
Speaker 1: I threw me off. Because of course, Wes Craven is
Speaker 1: in that documentary. Toby Hooper directed Spontaneous Combustion.
Speaker 3: Yes, the movie about spontaneous combustion, where where Brad Doura
Speaker 3: shoots fire out of his eyes and out of his hands.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but obviously Toby Hooper, I think what we're going
Speaker 1: to take from all of this is he would have
Speaker 1: been a fan of this movie as well. This was
Speaker 1: a movie that cast a long shadow and influenced a
Speaker 1: lot of the people that would go on to be
Speaker 1: subsequent generations of horror film makers. So Andre de Taff
Speaker 1: was a Hungarian American director who was of solid hand
Speaker 1: in the Warner Brothers system. He'd been directing since nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, and I believe he'd worked mostly on thrillers, dramas,
Speaker 1: general action pictures, you know, some Westerns and so forth.
Speaker 1: But again solid hand, very technically proficient, and this would,
Speaker 1: I believe, be the only horror film he'd ever direct.
Speaker 1: He later served as second unit director on seventy eight, Superman,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, Thunderball. In nineteen sixty two's Lawrence of Arabia.
Speaker 1: It's often pointed out that Detov had only one eye.
Speaker 1: He wore an eye patch. Most images you look up
Speaker 1: of him are going to be him wearing an eye patch,
Speaker 1: so that means that he himself could not see in
Speaker 1: three dimensions. He couldn't see in three D, but he
Speaker 1: had a great head for optics and cinema, so it
Speaker 1: was hardly a limiting factor. Now. Interestingly enough, the studio
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers asked the tok not to wear his eye
Speaker 1: patch while working on and later promoting the picture because
Speaker 1: they didn't want the public to think about their big
Speaker 1: three D film that was going to revitalize everything, as
Speaker 1: they didn't want them to associate it with a one
Speaker 1: eyed man. That's mean. Yeah, and from what they said
Speaker 1: in the documentary to tot was in general not the
Speaker 1: sort of guy that would normally have put up with
Speaker 1: this kind of request. But he apparently agreed. He didn't
Speaker 1: wear the eye patch because he just he really wanted
Speaker 1: to make the picture and realized that he needed, I
Speaker 1: guess to play Paul with Warner Brothers on this one thing.
Speaker 1: But he, yeah, he really believed in the picture. He
Speaker 1: believed in the three D. They said that later he
Speaker 1: would sometimes he would go to screenings of the picture.
Speaker 1: You know, I guess you know they're promoting like the
Speaker 1: director will be there, and he would threaten to leave.
Speaker 1: He'd threatened to get on a flight and go home
Speaker 1: immediately if he found out that they weren't showing it
Speaker 1: in three dimensions.
Speaker 3: So he's committed. I thought you were going to say
Speaker 3: that the studio was afraid if people saw him with
Speaker 3: the eyepatch, that they would worry that watching a movie
Speaker 3: in three D would make them lose sight in one eye.
Speaker 1: Huh, Yeah, I don't know. I've never seen any scare
Speaker 1: tactics about three D, certainly from William Castle. It's hew
Speaker 1: plenty of scare tactics about just how frightening a movie
Speaker 1: could be. It may kill you, but not so much
Speaker 1: put an eye on.
Speaker 3: I dare you to see my movie, you will probably
Speaker 3: be dead, all right.
Speaker 1: The screenplay for this one was from Crane Wilbur who
Speaker 1: lived eighteen eighty six through nineteen seventy three, early twentieth
Speaker 1: century actor turned writer. His other films on which he
Speaker 1: wrote included nineteen forty eighth Cannon City, fifty nine's The Bat,
Speaker 1: thirty six's The Devil on Horseback, nineteen fifties Outside the Wall,
Speaker 1: fifty three's Crime Away that was also directed by t
Speaker 1: Toaf and nineteen fifty four is The Mad Magician, which
Speaker 1: was a Vincent Price three D kind of a follow
Speaker 1: up to this picture from another studio, but it's in
Speaker 1: black and white. It's supposed to be fun as well.
Speaker 1: Wilber also wrote nineteen sixty two's Mysterious Island.
Speaker 3: I don't want to be too harsh, because I'd say
Speaker 3: this is a pretty good script for nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 3: but it has a common, i would say, a problem
Speaker 3: that is fairly common too horror movies from the fifties,
Speaker 3: which is that the good characters aren't super interesting. So
Speaker 3: like Sue and Scott and the police, basically all of
Speaker 3: the people you're supposed to be rooting for are you know,
Speaker 3: they're fine, but like the real character interest is in
Speaker 3: the villains exactly now.
Speaker 1: The story credit for this one goes to Charles Belden,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen oh four through nineteen fifty four. Screenwriter
Speaker 1: who is pretty active in the forties and fifties, but
Speaker 1: his story credit on this and also on related wax movies,
Speaker 1: is what he's best remembered for. His original story was
Speaker 1: adapted into nineteen thirty threes Mystery of the Wax Museum.
Speaker 1: This was a follow up to a film we watched
Speaker 1: on the show for Weird House Cinema a while back,
Speaker 1: Doctor X, starring Lionel Atwill and Fay Ray. This also
Speaker 1: starred Lionel Atwill and Fey Ray, with Atwill playing the
Speaker 1: wax Master, the Vincent Price role, but with a different name.
Speaker 3: Oh I'm sorry, I was just looking something up, but
Speaker 3: I'm a little confused because I did not recall Lionel
Speaker 3: Atwill's character surviving at the end of Doctor X.
Speaker 1: It's not the same character. It's more of a you know,
Speaker 1: don't think of it as sequel, but just like a
Speaker 1: follow up where they were like, hey, you guys really
Speaker 1: made a great kind of modern feeling, two tone technicolor
Speaker 1: gothic horror story here, but with again with modern elements
Speaker 1: to it. Let's have another slice of that. What can
Speaker 1: you dish up for us? And they ended up doing
Speaker 1: Mystery of the Wax Museum and it was also directed
Speaker 1: by the same director, Michael Curtis.
Speaker 3: Okay, so Doctor X it had a wax theme, but
Speaker 3: I from what I recall, it was only as like
Speaker 3: the twist at the end that you found out about
Speaker 3: this so called synthetic flesh that was more or less
Speaker 3: used like the wax, like the wax that Vincent Price
Speaker 3: uses in this movie exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's some similar The synthetic flash is definitely
Speaker 1: a common element of both pictures. A Mystery of the
Speaker 1: Wax Museum is a gorgeous looking two tone technicol or
Speaker 1: gothic horror film has some great horror elements in it.
Speaker 1: A number of the best moments in this film are
Speaker 1: kind of just direct remakes of what occurred in that movie,
Speaker 1: but it also has some really rough dialogue moments and
Speaker 1: darker plot elements that absolutely wouldn't have flown in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, and some of these elements wouldn't fly to
Speaker 1: get today either for good reason. So nineteen fifty three's
Speaker 1: House of Wax is a remake and kind of a reminder.
Speaker 1: As tired as we get of remakes, sometimes they can
Speaker 1: be great. Sometimes they can improve upon and redefine that
Speaker 1: previous film. And it's a fairly blow for blow for
Speaker 1: blow remake as I remember, though, without the drugs, strong
Speaker 1: necrophilia vibes and casual racism of the previous nineteen thirties film. Okay,
Speaker 1: both films inspired a whole subgenre of wax movies, and
Speaker 1: this film, A House of Wax was very loosely, very
Speaker 1: loosely remade in two thousand and five as House of Wax.
Speaker 1: Belden retained a story credit on that film, but it
Speaker 1: is otherwise, it's a completely different thing, nothing to do
Speaker 1: with this picture or the nineteen thirties picture written by
Speaker 1: the screenwriters behind the Conjuring franchise man.
Speaker 3: The two thousand and five House of Wax is rough.
Speaker 3: I tried to rewatch that a few years ago when
Speaker 3: we did our Core episode about Wax, where we talked
Speaker 3: very briefly about this movie we're looking at today. You
Speaker 3: deserve a prize if you can sit through the two
Speaker 3: thousand and five movie. It is rough.
Speaker 1: I think, as I said before, one of the things is,
Speaker 1: you've got to have a compelling wax master character. You've
Speaker 1: got to have somebody in there playing the Vincent Price role.
Speaker 1: And if you don't, what are you doing? What are
Speaker 1: you doing doubling down on victim characters in your wax movie.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much of it we can really
Speaker 1: blame on the screenwriters here, How much of it is
Speaker 1: the director for how much of It is just like
Speaker 1: that's what people wanted or the studios thought people wanted
Speaker 1: in two thousand and five.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think two thousand and five is the beginning
Speaker 3: of the torture porn era. It's like Saw had come
Speaker 3: out and people were into that, and people wanted, like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, that vibe of the mid two thousand's
Speaker 3: horror movie It was like you wanted a kind of queasy, gross,
Speaker 3: fluorescent lit scenes of like slick surfaces gleaming with blood
Speaker 3: and bodies just being mutilated and while people scream. It
Speaker 3: was a bad time for horror.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but again, wax what these wax movies highly influential.
Speaker 1: We could easily just do wax museum movies for like,
Speaker 1: you know, a good couple of months, maybe three months,
Speaker 1: if we so desired. All right, let's get to the
Speaker 1: star here. Vincent Price, playing Professor Henry Jared Price lived
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven through nineteen ninety three Horror Icon. This is
Speaker 1: I believe, our fourth Vincent Price film, as we previously
Speaker 1: discussed seventy one's The Abominable Doctor Fibes nineteen seventy Scream
Speaker 1: and Scream Again in nineteen sixty four is The Mask
Speaker 1: of the Red Death. So we're not going to really
Speaker 1: retread a lot of what we talked about. There is
Speaker 1: basic history, except to say that this film is extremely
Speaker 1: pivotal to Vincent Price's career. Prior to House of Wax,
Speaker 1: he was not an actor associated with horror films. He
Speaker 1: was like an occasional leading man, but mostly he did
Speaker 1: secondary roles. He was, you know, he was a very
Speaker 1: tall man. He was certainly handsome, so he was often
Speaker 1: pushed in the leading man direction. But I think it's
Speaker 1: like nothing like completely clicked there.
Speaker 3: Let's see, what have we talked about the Vincent Price
Speaker 3: I did before this. We certainly looked at his role
Speaker 3: as the narrator of the nineteen forty nine TV adaptation
Speaker 3: of Charles Dickens a Christmas Carol, which is twenty five
Speaker 3: minutes long. It's called the Christmas Carol, and it was
Speaker 3: a half hour television special presented by the Magnavox Corporation.
Speaker 3: And it's let's just say that was not using Vincent
Speaker 3: Price to the fullest extent of his talents.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think even you think of like nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties leading men too, it's like, would you want Price
Speaker 1: to play those roles. I think clearly Price had more
Speaker 1: to offer because most of those leading man roles in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties is just not that interesting. With a
Speaker 1: few exceptions, I mean, you did have some standout stars,
Speaker 1: but generally they're not in the movies we watched for
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of the like horror and sci fi
Speaker 3: movies in the fifties, the quote hero often has very
Speaker 3: little personality. He's just there to kind of be like
Speaker 3: strong and good and punch the bad guy at the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and to absolutely conform. So yeah. The other really
Speaker 1: interesting thing that I wasn't up on this particular history
Speaker 1: until I watched that documentary, and a lot of this
Speaker 1: came from his daughter, is that prior to this film,
Speaker 1: he was on the Hollywood Gray List. So we've talked
Speaker 1: about the Blacklist before because it ended up impacting a
Speaker 1: number of different filmmakers and actors, often leading them into
Speaker 1: being in films that we watched in Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 1: or even just completely destroying their career as they were
Speaker 1: at the very least accused of being Communist sympathizers the
Speaker 1: gray List, which I was not familiar with. This is
Speaker 1: a list. You were put on if you were automatically
Speaker 1: you were if you opposed the Nazis before World War Two.
Speaker 1: They interpreted that as being well, they're possibly a communist,
Speaker 1: so let's go ahead and put them on the list.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think the historical term I've heard used to
Speaker 3: refer to this as premature anti fascist, like that you
Speaker 3: were against the fascists before the US government had essentially
Speaker 3: given mission to be against fascism.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So obviously confusing and illogical in many ways, but
Speaker 1: very much a real thing at the time, to the
Speaker 1: point that Price was apparently very concerned that his career
Speaker 1: was over, that he was never going to work again.
Speaker 1: He'd certainly seen plenty of his contemporaries ruined in Hollywood
Speaker 1: by this point because of the blacklist. But as it
Speaker 1: worked out, he ended up some FBI people came to
Speaker 1: his house, he had to sign some documentation, and after
Speaker 1: that he ended up having his name cleared, And once
Speaker 1: he was cleared, he got offered two projects. One was
Speaker 1: a play and one was House of Wax. He ended
Speaker 1: up going with House of Wax, and it just revitalized
Speaker 1: his career and began his emergence as a new horror Icon.
Speaker 1: Without House of Wax, who's to say we'd be talking
Speaker 1: about Vincent Price today.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm certainly glad we got all of these wonderful
Speaker 3: Vincent Price films because he hit it big with this one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right. Our leading lady here is Sue Alan
Speaker 1: or Sue Allen's the character played by Phyllis Kirk, who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen twenty seven three two thousand and six. Her
Speaker 1: other big film from the same year is nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: three's Crime Wave, also directed by de Toaf. She did
Speaker 1: a lot of TV, including an episode of the classic
Speaker 1: Twilight Zone series, and she starred along Peter Lawford on
Speaker 1: TV's The Thin Man. They played Nick and Nora Charles, respectively, investigators.
Speaker 1: This show was based, like the nineteen thirty four film
Speaker 1: on the work of DASHL. Hammett, and the Nick and
Speaker 1: Nora glasses that some of you may have in your
Speaker 1: cupboard are named for these characters. I use my Nick
Speaker 1: and Nora glass just the other night.
Speaker 3: I have no idea what that is.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're familiar with the coop glass, right, Oh?
Speaker 3: Yes, like for cocktails or champagne.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so imagine a coop glass that's a little more
Speaker 1: narrow and a little less spillable, a little more petite,
Speaker 1: and that's a Nick and Nora glass. I'm a big
Speaker 1: fan of them because I found that, Yeah, I find
Speaker 1: they're less spillable than a Coop glass, but they have
Speaker 1: the same feel, and they're great for a like a
Speaker 1: non iced cockedil like it's great for something like a Manhattan.
Speaker 3: Okay, I had no idea what that was called, but
Speaker 3: I've had drinks and restaurants in these Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nice little glass I like. All right, So that's Sue.
Speaker 1: Sue is our main female character, but then she has
Speaker 1: a friend in the movie named Kathy Kathy Gray. Kathy
Speaker 1: Gray is played by Carolyn Jones, who lived nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: through nineteen eighty three. Her character doesn't stick around long,
Speaker 1: but she gives us the real bubbly, fun loving blonde
Speaker 1: performance as the doomed Kathy, and she would go on
Speaker 1: to play a supporting role in nineteen fifty six is
Speaker 1: Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but he's best well known
Speaker 1: for playing more Titia Adams on TVs. The Adams Family
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3: You know, I almost wish they had swapped the roles here.
Speaker 3: Not that it really would have worked, because I can
Speaker 3: tell what they were going for with the character of Sue,
Speaker 3: and Phyllis Kirk fits that. But Carolyn Jones is so
Speaker 3: much fun and it's sad that her character gets waxed
Speaker 3: too early in this film because she's got great screen presence,
Speaker 3: and it does a very funny combination of kind of yeah,
Speaker 3: like you said, on one hand, this bubbly party girl mentality,
Speaker 3: but she also has a very cynical edge that I liked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this movie, at least for the most part,
Speaker 1: I don't know to what extent they You know, certainly
Speaker 1: in the Night By the nineteen eighties we've talked about
Speaker 1: how like the good girl becomes our hero and the
Speaker 1: bad girl is punished. I didn't get that as much
Speaker 1: from this film that that Sue I did. You did, well,
Speaker 1: let's say it wasn't as pronounced, you know, like she was.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, I'm sorry, maybe I misunderstand you. You mean,
Speaker 3: like you don't get the sense that the movie, the
Speaker 3: ethic of the movie is that, Wow, Kathy really got
Speaker 3: what was coming to her. It's just like it is
Speaker 3: tragic that she was killed, right, Like, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: totally Okay, it's not that it's like a film of
Speaker 3: vengeful conservative morality like you might perceive in some slash movies.
Speaker 1: Right. There may be. I think there's probably some of
Speaker 1: that leeching in sort of indirectly from the general culture,
Speaker 1: but it's not it's not sharpened in the script to
Speaker 1: the degree that it is in later films. So and
Speaker 1: I appreciated that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed. So.
Speaker 1: Joneses also had a small part in the Man Who
Speaker 1: Knew Too Much from fifty six. She had a small
Speaker 1: part in Fritz Lang's The Big Heat from fifty three,
Speaker 1: and she played Marcia, Queen of Diamonds on the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties Batman series. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Like I said, Carolyn Jones is great in this. I
Speaker 3: wish her character had been alive longer, and I you know,
Speaker 3: she's almost still kind of funny as a wax figure
Speaker 3: later in the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, I'm gonna skip most of the male
Speaker 1: good guys here because again, they're not that interesting. Maybe
Speaker 1: we'll come back to Frank Lovejoy and Paul Piccorini in
Speaker 1: later films, but we'll refer to their characters. But I
Speaker 1: just wasn't that interested, especially when we've got Egor to
Speaker 1: talk about. Igor was played by Charles Bucchinski, who would
Speaker 1: later be known as Charles Bronson, who of nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: one through two thousand and three.
Speaker 3: He made a death wish to be in this horror
Speaker 3: film and it was granted. And wow, his muscles.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, he has a strapping dude in this This
Speaker 1: is Bronson pre mustache and also pre Bronson because he
Speaker 1: didn't start using that name until nineteen fifty four. And yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's he's very muscular. He doesn't talk, he plays
Speaker 1: his character is supposed to be a death mute. He's
Speaker 1: also extremely grappily. He keeps getting into scrapes with people,
Speaker 1: with the cops, with our heroes, and he goes right
Speaker 1: for the grapple.
Speaker 3: Even in his non threatening scenes in this movie. He's
Speaker 3: one of those people who just has kind of a
Speaker 3: threatening posture like his his arms are always kind of
Speaker 3: bent in such a way, kind of like a wrestler's stance,
Speaker 3: like he might spring out to grab you at any moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is it's interesting because it's a total different
Speaker 1: physical energy compared to what we I think most people
Speaker 1: afy with Charles Bronson from his later career where he's
Speaker 1: kind of a you know, kind of a cool, tough guy, a.
Speaker 3: Guy who will sit there with an expressionless face until
Speaker 3: he suddenly shoots you exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah. He went on to be a big
Speaker 1: action star in the sixties and seventies, especially thanks to
Speaker 1: films like Once Upon a Time in the West, The
Speaker 1: Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven, The Dirty Dozen, The Mechanic,
Speaker 1: and of course the Death Wish franchise. All Right, we
Speaker 1: talked about the ping pong Guy earlier, the paddless Man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: paddleball Man. In the credits, he's referred to as the
Speaker 1: Barker because his job is to be outside of the
Speaker 1: wax Museum, getting people excited bringing him in. He's a
Speaker 1: carnival barker played by Reggie Rymahl who lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: one through two thousand and two. He was a stand
Speaker 1: up comedian of the day who specialized in ping pong
Speaker 1: gags with little paddle balls, you know, on the elastic string.
Speaker 1: He performed on The Steve Allen Show, The Eddie Cantor Show,
Speaker 1: and you asked for it, But this is what he's
Speaker 1: best remembered for, and he gets a lot of screen time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say, Reggie Raimol probably has more words
Speaker 3: of dialogue in this movie than like Scott the Sculptor,
Speaker 3: who is ostensibly like the male hero.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, we'll come back to him in a bit,
Speaker 1: all right. The music on this one is from David Buttoff,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen oh two through nineteen eighty three, prolific
Speaker 1: composer who also did Hitchcock's Rope in forty eight. The
Speaker 1: Beast from twenty thousand Fathoms and fifty three and nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine is the Gorilla all right now. Gordon Bow,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen oh seven through nineteen seventy five, has
Speaker 1: makeup credit on this, but the fantastic makeup the monster
Speaker 1: makeup that Price is actually wearing is apparently the work
Speaker 1: uncredited of his brother George Bow, who lived nineteen oh
Speaker 1: five through nineteen seventy four. George Bow was a materials
Speaker 1: innovator who developed a bow foam, which was first used
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty nine s The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Speaker 1: Gordon Bal his brother worked on a ton of films
Speaker 1: and doing makeup, including It's a Wonderful Life, revel Without
Speaker 1: a Cause, the three D picture dial m for Murder,
Speaker 1: Dirty Harry Them, and the Omega Man just to name
Speaker 1: a few.
Speaker 3: Very solid makeup in this movie.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and I love the Yeah, the coloration. It has
Speaker 1: this kind of a purplish effect, so the purples and
Speaker 1: pinks that kind of match up with the pink wax
Speaker 1: we see later. So it's grotesque but also grotesque in
Speaker 1: a way. And I don't know how much of this
Speaker 1: was intended, but it like it doesn't feel completely realistic.
Speaker 1: I think they were maybe going for realism, but like
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel I don't know. Somehow it doesn't feel
Speaker 1: as exploitive. I don't know if that makes sense. Like
Speaker 1: it's a different energy than say a Freddy Krueger makeup. Yeah, anyway.
Speaker 1: Final note, Robert Burks, who lived nineteen oh nine through
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, Hitchcock's favorite cinematographer, worked on this picture uncredited,
Speaker 1: along with the credited cinemaographers Burke Glennon who lived eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety three through nineteen sixty seven, and Jay Peverell Marley
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen oh one through nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 3: All Right, are we ready to talk about the plot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's get into it.
Speaker 3: So I really love the title shot. It really lets
Speaker 3: you know what kind of movie it's going to be.
Speaker 3: So you have a background that's a damp, dismal street
Speaker 3: corner in New York around the turn of the century.
Speaker 3: There are rain soaked cobblestones and bricks that are reflecting
Speaker 3: the kind of measly light from a pair of street lamps.
Speaker 3: The scene is very dark blue and gray. But then
Speaker 3: in the foreground here comes the title House of Wax
Speaker 3: in huge, shrieking orange block letter. Is like, uh, I
Speaker 3: don't know how to describe this. Like the letters have
Speaker 3: the their blocks that have these big amount of that
Speaker 3: have depth, like their stamps jutting out of the screen,
Speaker 3: and the texture on the front of the letters is
Speaker 3: that of melting wax. So the title itself is dripping.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I love these even watching these and two
Speaker 1: D they jump out at you.
Speaker 3: Also, they put the title in quotation marks, which I
Speaker 3: found funny. I'm not sure why, but it's the so
Speaker 3: called House of Wax.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, when you're using House of Wax fat,
Speaker 1: you can disregard some of the other rules regarding punctuation, but.
Speaker 3: The title of a movie is usually underlined or italicized anyway,
Speaker 3: rather than putting quotation marks.
Speaker 1: This isn't a poem, yeah, I mean, generally you can
Speaker 1: just throw the words up there. You don't need to
Speaker 1: worry about anything else, especially if you're using gimmicky letters
Speaker 1: like this. I mean, come on.
Speaker 3: Anyway, As the credits fade in and out, we watch
Speaker 3: the silhouette of a lonely man tramping up the sidewalk
Speaker 3: in the rain. And by the way, just throughout the movie,
Speaker 3: I do love the nighttime shots of the streets here,
Speaker 3: the lonely dark, often foggy, often wet with rain, New
Speaker 3: York streets around the turn of the century. It's I
Speaker 3: guess these were probably all indoor shots inside a studio,
Speaker 3: but they're fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a lot of these shots apparently you really
Speaker 1: got a sense of that depth when you were watching
Speaker 1: it in three D.
Speaker 3: Anyway, we move inside one of the windows into a
Speaker 3: brightly lit interior to immediately see a shadow cast upon
Speaker 3: a wall, and it is the shadow of a woman
Speaker 3: wearing a bonnet with a knife raised in her hand,
Speaker 3: ready to strike. So who's she about to stab? Nobody?
Speaker 3: Turns out, We pan over to discover this is not
Speaker 3: a living woman about to commit a murder, but a
Speaker 3: wax sculpture of a woman wearing the bonnet again and
Speaker 3: doing the knife delivery pose. The camera reveals the rest
Speaker 3: of the room slowly, and it is full of humanoid
Speaker 3: wax sculptures. We see a kind of master of ceremonies
Speaker 3: dude wearing a top hat in tails. There's a choir
Speaker 3: mistress in red and black tartan. There is a policeman
Speaker 3: and a bobby helmet. We see clear Apatra and Mark Antony,
Speaker 3: a fancy lady that I think is supposed to be
Speaker 3: Marie Antoinette. Oh yeah, this is Marie Antoinette. A scene
Speaker 3: of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and then Joan of
Speaker 3: arc at the stake, and of the historical figures depicted.
Speaker 3: I was noticing immediately that it seems like they're all
Speaker 3: people associated with tragic and untimely deaths. And I think
Speaker 3: this says something about the cultural understanding of the purpose
Speaker 3: of a wax museum, that it is not for effigies
Speaker 3: of just any famous person, but there's a particular spirit
Speaker 3: of morbid curiosity that we associate with wax. There's kind
Speaker 3: of a focus on not just in the chamber of
Speaker 3: horror since though that will become a theme in the
Speaker 3: movie itself, where you know, you have wax figures for
Speaker 3: scenes of torture and execution and all that, but even
Speaker 3: when you're not showing torture and execution, you're showing figures
Speaker 3: that we remember for the fact that they died young
Speaker 3: and tragically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with their flesh made hole again and lifelike.
Speaker 3: So finally we arrived at the end of the Great Hall,
Speaker 3: and we come to a place that functions as a workshop,
Speaker 3: and here is Vincent Price as the character Professor Henry Jared.
Speaker 3: He's dressed in a long smock, surrounded by half finished
Speaker 3: wax bodies, arms and heads, and he's deep in his work.
Speaker 3: He's using his fingers to shape the contours of a
Speaker 3: sort of wax of venus on a stand before him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is essentially the same character played by Atwell
Speaker 1: in the original, though that character in the original was
Speaker 1: named Ivan Igor, and there was also just again a
Speaker 1: lot more of a necrophilia vibe to his obsession with
Speaker 1: wax bodies and Vincent prizes. Henry Jared comes off more innocent,
Speaker 1: eccentric certainly, but more innocent in his connection to his work. Initially, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it becomes perverse obviously in Murder beginning, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: But in the beginning, it's just about a man who
Speaker 1: is pouring all of his being into these creations and
Speaker 1: loves them and has this kind of eccentric relationship with them.
Speaker 1: He sees them as his friends, he sees them as
Speaker 1: his family.
Speaker 3: So somebody comes in from the rain. It is Matthew Burke,
Speaker 3: Jared's business partner, and as soon as he's in the door,
Speaker 3: they're at odds about their business situation. So they run
Speaker 3: a wax museum together, and Matthew Burke is not happy
Speaker 3: with recent ticket returns. He says that, hey, you know
Speaker 3: the other wax museums in town. They've got lines around
Speaker 3: the block. What's the difference. They've got a chamber of horrors,
Speaker 3: so all of their sculptures are about murder, torture, and execution,
Speaker 3: and Jared is not interested in that. He says he'd
Speaker 3: rather spend his time depicting beauty and figures of historical significance.
Speaker 3: He's not going to stoop to slopping out wax gore, which, again,
Speaker 3: remembering what we just said, it's kind of funny because
Speaker 3: while this. The stuff in his museum is not gory.
Speaker 3: It is very focused on people with tragic deaths.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he's not pushing it the way his business
Speaker 1: partner thinks he should be pushing it, like the gore
Speaker 1: should be front and center, and he's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: the beauty should be front and center, even if I'm
Speaker 1: focusing on martyred individuals and tragic figures.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I guess Matthew here would say like, look,
Speaker 3: I want that Joan of Arc to be half burned alive,
Speaker 3: you know. I want to see her muscle. I want
Speaker 3: to see the blood. So Matthew is not happy. He says,
Speaker 3: I've got twenty thousand dollars sunk in this historic peep
Speaker 3: show of yours, and I could use that money to
Speaker 3: better advantage. But Vincent Price has an ace up his
Speaker 3: sleeve here. He says, well, there's a wealthy investor named
Speaker 3: Sidney Wallace. He's about to come by, and Jared is
Speaker 3: hoping that mister moneybags here might be willing to buy
Speaker 3: out Matthew's share of the museum, and this would free
Speaker 3: Jared from having to turn the place into hell Raiser
Speaker 3: two keep Matthew happy. So Wallace and this other guy
Speaker 3: named Bruce show up and Jared starts giving them a
Speaker 3: tour of his artworks. But in doing so he does
Speaker 3: start making these eccentric comments, like he calls his sculptures
Speaker 3: his children, and he says, to you they are wax,
Speaker 3: but to me their creator, they live and breathe. He
Speaker 3: explains a bit about how he makes them. He presses
Speaker 3: the hair into the wax heads with a scalpel, one
Speaker 3: hair at a time, he says, and they're they're like
Speaker 3: looking at the Cleopatra scene and I think it's Bruce
Speaker 3: who's getting a little too excited about the Cleopatra sculpture.
Speaker 3: And then Jared shows off the Lincoln assassination scene. He says,
Speaker 3: he calls it quote one of my few concessions to
Speaker 3: the macabre. And then Wallace looks at it. He says,
Speaker 3: why is the best John Wilkes booth I've ever seen?
Speaker 3: And it's like, what, how many is he seen? Or
Speaker 3: there are there like assassin waxes all over the town.
Speaker 3: I guess maybe all the museums have a booth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he travel around. You go to New City, you
Speaker 1: want to see whether John Wilkes booth looks like at
Speaker 1: their local wax museum.
Speaker 3: Oh. But but then in explaining the scene, Jared gets into, oh,
Speaker 3: the booth sculpture was very stubborn. I kept arguing with
Speaker 3: him while he was being crafted, and he didn't want
Speaker 3: to do what I wanted him to do. And they're like,
Speaker 3: do you mean he talked back to you? And he says,
Speaker 3: of course, what do you expect from an actor? And
Speaker 3: then finally onto Joan of Arc, Jared's well, i'd say
Speaker 3: one of his two favorite subjects. Marie Antoinette and Joan
Speaker 3: of Arc are his favorites.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 3: He says that he has remade the scene many times now,
Speaker 3: and he explains the reason there is no authentic portrait
Speaker 3: of Joan, so he has to work from living models
Speaker 3: and he's never found the model to give him the
Speaker 3: perfect face of the saint, but he's sure he will
Speaker 3: one day. Oh and also just they also have a
Speaker 3: conversation about the Marie Antoinette figure and at one point
Speaker 3: he's he's saying that her eyes are made of glass,
Speaker 3: and he says, the exact size and color of the original.
Speaker 1: I guess the same size as the original eyes or
Speaker 1: just sort of human eyes. I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: know comment that was odd.
Speaker 3: But anyway, after the tour, Walla Wallace is interested in
Speaker 3: buying out Matthew's stake in the museum, but first he
Speaker 3: has to go do excavations in Egypt for three months,
Speaker 3: so he's going to be off grave robbing. But when
Speaker 3: he returns he will be perhaps willing to invest in
Speaker 3: the museum. So Wallace and Bruce leave and Jared gets
Speaker 3: back to talking to the wax babies. He's you know,
Speaker 3: oh Marie Antoinette, my beloved, did you hear them acknowledge
Speaker 3: your beauty? And meanwhile, Matthew, the business partner, has been
Speaker 3: lurking around this whole time, and he comes out of
Speaker 3: an adjacent room and Jared expects him to be happy,
Speaker 3: but he's like, sorry, I can't wait three months. I
Speaker 3: need money now. So his plan is that the Wax
Speaker 3: Museum is insured for twenty five thousand dollars. He says,
Speaker 3: let's burn it down and claim the insurance check. Of course,
Speaker 3: Jared is scandalized. He's like, burn my children alive. That's murder.
Speaker 3: I won't do it, and I'll kill you if you try.
Speaker 3: But Matthew does not stop to discuss. He just starts
Speaker 3: lighting matches and setting wax people on fire.
Speaker 1: This is pretty much exactly how it goes down in
Speaker 1: the original film as well. It is not premeditated Arson.
Speaker 1: It's just like, hey, let's do Arson. I think that's
Speaker 1: the way to go. Let's do it.
Speaker 3: I'm doing it now, no time to argue. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they get into a fistfight, but Vincent Price is
Speaker 3: bested and he gets knocked out I think twice in
Speaker 3: this sequence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of punching going on. And I
Speaker 1: believe it was Wes Craven in the documentary who pointed
Speaker 1: out that it looks like Vincent Price is doing a
Speaker 1: lot of his own stunts and also doing them really
Speaker 1: close to open flames. So Craven was kind of like
Speaker 1: he was like flinching a little. It's like, Oh, it's
Speaker 1: a director, you know this is You're kind of like, wow,
Speaker 1: they really they were really going for it here.
Speaker 3: There is another scene later in the movie where where
Speaker 3: the Vincent Price character does like a swing on a
Speaker 3: rope across an alleyway top and it looks like it's
Speaker 3: really him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder how much of that is just sort
Speaker 1: of this is just how you did it at the time,
Speaker 1: and how much of it too is just like Price
Speaker 1: coming out of this grayless scare, realizing that this is
Speaker 1: perhaps his big chance to get back on top of
Speaker 1: things and just going just all in on it, just
Speaker 1: doing everything he can.
Speaker 3: Well, he does really go for it. But so in
Speaker 3: this scene, Matthew Knock's Jared unconscious leaves him for dead
Speaker 3: as the Palace of Wax burns, and we here get
Speaker 3: to see this is something that I think is common
Speaker 3: to most wax horror movies. There is the Palace of
Speaker 3: Wax burns, and we watch all of the wax figures
Speaker 3: burning and melting in a revolting manner, and it really
Speaker 3: does look gross. Presumably I was thinking about why this is,
Speaker 3: and I think it's because the sort of fat like
Speaker 3: composition of wax somewhat resembles what we imagine it would
Speaker 3: look like for flesh and adipose tissue to burn. But
Speaker 3: we get horrifying shots of wax faces kind of softening
Speaker 3: and then scorching and trickling away down the chin of
Speaker 3: the mold, and it just makes me think about how
Speaker 3: there's a reason wax museums keep occurring as a setting
Speaker 3: for horror movies, and those movies always involve a tragic
Speaker 3: inferno where the wax faces milt. It's just an inherently
Speaker 3: disgusting and disturbing visual texture.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, So the museum burns. We see Price wake up
Speaker 3: and run through an interior doorway, though it's not initially
Speaker 3: clear whether he dies in the fire or escapes. And
Speaker 3: then the fire department arrives. A horse drawn fire engine
Speaker 3: comes clattering up the street to put out the blaze.
Speaker 3: And I thought this was a very cool historical set piece.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really drives home the historic gothic feel of
Speaker 1: the picture.
Speaker 3: So later I guess this is taken to be weeks later,
Speaker 3: we are at some I don't know. The setting here
Speaker 3: is horrible. It's like this insipid promenade where this repetitive
Speaker 3: music is playing. We see a banner somewhere that says
Speaker 3: Weber's Hoffbrow And Matthew Burke is there, the scheming business
Speaker 3: partner who set fire to the wax museum. He is
Speaker 3: there with his fiance talking about his dear departed friend,
Speaker 3: Professor Jared and his fiance. Here is Carolyn Jones playing
Speaker 3: Kathy Gray. Now Matthew is describing his dear departed friend,
Speaker 3: Professor Jared. He says, you know, oh, he was a
Speaker 3: great artist. Only I could understand him. We were like this,
Speaker 3: And his fiance says, did they ever find him after
Speaker 3: the fire? And she's doing I would call it a
Speaker 3: Betty Boop voice, very much a baby voice.
Speaker 1: I agree.
Speaker 3: Matthew says, nope, no sign of him. Place went up
Speaker 3: like a volcano. Maybe he was reduced to unrecognizable ash.
Speaker 3: And he says, if only I had been there, I
Speaker 3: might have saved him. And Carolyn Jones says, oh, but Maddie,
Speaker 3: then you might have been burned up too. So at
Speaker 3: very first, it seems like this character played by Carolyn
Speaker 3: Jones is supposed to be kind of naive and dumb.
Speaker 3: But then she looks away from Maddie and she kind
Speaker 3: of gets a twinkle in her eye, and she says,
Speaker 3: was there any insurance on the place? So I think
Speaker 3: she's actually angling for that sweet cash, just as much
Speaker 3: as Matthew is.
Speaker 1: Of course, it worth mentioning she does not know the
Speaker 1: true horror of what happened there. She doesn't know that
Speaker 1: that he's a murderer, right.
Speaker 3: She doesn't know about that, But she does want the money,
Speaker 3: and Matthew's like, well, there's a problem. The insurance was
Speaker 3: hesitant to pay out because they couldn't verify whether Jared
Speaker 3: was alive or dead, and Cathy says, yeah, they always
Speaker 3: want a corpse giggle. But then it seems like the
Speaker 3: insurance check finally just came through today. So Matthew is
Speaker 3: he has possession of the money, and Kathy is positively
Speaker 3: cooing and twittering about this, and he says, where would
Speaker 3: you like to go? Atlantic City? But she wants to
Speaker 3: go to Niagara Falls to get married. She says, you know,
Speaker 3: make it legitimate, and I laughed out loud at Matthew's
Speaker 3: reaction to this. He gets very kind of somber and
Speaker 3: he's like, check please. Yeah. But later that night, Matthew
Speaker 3: returns to his office alone and we see him go
Speaker 3: into this lonely building, this empty office at night, and
Speaker 3: retrieve some money from his safe. But as he's doing so,
Speaker 3: a black gloved hand reaches up over the back of
Speaker 3: the sofa in his office, and a shadowy figure emerges,
Speaker 3: a man dressed in all black with a wide brimmed
Speaker 3: black hat and a face scarred beyond recognition and I
Speaker 3: don't know if there's supposed to be any mystery about
Speaker 3: who it is at this point, but obviously it's Jared.
Speaker 3: Who else would it be?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it man Again. The makeup is just impressive.
Speaker 1: They do some great stuff with not only you know,
Speaker 1: layering on too Vincent Price's face, but also keeping Vincent
Speaker 1: Price recognizable through the makeup, but also distorting his natural
Speaker 1: features a little bit, like pulling his lip down on
Speaker 1: one side I think he has later we see that
Speaker 1: in like one of his ears, this kind of pin
Speaker 1: back as well. Great makeup. You can't fault them for
Speaker 1: showing it a lot. And early in the picture, right.
Speaker 3: So he creeps up on Matthew, he dims the lamp
Speaker 3: on the wall, and then he pounces and strangles Matthew
Speaker 3: with the length of rope, and then we see the
Speaker 3: figure creeping away from the scene of the crime. You
Speaker 3: think he's running away, but no, he is staging a
Speaker 3: crime scene. Instead, he secures a rope to an elevator
Speaker 3: shaft and then drops Matthew's body to make it look
Speaker 3: like a suicide. So you would think at this point, okay,
Speaker 3: Vincent Price's revenge checklist complete, Like it seems like, this
Speaker 3: revenge plot would have taken the whole movie, but no,
Speaker 3: it is done within twenty minutes. So what is the
Speaker 3: rest of the drama going to consist of?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, Doctor Fibes would have taken up the
Speaker 1: entire length of the film trying to pull off this
Speaker 1: level of completion with his revenge.
Speaker 3: Well, let's check in with Mattie's fiance Kathy and her
Speaker 3: roommate Sue. So again, it's funny because while Carolyn Jones
Speaker 3: did the Betty Boop voice for Matthew, she comes off
Speaker 3: as savvy and even cynical when talking with Sue. So
Speaker 3: she's no longer playing at naive and she's talking to
Speaker 3: her roommate Sue, and Sue is Phyllis Kirk and she's like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, Maddie was going to marry me, so I
Speaker 3: thought I could get my hands on that insurance money,
Speaker 3: but he's dead. Lol. Anyway, I've got a new date
Speaker 3: tonight and he's real handsome and he's a free spender. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Kathy is like bracing against a door frame while Sue
Speaker 3: pulls her course at laces tighter, and Kathy's very excited
Speaker 3: about about her new bow again, he's you know, he's
Speaker 3: he's a free spender. He's going to take her to
Speaker 3: a place called the Hoffman House for dinner, and then
Speaker 3: to quote Tony Pastors for the vaudeville show, which I
Speaker 3: don't know. That doesn't sound like a cheap date. Does
Speaker 3: sound like he's pay he's paying up to go to
Speaker 3: the nice places.
Speaker 1: But when we do see the vaudeville show, it's another Again.
Speaker 1: I think it's a three D showcase. We get that
Speaker 1: three D code approved to it, pushed at the camera,
Speaker 1: like the what do you call the sort of pants
Speaker 1: that they're wearing with all the ruffles.
Speaker 3: The ruffel pants underneath the dress. I don't know what.
Speaker 1: Yeah all that. Yeah, sots are really nuns and pantaloons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not even remotely riskue by modern modern standards. But I
Speaker 1: guess this is a slightly risky moment in this film.
Speaker 3: Well, we don't see it in this scene. We see
Speaker 3: it later when hilariously Scott takes Sue there to take
Speaker 3: her mind off the fact that she is being chased
Speaker 3: by a melted man. Yeah, but we learn a bit
Speaker 3: here about Kathy and Sue's relationships, So the dynamic seems
Speaker 3: to be that Kathy is. She has an active social life,
Speaker 3: ended nose for money, she's trying to marry rich, whereas
Speaker 3: Sue seems very modest and she's kind of a homebody.
Speaker 3: And if this movie were set one hundred years later,
Speaker 3: I think Sue would be a nerd with glasses. Who doesn't,
Speaker 3: you know, take her glasses off. Until the scene in
Speaker 3: the third act where she's modeling to be Marie Antoinette
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you definitely get the vibe here that they're
Speaker 1: both doing what they can to scrap, buy and make
Speaker 1: it in a man's world.
Speaker 3: That's right. And you know what, I liked their relationship.
Speaker 3: They're good friends and they take care of each other.
Speaker 3: Kathy says, you know, we're so different. You've got the brains,
Speaker 3: and what I've got is well what I've got. And
Speaker 3: so Sue has in this at the beginning here come
Speaker 3: on hard time. She's out of work and out of money,
Speaker 3: and Kathy's helping her out. She right before she leaves
Speaker 3: for the date, she gives her the last fifty cents
Speaker 3: in her purse to buy some supper and says, I
Speaker 3: don't need any mad money. I never get mad. So
Speaker 3: later that night, Sue comes home after trying to get
Speaker 3: a job as a hat check attendant working under some
Speaker 3: tyrannical theater manager. That doesn't work out. She doesn't get
Speaker 3: the job. We don't see that scene, but we get
Speaker 3: the impression that it's because the theater manager is a
Speaker 3: creep and Sue wouldn't put up with it and just left.
Speaker 3: So Sue's trying to sneak up to her room, but
Speaker 3: the land lady of their building is posted like a
Speaker 3: century She's waiting in the parlor to demand immediately, like
Speaker 3: you cannot stay here tonight unless you give me the rent.
Speaker 3: And I think Sue was waiting for Kathy to get
Speaker 3: back from her date with some money so she could
Speaker 3: so that could she could borrow it from her, so
Speaker 3: that could be the rent.
Speaker 1: I think, mm hmm, yeah, I believe that was the arrangement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So Sue goes up to the room to
Speaker 3: see if she can borrow the money, but instead Kathy
Speaker 3: is dead. She finds Kathy murdered in her room, and
Speaker 3: then she is startled by a terrifying melted man in black,
Speaker 3: the same man we saw killing Matthew Burke, and a
Speaker 3: chase scene follows I would say, very good tense chase scene.
Speaker 3: Sue escapes out the window and onto the streets below,
Speaker 3: and then the melted man in black runs after her,
Speaker 3: and they're chasing through this maze of alley ways in
Speaker 3: a foggy night. Sue barely escapes, making it to the
Speaker 3: home of a friend, a sculptor named Scott Andrews who
Speaker 3: lives with his mother. Again thumbs up to the chase scene.
Speaker 3: I love the street sets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the great, great, great streets they create here, dark, gothic, wonderful.
Speaker 3: So police investigators the next day arrive at the scene
Speaker 3: of Kathy's murder, or maybe it's later that night, I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: They show up and they're trying to figure out what's
Speaker 3: going on at the morgue. They determined the cause of
Speaker 3: death with strangulation, and they determined that she had been drugged,
Speaker 3: probably in a drink beforehand.
Speaker 1: Hmm.
Speaker 3: It makes you wonder who her date was with was
Speaker 3: the date involved in the murder, but we assume also
Speaker 3: that her date was not with the melted Vincent Price
Speaker 3: because she says the guy she was going out with
Speaker 3: was very handsome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they never really tell us one way or another.
Speaker 1: I guess, if I had to try and put it
Speaker 1: together in my head, I guess maybe one of Vincent
Speaker 1: Price's two underlings that we meet later.
Speaker 3: Or it could be Vincent Price with the wax face
Speaker 3: we see him with later.
Speaker 1: I guess you'd think the cops would figure this out, though, like,
Speaker 1: who is she saying? This is not a police procedural,
Speaker 1: So if we don't even go down this direction anyway.
Speaker 3: At the MO there is some comic relief with the orderlies,
Speaker 3: and there's one point where they're in the room with
Speaker 3: all of the bodies and one of the corpses pops
Speaker 3: up under the sheet, but the orderly is like, ah, yeah,
Speaker 3: they do that sometimes it's the embalming fluid. But no,
Speaker 3: after they leave, it pops up again and it is
Speaker 3: not the embalming fluid. It is our melted assailant pretending
Speaker 3: to be a corpse.
Speaker 1: This whole sequence plays out pretty much exactly like it
Speaker 1: does in the original picture, and in the original picture
Speaker 1: also just a very haunting scene of the of the morgue,
Speaker 1: So yeah, they recreate it well, I think.
Speaker 3: But he locates the body of Kathy Gray and he
Speaker 3: proceeds to steal it from the morgue. He lowers the
Speaker 3: body out the window to a couple of co conspirators
Speaker 3: waiting below, who are also dressed in dark cloaks and hats.
Speaker 3: And I did laugh here because the fake body prop
Speaker 3: they use for the rope lowering is very stiff and
Speaker 3: obviously very light. Later, Sue and her friend Scott and
Speaker 3: Scott's mother are at the police station being interrogated, and
Speaker 3: the interrogation consists of the police asking things like, quote,
Speaker 3: are you sure you didn't imagine all of it? And
Speaker 3: also they tell her it is impossible for a human
Speaker 3: being to look the way you described. Oh, and we
Speaker 3: find out in the scene that the body of Matthew
Speaker 3: Burke was similarly stolen from the morgue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it gradually becomes apparent that bodies are being stolen
Speaker 1: and bodies are disappearing all over town.
Speaker 3: Right, So a new scene later Sidney Wallace remember him,
Speaker 3: He was the investor who had to go to Egypt
Speaker 3: for three weeks, but he was going to invest in
Speaker 3: Henry Jared's museum. Well, he shows up at a door
Speaker 3: in an alleyway and he's greeted by a young jacked
Speaker 3: Charles Bronson, who we will later be informed is named Igor.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. By the way, one thing I pointed out
Speaker 1: in the documentary is that Bronson was already pretty big
Speaker 1: in Italy under his birth name, but he was big
Speaker 1: enough that when they put the poster out for the
Speaker 1: Italian market, his head is prominently featured, like it's almost
Speaker 1: like starring Charles Bronson.
Speaker 3: Well, his head is actually prominent in the movie because
Speaker 3: there are multiple wax casts of it, because what we
Speaker 3: learn in the scene is that Igor is one of
Speaker 3: the pupils of Professor Jared, now revealed to be still alive,
Speaker 3: and Igor tries to make wax figures of other people,
Speaker 3: but he always ends up making his own face. That
Speaker 3: almost seems like an interesting, rare neurological condition where you
Speaker 3: perceive everybody else's face to be exactly the same, everybody
Speaker 3: else's face to be the same as your own.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like the kind of thing you might
Speaker 1: build an entire Twilight Zone episode out of, but it's
Speaker 1: not really explored here.
Speaker 3: Well anyway, so Wallace here, he says he got a
Speaker 3: letter telling him to come meet Professor Jared this address,
Speaker 3: and yet he's confused because Professor Jared is supposed to
Speaker 3: be dead, but nope, here is Vincent Price and not melted.
Speaker 3: He looks like regular unmelted Vincent Price. His hands are
Speaker 3: scarred and he moves with the help of a wheelchair,
Speaker 3: but his face is back to normal. And Jared says, hey, Wallace,
Speaker 3: I'm opening a new wax museum. This one will be
Speaker 3: dedicated to the themes of terror, agony, crime, malice, and execution.
Speaker 3: And we're going to send people into the streets telling
Speaker 3: their friends how wonderful it is to be scared to death?
Speaker 3: Do you want end? Do you want to invest? Seems
Speaker 3: like Wallace is going to invest, but he shows him
Speaker 3: around first. He's like, you know, here's my facility. Here
Speaker 3: is Charles Bronson. This is my student. He makes wax faces.
Speaker 3: Now that my hands are too scarred to do it.
Speaker 3: He's got another student downstairs named Leon. He also does
Speaker 3: the wax for him. Oh and here is my giant
Speaker 3: vat of boiling wax.
Speaker 1: Oh I love this vat of wax. It's got this
Speaker 1: pink tent to it just looks amazing.
Speaker 3: And he shows how he uses the boiling wax to
Speaker 3: make the skin that he pours. He uses a sort
Speaker 3: of sprinkler system to pour the melted wax over the
Speaker 3: mold of a body, which is made of plaster, by
Speaker 3: the way, not flesh. And then he reveals the most
Speaker 3: recent wax effigy he has finished. Igor opens a box
Speaker 3: which just looks like a coffin standing up, and then oh,
Speaker 3: there is Matthew Burke. He looks so lifelike, and he
Speaker 3: falls toward the camera out of the box, and Price
Speaker 3: says he hanged himself in an elevator shaft. And then intermission.
Speaker 3: So my version of this movie, the intermission card just
Speaker 3: said intermission. But I found screenshots of the intermission card
Speaker 3: on the internet that said intermission ten minutes. What's what's
Speaker 3: going on there?
Speaker 1: I believe the version I watched said ten minutes as well.
Speaker 1: I didn't go back and double check, but I remember
Speaker 1: when it came up and I was like, oh, I've
Speaker 1: got some time here. But then we don't get the
Speaker 1: actual ten minutes or whatever, so we go right back
Speaker 1: into the picture. But I have to say I kind
Speaker 1: of miss the when I do go to a theater
Speaker 1: these days, I kind of miss the intermission, especially when
Speaker 1: we're dealing with like three hour long pictures. And you
Speaker 1: know you're drinking coffee. You need to get up and
Speaker 1: go to the bathroom after a while, and you just
Speaker 1: have to sort of guess or maybe do some research
Speaker 1: and find out what scenes you need to hit. And
Speaker 1: then it's got to be this rushed affair to use
Speaker 1: the bathroom and get back to the seat. It seems
Speaker 1: like why not do the intermissions, and especially in these
Speaker 1: theaters where you have assigned seats nowadays, like let people
Speaker 1: stroll out there, use the bathroom, buy some more food
Speaker 1: and what have you?
Speaker 3: Agreed? Intermissions are nice, but yeah, likewise my version of
Speaker 3: the movie, the intermission only lasted a few seconds. So
Speaker 3: after the intermission, the new house of Wax is open
Speaker 3: and it is bustling. It's obviously doing great business. It
Speaker 3: is also deeply morbid and prurient. All it's just wax
Speaker 3: executions and belly dancers, and Vincent Price is going around
Speaker 3: handing out smelling salts to the ladies who are fainting
Speaker 3: in the middle of his museum. And here's the part
Speaker 3: where they have hired a paddle ball barker to get
Speaker 3: people in the door. He is out front, just whipping
Speaker 3: the paddle balls and talking a mile a minute.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Reggie rymal here absolutely threatening any and everyone who
Speaker 1: comes within paddleball reach of him just ride in their faces,
Speaker 1: then ride in the camera, and he even basically breaks
Speaker 1: the fourth wall and threatens a moviegoer in their popcorn,
Speaker 1: though not in like a total Grimlins two winky Winky way,
Speaker 1: but but still it gets dangerously close to that level.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I think it is almost Krimlin's two level,
Speaker 3: because he's starting to say he looks directly into the
Speaker 3: camera and he says, I see you sitting. So what
Speaker 3: he's doing already is he's hitting the paddle ball at
Speaker 3: like somebody's hat. He's like, I can knock the feather
Speaker 3: off of your hate and he's, you know, doing that.
Speaker 3: But then he looks into the camera he says, look,
Speaker 3: you there holding a box of popcorn. I'm going to
Speaker 3: hit the popcorn.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, but but if you really want to do
Speaker 1: you could think, well, there's a kid with popcorn there
Speaker 1: on the street, and that's what he's aiming at. And
Speaker 1: it's just out of we can't see it because we're
Speaker 1: that's where we're positioned. But yeah, it's it's still very gimmicky.
Speaker 1: It's a very gimmicky moment. This is the moment of
Speaker 1: the film where they're fully embracing the gimmick of three D,
Speaker 1: and not for immersion in the picture, but just for
Speaker 1: the spectacle itself.
Speaker 3: So many pretensions Henry Jared had of keeping dignity and
Speaker 3: fine art as the as the purpose of music his museum,
Speaker 3: this has all been abandoned. So he has a gimmicky
Speaker 3: barker out front, get luring people in by by taunting them.
Speaker 3: And when he leads the tour, it is now all
Speaker 3: wax score. He's quoting Shakespeare and making comments like yes,
Speaker 3: Anne Boleyn, her husband King Henry found a way to
Speaker 3: cut their marriage short. And then he uses at one point,
Speaker 3: he uses a guillotine to decapitate a wax French aristocrat
Speaker 3: and this makes people scream and faint.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's just fully embracing all of the gore that
Speaker 1: he he didn't want to embrace previously. He's like, I'm back,
Speaker 1: I'm changed. Now you want gore, you got it?
Speaker 3: Oh, and then here's a familiar exhibit. He's he's like
Speaker 3: showing off the scenes of crimes. He's like Matthew Burke,
Speaker 3: the stockbroker and I'm just thinking, is this a quote
Speaker 3: crime worthy of a museum piece. It doesn't make doesn't
Speaker 3: really fit in with the famous historical executions here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Again, it's a moment where this is clearly not
Speaker 1: a police procedural because amid all of these historic and
Speaker 1: famous deaths, here is a less newsworthy death about someone
Speaker 1: personally connected to me and my business pursuits.
Speaker 3: Who died several weeks ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and everyone's like, oh, oh yeah, very impressive.
Speaker 3: So Sue and Scott Scott the sculptor, come to visit
Speaker 3: the museum, and they're commenting on everything. They're like, wow, yeah,
Speaker 3: these are really well done. Scott, even as a professional,
Speaker 3: is highly impressed, and he says Sue has been modeling
Speaker 3: for him, she's been posing for I guess his sculpture is.
Speaker 3: I don't know if he is a wax sculptor or
Speaker 3: some other kind of sculptor. I don't recall if they
Speaker 3: reveal that. But eventually Sue wanders over to the exhibit
Speaker 3: showing Joan of arc at the stake ready to be burned,
Speaker 3: and let's zoom in on her face. Why that looks
Speaker 3: an awful lot like Carolyn Jones Sue's roommate Kathy. Sue
Speaker 3: is greatly disturbed to see her dead friend's face perfectly
Speaker 3: reproduced in wax sculpture, and she starts to kind of
Speaker 3: freak out about this, but Vincent Price comes over to explain.
Speaker 3: He says that after she was killed, he saw her
Speaker 3: face in a picture in the newspaper and use that
Speaker 3: as a model for his joan of arc and Sue
Speaker 3: accepts this, but still seems troubled by how it can
Speaker 3: look so real, And of course Vincent Price is very
Speaker 3: creepy about it. He says, that's the finest compliment I've
Speaker 3: ever received, And then Jared starts asking old Scott the
Speaker 3: sculptor what he's He's like, I hear you're a sculptor, Scott,
Speaker 3: show me your hands, and then he shows him his hands,
Speaker 3: and Vincent Price says, yes, mine, we're once like that,
Speaker 3: and so they make arrangements to work together sometime. But
Speaker 3: while Jared is talking, he also just starts hallucinating Sue
Speaker 3: as Marie Antoinette. She's like fading in and out of
Speaker 3: her regular costume and then into the Marie Antoinette get up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is he sees her as his favorite is
Speaker 1: like he wants to recreate his favorite Marie Antoinette, and
Speaker 1: this is clearly the woman whose likeness he needs to
Speaker 1: transform into her.
Speaker 3: Right, He is desperate to wax this woman, so Jared
Speaker 3: asks Sue to model for him, and she I think
Speaker 3: she kind of agrees, But then they leave and you
Speaker 3: know they're they're walking out and we get another another
Speaker 3: shot of the paddleball guy as we leave. It's like
Speaker 3: one was not enough.
Speaker 1: He is really impressive. Like there at one point, and
Speaker 1: maybe it's the earliest scene. He does the bit where
Speaker 1: he's using two paddleballs at once, but then he ends
Speaker 1: up doing three and he catches all the balls in
Speaker 1: his mouth. Uh, it's it's pretty great. You might not
Speaker 1: think you need to see this performance, but after you
Speaker 1: see it, you're like that, that's that's really good. This
Speaker 1: man was at the top of his game.
Speaker 3: Later that night, though, when Sue is in her bedroom,
Speaker 3: we see the melted wax man in the in the
Speaker 3: hat and cloak sneaking up to the window and he
Speaker 3: sort of he like throws throws a grappling hook or
Speaker 3: something and like swings across the alleyway to her window
Speaker 3: and he's sneaking up on her, but Sue wakes up
Speaker 3: before he reaches her. She screams and he runs away.
Speaker 3: And then next we just go straight to the Burlett
Speaker 3: three D spectacle that you talked about earlier. So they're
Speaker 3: at the music hall, Sue and Scott are there together,
Speaker 3: and we just get to watch the can Can dancers
Speaker 3: in three D kicking kicking up a storm. Also time
Speaker 3: to stop and appreciate a food and bev scene. You know,
Speaker 3: we should, we should rate the food and beverages in
Speaker 3: movies more often. So in this scene, our heroes are
Speaker 3: delivered a logger for the man, a sasparilla for the lady,
Speaker 3: and two knockwursts on rye. Looks like maybe they get
Speaker 3: a couple of little Cornischans with sausage sandwiches. I rate
Speaker 3: this movie meal of three out of ten.
Speaker 2: What.
Speaker 1: I don't know, if you're in the mood for it,
Speaker 1: it could work out, you know. Like the cornichons.
Speaker 3: I like Cornischans. The sandwiches look kind of kind of
Speaker 3: boring and dry, like it doesn't even look like the
Speaker 3: bread is toasted. It just don't know.
Speaker 1: The sasparilla looks good. It's in a nice classy little glass.
Speaker 3: Okay, agree there. So they're sitting there watching this dance
Speaker 3: show and Sue is like, it doesn't see improper, all
Speaker 3: those girls showing their talents, and then Scott explains. He says, look,
Speaker 3: you've been going around with the weight of the world
Speaker 3: on your shoulders. You're obsessed with your dead friend reincarnated
Speaker 3: as a wax martyr. You're seeing melted stalkers in your
Speaker 3: bedroom at night. You need to watch a show like
Speaker 3: this to quote bring you back to Normalcy'd say this
Speaker 3: is one of the least convincing statements in the film.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it's Bloomers in three D? What can you
Speaker 1: what can you say? Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah? And in all honesty, I think this scene
Speaker 3: probably is just like the paddle Ball, Like they wanted
Speaker 3: an excuse to have a three D a spectacle can
Speaker 3: can dancers kicking and jamming their butts in your face?
Speaker 3: So they found a way to fit it into the plot.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's it's funny, it works, it's pretty good. Yeah,
Speaker 3: But in the middle of this dance show, Sue is
Speaker 3: preoccupied with something about the wax Joan of Arc. Not
Speaker 3: only did it look exactly like Kathy, it had any
Speaker 3: irregular piercing in only one ear, just like the real Kathy.
Speaker 3: How could Jared have seen that from a newspaper photo
Speaker 3: and Scott that. She explains this to Scott and he's like,
Speaker 3: you know what you need. You need to talk to
Speaker 3: a cop. I'm gonna take you to the police station
Speaker 3: tomorrow and they'll tell you there's nothing to worry about.
Speaker 3: And so she's looking kind of like sad and dejected,
Speaker 3: while Scott's like, now relax, honey, and enjoy the show,
Speaker 3: and he's all jazzed up about it. The dancing resumes
Speaker 3: and then anyway, there is a scene the next day,
Speaker 3: I think where they get They do go and talk
Speaker 3: to the police, and unexpectedly the police start investigating this.
Speaker 3: They go and check on the museum and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't completely laugh off. I mean they do
Speaker 1: laugh at her, but they still follow up.
Speaker 3: Now, there's a few other scenes in here leading up
Speaker 3: to the climax. There's one part where they're at the
Speaker 3: museum and she's investigating the Kathy sculpture and then Vincent
Speaker 3: Price shows up with a box and opens it and
Speaker 3: it's a wax sculpture of Sue's own head and he
Speaker 3: shows it to Sue, like do you like it? But
Speaker 3: he still wants her to model sometime. And then meanwhile,
Speaker 3: also the police are poking around in the museum and
Speaker 3: they start noticing that a bunch of the wax figures
Speaker 3: in the room look exactly like the faces of bodies
Speaker 3: that have recently gone missing from the morgue. But they're
Speaker 3: just like Hunt, that's odd and just kind of whiffs
Speaker 3: over their heads. So there's more of a police investigation plot.
Speaker 3: They interrogate Wallace, they hunt down Leon, one of the
Speaker 3: two pupils, and arrest him, figure out his real identity
Speaker 3: and stuff. But it's all building up to this final
Speaker 3: confrontation where one night, Sue goes to the wax Museum
Speaker 3: to meet Scott but she can't find him, And there's
Speaker 3: a wonderful creepy scene where she's walking around in the
Speaker 3: darkened museum amongst the exhibits and all these scenes of
Speaker 3: murder and stuff, and she's calling out Scot Scott, and
Speaker 3: meanwhile Charles Bronson is creeping around. There's one point where
Speaker 3: you see a wax head that you think, or you
Speaker 3: see what you think is a wax head, but it's
Speaker 3: really Charles Bronson's actual head.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great fake out, and there's.
Speaker 3: There's a Kathy hair reveal. She like goes up to
Speaker 3: the sculpture of Joan of arcause she pulls the wig
Speaker 3: off and it's Kathy's real blonde hair underneath. All has
Speaker 3: come delight, that's right. And of course she's confronted here
Speaker 3: by Charles Bronson and by Vincent Price.
Speaker 1: Now we get one of the great scenes in this
Speaker 1: sequence that is also pretty much blow for blow exactly
Speaker 1: what happens in the nineteen thirties picture as well, where
Speaker 1: Vincent Price is there. He first of all, he gets
Speaker 1: up out of his wheelchair. So Vincent Price's character here
Speaker 1: is actually guilty of what the dude accuses the Big
Speaker 1: Lebowski off in the Big Lebowski. Oh, he can clearly walk.
Speaker 1: He's just using the wheelchair as part of this disguise.
Speaker 3: He's faking it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's faking it. But then she tries to struggle
Speaker 1: against him, and she hits him in the face a
Speaker 1: couple of times, and when she does it like smashes
Speaker 1: open his wax in false face, this wax face that
Speaker 1: he's wearing that makes him look like Vincent Price and
Speaker 1: reveals this heavily scarred visage beneath. It's a wonderful moment.
Speaker 1: It was a great moment in the original film, but
Speaker 1: this movie actually improves upon it with even better makeup,
Speaker 1: with this amazing full color makeup.
Speaker 3: Agree excellent reveal. It's not much of a surprise because
Speaker 3: I mean, again, who else would this melted guy be, like,
Speaker 3: you know, it's got to be Vincent Price. But yeah,
Speaker 3: a wonderful scene. And then this leads up to the
Speaker 3: ending where now Sue is you know, she's basically she
Speaker 3: has been tied to the train tracks by snidely whiplash.
Speaker 3: In this case, she is laying down on the table
Speaker 3: in the basement of the wax Museum under the big
Speaker 3: vat of boiling wax. So because the plan is that
Speaker 3: Jared is going to waxify Sue and turn her into
Speaker 3: his new Marie Antoinette while she's still alive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, despite this being very much like
Speaker 1: a Code approved film, we have implied nudity here. She's
Speaker 1: supposed to be nude in there, and of course, you
Speaker 1: know we'd never see any of the nudity, but it's
Speaker 1: heavily implied. And later like when she's rescued, somebody has
Speaker 1: to throw a coat over.
Speaker 3: Her, implied nudity being a hilarious content warning that we
Speaker 3: once saw on the IMDb parental guide. Yes, I mean,
Speaker 3: isn't the presence of any human body technically a case
Speaker 3: of implied nudity?
Speaker 1: It's like there somewhere, Yeah, so is the film Wine.
Speaker 1: So it's close here. They do a great job building
Speaker 1: the tension. We have these these dual scenes going on
Speaker 1: where there's the battle against Igor on one hand, and
Speaker 1: then there's Jared's wax preparations for Sue in the basement.
Speaker 1: I thought both sequences were really skillfully composed and cut
Speaker 1: together here.
Speaker 3: Yes, I agree, very tense sequence. Sue is in the
Speaker 3: basement about to be waxed alive Scott. Meanwhile, he gets
Speaker 3: in the fight with Charles Bronson and then Charles Bronson
Speaker 3: wins and then puts him in the guillotine to guillotine him.
Speaker 3: And then at the last moment they are saved by
Speaker 3: the arrival of the police, which you know, that's a classic.
Speaker 3: It's a very fifties movie kind of ending, one that
Speaker 3: I always find incredibly unsatisfying. The hero and the heroine
Speaker 3: do not find a way to best the villain of
Speaker 3: their own accord. They have to be rescued by the authorities.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know why. I wonder if
Speaker 3: audiences in the fifties found that as unsatisfying as I
Speaker 3: think most people probably would today or for the time.
Speaker 3: It's just like, oh, okay, yeah, good, you know, the
Speaker 3: police saved the day. It like it robs us of
Speaker 3: a certain kind of resolution to the dynamic between the characters.
Speaker 3: If you don't see a way for the good characters
Speaker 3: to save themselves, they just you know, dios x machin
Speaker 3: it basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's it's basically like Tarantula, where
Speaker 1: all right, Colin Clint Eastwood in a jet fighter, a
Speaker 1: character that we haven't seen before, is going to save
Speaker 1: the day by blowing up the giant spider.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess it's not quite a day of
Speaker 3: sex mank in it to be fair, because we have
Speaker 3: seen the police investigating up to this point, so like
Speaker 3: there's a plot line of them figuring out what's going
Speaker 3: on and getting there to that moment so that they
Speaker 3: don't show up from out of nowhere, But we're not
Speaker 3: really invested in the police characters. So I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's just it's just not quite the same as it
Speaker 3: would be if Sue or Scott themselves figured out a
Speaker 3: way out of this.
Speaker 1: I guess it's ultimately in the grander cinematic tradition. It's
Speaker 1: it's great to have that trope, though, because when that
Speaker 1: trope is later subverted in films it can be especially
Speaker 1: delightful and mean, with one of the prime examples, of
Speaker 1: course being like Hitchcock's Psycho, where the picture lets you
Speaker 1: know clearly that the you know, whatever rescue you thought
Speaker 1: was gonna come is is maybe not going to work
Speaker 1: after all. So when police intervention fails in later pictures,
Speaker 1: it maybe it hits a little harder. I don't know.
Speaker 3: There's a really good twist that inverts that in Silence
Speaker 3: of the Lambs. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, like where you
Speaker 3: think the cops are showing up to conclude the plot,
Speaker 3: but in fact the heroine is on her own.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, they're they're hitting the wrong house.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but anyway, authority saving the day aside. It is
Speaker 3: a really tense ending and I think it works great
Speaker 3: for the most part, and.
Speaker 1: There's a lot more Grapplert like when they when they
Speaker 1: when they arrest Igor, he's about to suplex a cop.
Speaker 1: And then I don't know if you noticed, but when
Speaker 1: Vincent Price's character is fighting off the authorities, at one
Speaker 1: point he like picks a dude up like he's gonna
Speaker 1: throw him into the wax. And of course we know
Speaker 1: who's going in that wax.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean, it's the end you know is coming.
Speaker 3: It's it's kind of like it's Chekhov's gun. If there's
Speaker 3: gun on the mantelpiece, it will probably be fired. If
Speaker 3: there is a what would you call it, an open
Speaker 3: topped large container of some kind of deadly liquid, whether
Speaker 3: that that's a pool with piranhas in it or boiling
Speaker 3: acid or boiling wax, the villain has got to fall in.
Speaker 1: It, exactly. I mean, that's what it's there for. We
Speaker 1: want that spectacle even if there's and in this case,
Speaker 1: there's nothing really gory afterwards, like you don't see a
Speaker 1: skeleton rising to the surface or anything like that. We
Speaker 1: don't see a wax cocooned Vincent Price, you know, falling
Speaker 1: under the floor or anything. But just the spectacle of him,
Speaker 1: of somebody landing in that stuff is enough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's not the stinger at the end. Instead, the
Speaker 3: epilogue is just them at the police station with Sue
Speaker 3: being like, thank you for putting your coat over my
Speaker 3: naked body.
Speaker 1: The end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a strange comment to end on.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, but they got to send the folks
Speaker 1: home happy, you know, the whole family came out, the
Speaker 1: whole family. But at least people made the effort to
Speaker 1: come to the big theater to get the big theater
Speaker 1: experience with all this wonderful sound, three D effects. They
Speaker 1: need to go home happy, so they'll come back next
Speaker 1: time and watch more three D Warner Brothers pictures.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if they ever re released this again in three D,
Speaker 3: I would absolutely go to a theater to watch it
Speaker 3: in three D. I think that would be a blast.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, I really left this movie and the
Speaker 1: research wanting to have the really for the first time
Speaker 1: perhaps ever, really wanting to have a proper three D
Speaker 1: cinema experience with whatever technology I can get my hands on,
Speaker 1: so that the next time there's like a strong I
Speaker 1: would I mean, obviously I would love to see this
Speaker 1: picture re released in modern three D or some form
Speaker 1: of three D in the theater, but I'll settle for
Speaker 1: anything at this point, almost anything.
Speaker 3: All right, does that do it for House of Wax?
Speaker 1: I believe that will. We'll go ahead and seal off
Speaker 1: the wax canister on this one, but we'll be back
Speaker 1: next week with one three D picture. What'll it be?
Speaker 1: I don't know. We're still looking around at things. I've
Speaker 1: got another disc to check out here, so tune in
Speaker 1: and find out. In the meantime, if you want to
Speaker 1: hear more Weird House Cinema, well, we put this out
Speaker 1: every Friday and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast
Speaker 1: feed We're primarily a science podcast, but on Fridays we
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 1: weird film. If you want to see a complete list
Speaker 1: of the films that we've covered on the show, we
Speaker 1: can go to letterbox dot com as L E T
Speaker 1: T E R B O x D. We have a
Speaker 1: user account there called Weird House, and on that account
Speaker 1: you'll find a list in order all the films we've covered.
Speaker 1: It's pretty fun to check out.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
Speaker 3: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 3: on this episode or any other to suggest a topic
Speaker 3: for the future, or just to say hello. You can
Speaker 3: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 3: dot com.
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