House of Wax (1953)

Like I said in my review of Mystery of the Wax Museum, while I first learned of that film through the documentary, Universal Horror, I actually saw a little bit of this much more popular, and in my opinion, better, remake long before I saw that movie in its entirety, which was when I bought the old DVD with both films in October of 2009. I know for certain that I caught my initial glimpse of House of Wax during one of AMC's horror movie marathons that they showed around Halloween every year and I'm also very sure that it was 1999, as it was my introduction to Vincent Price. I knew the name at that point, mainly because of that book I've mentioned called Monster Madness, where I learned that he gave Rick Baker the Oscar he won for An American Werewolf in London, but this was what gave me a face and a voice to go with it. (Speaking of the voice, I also thought I'd heard it on a Bugs Bunny cartoon called Water, Water Every Hare but I've since learned that it and the mad scientist character in that movie that spoke it were based on Boris Karloff. Moreover, as we'll get into, this was Price's first major foray into the horror genre and that cartoon was made the year before. Still, I can remember thinking that was him when I first heard him speak in this movie.) In addition, the following year was when I saw The Fly and from then on, I slowly but surely became a big fan of Price, as everyone in the world is. In any case, I came into the movie at the moment when Prof. Jarrod explains to Sue how his Joan of Arc looks so much like her recently murdered friend and I watched a little more of it before moving on (I don't remember why I didn't watch the whole thing at that time); I also saw the tail end of it one Saturday morning, again on AMC, but, save for reading about it in a book on horror films at my high school's library and seeing clips of it on both Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments and CineMassacre's Monster Madness (the same year that I got the DVD), that was it until I finally bought it at an FYE. When I finally did see all of it, it wasn't hard for me to see why this film has captured people's imagination much more than its 30's predecessor. While Mystery of the Wax Museum may have been bolder because it was made in the pre-Code era, House of Wax just has more life, charm, and spectacle to it in my opinion, and Price's performance can't be praised enough. Seriously, what else can I say about it that hasn't already been said? It's simply a well-made, nicely-paced, entertaining classic of the genre.

In New York City at the turn of the century, Prof. Henry Jarrod, a very gifted wax sculptor, runs a small museum that displays his amazing work. However, his business partner, Matthew Burke, is unsatisfied with the returns they're receiving and wishes that Jarrod would cater to a public that's more interested in shock and horror, as a more successful museum does nearby. Jarrod is uninterested in sensationalism but, sensing Burke's disdain, tells him that famed art critic Sidney Wallace is scheduled to meet with him that evening and that he could buy him out as an investor. Wallace is then brought over by a friend of Jarrod's and is given a private tour. He's amazed by both the artistry and realism of the sculptures and is very much interested in investing; however, he has to travel to Egypt to supervise an excavation and won't be back for three months. After they leave, Burke, who overheard everything, tells Jarrod that he can't wait that long and decides to make use of the insurance by setting fire to the place. Jarrod, horrified at this proposition, completely opposes it, but Burke does it anyway, fighting Jarrod off at every turn and ultimately leaving him in the burning building to die. Some time later, Burke is courting a ditzy young woman who he plans to go off with, telling her that he just got the insurance check cashed. However, when he goes to his office to fetch the money, he's attacked and strangled by a hideously disfigured man in black, who takes the money and then arranges it to make it look as though Burke hanged himself in the elevator shaft. Burke's intended, Cathy Gray, then finds another wealthy man to go out with, but when her roommate, Sue Allen, returns to their boardinghouse after a job interview, she finds Cathy dead, killed by the same scarred man. Sue is chased through the streets by the man and eventually reaches the house of her boyfriend, Scott Andrews; later that night, the man steals Cathy's body from the morgue with the help of some accomplices. Sidney Wallace arrives back in New York and is shocked when a letter leads him to a wheelchair-bound but still-living Jarrod, who is opening up a new wax museum, one that will cater to the crowds who want sensationalism and asks Wallace to invest in it. The museum soon opens and is a success, but when Sue and Scott visit it, Sue is struck by the Joan of Arc sculpture, which bares an uncomfortable resemblance to Cathy. Although Jarrod ensures her that it's due to his using Cathy's picture in the newspaper as his inspiration, Sue is convinced that there's something more sinister to it... a secret that will soon put her in danger herself, given how much she looks like Jarrod's most beloved creation: Marie Antoinette.

That plot synopsis emphasizes one of the reasons why I prefer this film to Mystery of the Wax Museum: it takes the same story and boils it down to its most basic elements, whereas that film's story was at times a tad too complicated. For instance, here, the whole story takes place in New York rather than beginning in London and moving to New York for the remainder of the film and the opening and main story take place within a few months of each other, instead of jumping ahead twelve years. What I really like is that Prof. Jarrod gets his revenge on Matthew Burke immediately after the opening, rather than keeping tabs on him for longer than is necessary and waiting until near the end of the movie to finally do it, as Ivan Igor did with Joe Worth in the original film. Also, we don't have the subplot of his now being a bootlegger, with the film trying to make it look as if he's unknowingly working for the man he left for dead, which I appreciate as that made things a little bit confusing. Finally, instead of focusing on a reporter who's investigating the deaths and the disappearing bodies and making the woman who becomes the mad professor's target a side-character, the filmmakers here simplified things by combining the two, giving Sue Allen a personal connection to the case when her friend and roommate ends up as a wax figure at the museum and her determination to find out the truth about it ultimately makes her a target for Jarrod.

House of Wax is undoubtedly the most well-known film by Hungarian-born Andre DeToth, who started out as a stage actor and playwright before heading into the film business, where he worked as a writer, editor, second-unit director, and actor until he finally made the leap to director. He made five films in Hungary but fled to England when World War II broke out and arrived in Hollywood in 1942, where he worked as a second-unit director on The Jungle Book. His first American film as director was a comedic crime-thriller called Passport to Suez in 1943 but, even though he started fairly early and had an oral contract with Columbia, he'd only made eight films by the end of the 40's. The reason for that was because DeToth actually preferred to work as an independent director, having gotten himself out of his contract with Columbia after doing only two films, and the rest of the movies he directed during the 40's were distributed by United Artists. But his independent nature came with a price: in addition to directing, he had to take writing assignments in order to make ends meet and often went uncredited (although, his work for the story of The Gunfighter with Gregory Peck got him an Oscar nomination). He mostly did westerns and noir-style thrillers, such as Man in the Saddle with Randolph Scott (whom he worked with a number of times), Springfield Rifle with Gary Cooper, Last of the Comanches, and The Indian Fighter with Kirk Douglas, to name a few, with House of Wax being his own real foray into the horror genre. What's ironic is that he filmed it in the new process of 3-D and yet, he would never be able to see it that way, as he lost his left eye early in life. After House of Wax, he worked steadily through to the end of the 50's and started doing television work in 1959, directing episodes of Maverick, Hawaiian Eye, 77 Sunset Strip, and The Westerner. While his directing petered out by the end of the 60's, with his last movie being 1969's Play Dirty, a war movie starring Michael Caine, he had sporadic work as a second-unit director, performing the duty on movies like Lawrence of Arabia and Superman, and produced John Guillermin's El Condor in 1970. The last thing he ever did was writing the story for a 2002 short film titled Antychryst; he died that same year from an aneurysm at the age of 89.

Like I mentioned before, this film provided Vincent Price with his first truly significant horror performance. He'd been in other horror films before, like Tower of London (which is mainly a historical drama but features Boris Karloff in a memorable supporting role as a bald executioner with a dragging foot) and The Invisible Man Returns, which he starred in, but for the most part, up until this movie, he'd been a romantic leading man. And even after House of Wax, it wouldn't be until the latter part of the decade, when he appeared in The Fly and when William Castle and Roger Corman began putting him in their films, that he would be firmly cemented as the successor to past horror kings like Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Lon Chaney Jr. In any case, Prof. Henry Jarrod is one of Price's most memorable roles in the genre and it's an early example of how he could be both menacing and sympathetic at the same time. Like Ivan Igor in Mystery of the Wax Museum, he's an artist in every sense of the word and one who puts passion and his very soul into his work, to the point where he sees as sculptures as living, breathing people. However, the difference is, while Lionel Atwill played Igor as a rather stern man even before the museum was burnt down, Price is much more mild-mannered and modest as Jarrod; I also get a better sense of the affection he has for what he does, whereas Igor seemed to be someone who knew he had talent and was concentrating on how to express it in his every waking hour. On the flip side, though, Igor seemed much more in love with his Marie Antoinette and therefore, his obsession with Charlotte Duncan and how much she resembled the long lost sculpture felt more palpable. Jarrod still does consider his Marie Antoinette to be his greatest creation but it's not focused on as much, as he's devastated about having lost all of his sculptures, and so, when he decides to use Sue Allen's body to replace her, it doesn't have as much impact. In fact, it seems to be a bit random, as Jarrod had already chased Sue through the streets after he'd killed Cathy and only appeared to see Sue as his Marie Antoinette when they meet formally at the museum (I guess he didn't get a good look at her because it wad dark and he was only chasing her to try to keep her from telling anyone).

Regardless of that little nitpick, there's no denying that Jarrod is a sympathetic antagonist. While what he's doing is not just wrong but downright ghastly, you understand why he does it, as all of the great sculptures and work that he created and love has been destroyed his slimy, traitorous business partner, Matthew Burke, who also left him there to die. As a result, he's been left horribly disfigured, having to hide his hideous facial scars behind a mask of wax, and he can no longer sculpt with his hands, forcing him to rely on assistants. Unable to cope with this, and knowing that his assistants would never be able to exactly recreate his lost work, he resorts to killing people who resemble them and coating their bodies in wax before dressing them. He also kills and makes Burke a part of his museum simply out of revenge, adding insult to injury by making it look as if he hanged himself before taking the body. Having killed Cathy to make her into his Joan of Arc, who was a favorite subject of his anyway, draws the attention of Sue, who is sure that the sculpture is really her, and her resemblance to his beloved Marie Antoinette causes him to become obsessed with making her part of his museum. This leads to another thing that makes me like Jarrod more than Igor: how he handles himself around everyone else. He has that great sense of charm that Price was able to give off in his favor, making everyone like him as well as admire his talent, and it also makes sense why people Sue's boyfriend, Scott Andrews, would want to work for him, as he's not a stern, insulting taskmaster like Igor was towards them. What's more, he doesn't come across as creepy towards Sue as Igor did Charlotte because of her resemblance to Marie Antoinette, rather continuing to use his charm on her and coming up with a convincing explanation as to why his Joan of Arc looks so much like Cathy (and yet, while Charlotte never felt uncomfortable around Igor until it was too late, Sue never really trusts Jarrod because of her suspicions).

While he would become known for the campiness of his performances and the sly, often morbid sense of humor he would slip in, for the most part, Price plays Jarrod fairly straight. There are some early examples of those traits, such as the comments he makes about the events depicted when he's giving a tour on the museum's opening night and how, when one woman faints upon seeing a demonstration of the guillotine in one exhibit, he candidly passes out smelling salts, telling the ladies to help themselves, as well as in the beginning when he describes about how he "argued" with John Wilkes Booth while sculpting the figure, adding, "You know how hard it is to shut an actor's mouth," but other than that, he's pretty serious about it. Given the tragedy of the character, it makes sense that he wouldn't make jokes every other line, and he himself even lampshades how he's a totally different man now than he was before the fire, saying, "Jarrod is dead. I'm a reincarnation." When it's time to be menacing, Jarrod really turns it on, as he's all business when he's stalking about New York late at night to kill people and take their bodies, being pretty vicious while in the act of murdering someone, and drops all pretenses of charm when Sue discovers that the Joan of Arc figure really is Cathy, growling, "You shouldn't have done that, my dear." He's really creepy when he reveals that he actually can walk by stepping up out of the wheelchair, approaching and cornering Sue with a look of obsessive madness on his face, and telling her, "Everything I ever loved has been taken away from me, but not you, my Marie Antoinette, for I will give you eternal life." Despite her smashing his wax mask, he's determined to make her part of his museum, stripping her clothes off and shackling her in a box as he prepares to pour hot wax on her. He even gives her a sedative so that the panicked look on her face won't show through the wax (it's strongly implied he did the same thing to Cathy) but, right before he can do it, the police break in and a fight ends with Jarrod falling to his death in the boiling vat.

Although both burned makeups for Igor and Jarrod are pretty gruesome for the time they were created in, I think I'd have to say that the makeup here, by Gordon Bau, is the more hideous of the two. While Igor's burned face was startling, it seemed a little too thick and sculpted, whereas Jarrod's makeup looks much more like an actual burn victim, with the lack of color and in the clearly scarred texture of the flesh. Price really looks creepy in that makeup when he's lurking in the shadows, dressed in his black cloak and hat, and it seems like it was so horrific-looking in person that people on the set didn't want him anywhere near them. He also shows that, while he can actually walk, his movements were still badly affected by what happened to him, as he's often hunched over and walking in a distinct, back and forth swaying motion (at least, the first few times you see him after the fire). But, like Igor, despite the severity of his injuries, he is able to fight and defend himself very well, as seen during the climax when the police break in.

For me, combining the characters of Charlotte Duncan and Florence Dempsey from Mystery of the Wax Museum into the single character of Sue Allen (Phyllis Kirk) here was a good way of not only streamlining and simplifying things but also giving the leading lady more to do. Personality-wise, Sue is kind of the middle in those two characters, in that she's demure and soft-spoken like Charlotte but she has Florence's determination to follow up on her hunches and, also like her, is intelligent enough to know that something's wrong. She also suffers from a severe, frightening trauma from finding Cathy's body up in her room and being chased through the empty, misty city streets by the scarred Jarrod, a trauma that's only compounded by seeing the Joan of Arc with Cathy's face at the House of Wax. The shock from initially seeing that is bad enough but the fact that it looks so much like her, down to the smallest detail, such as one ear being pierced, continues to eat at her, as she's sure the resemblance is due to more than it simply being copied from a newspaper photo, as Jarrod claims it was, to the point where she has nightmares about it. And while Jarrod is charming enough, it's very obvious that Sue feels uncomfortable around him, especially when he talks about how much she resembles his Marie Antoinette and when he presents her with a wax sculpture of her own head. It all culminates when, while waiting for Scott outside the museum, Sue wanders into the darkened building and makes her way to the Joan of Arc, removing the black wig on the figure to reveal Cathy's blonde hair underneath it. Unfortunately, her discovering that her suspicions were right comes at a price: Jarrod catches her and takes her down to the workshop, where he removes her clothes and shackles her in a box under the vat of wax, preparing to bathe her in it to bring his Marie Antoinette back. He goes as far as to sedate her so her terrified expressions won't show on the figure but, while she's out, the police break in and kill Jarrod before rescuing her.

While the gave the lead female character more to do this time around, Sue's fiance, Scott Andrews (Paul Picerni), is just as bland as Ralph was in Mystery of the Wax Museum. As was the case in that film, he himself is a sculptor and he comes to work for Jarrod at the wax museum, due to a recommendation from Sidney Wallace, Jarrod's investor who also happens to be a friend of Scott's, and this and his relationship with Sue is what leads to Jarrod's obsession with her. Scott tries to be there for Sue, comforting her and giving her a place to stay after she's been chased upon finding Cathy's body but, while he does listen to her fears about the Joan of Arc looking so much like Cathy, he doesn't really believe what she's inferring, although he does take her to the police station so she can make a report. He continues working for Jarrod and only comes to realize that there's something wrong when, upon coming back to the museum after running an errand, he finds no trace of Sue, who was supposed to meet him there, and hears her scream down in the basement. This leads to him getting into a fight with Igor, one of Jarrod's assistants, who blocks the door but, as in the 30's film, he's outmatched and is nearly killed in the brawl, as Igor almost beheads him with the museum's guillotine (which was a real blade and caused such a heated argument between Paul Picerni and Andre DeToth that he was temporarily thrown off the movie; when he was brought back on, the prop department modified the blade so it wouldn't be so dangerous and Picerni agreed to do only one take, which is the one you see). Fortunately for him, the police break in and save him before heading down into the basement to help Sue.

Initially, the two lead investigators in the case of Cathy's death, Lt. Tom Brennan (Frank Lovejoy) and Sgt. Jim Shane (Dabs Greer), aren't sure what to make of Sue's claims, both her description of the man who chased her and then her dread that the Joan of Arc figure in the museum is Cathy. But, since she's their only witness and because Cathy's body does go missing, they decide to look into it, checking up on Jarrod. When they learn that somebody fitting his description did come in to look at the photographs of Cathy, they go to the House of Wax and see for themselves. They're both confident that the Joan of Arc is just a wax sculpture but, while Shane sees it as mere coincidence, Brennan begins to have his suspicions when he notices how the John Wilkes Booth figure looks like a missing deputy city attorney. What's more, when the two of them meet Leon Averill, one of Jarrod's sculptors, Shane feels that he recognizes him and soon remembers that his name is actually Carl Hendricks and that he was an alcoholic artist who spent some time in prison. With that, Brennan authorizes Shane to bring Averill in and, while going through the personal belongings in his pockets, they find a watch belonging to the missing man who resembled the Booth figure. Averill initially refuses to talk but the policemen play into his alcoholism to finally get him to confess, where they learn that the House of Wax is full of people whose bodies have been made into wax figures. They immediately race over, saving Scott Andrews right before Igor can behead him and also killing Jarrod while rescuing Sue from being added to the museum's ghoulish display, with Brennan personally moving her away from the vat of wax and wrapping her nude body in his coat, which she thanks him for during the ending scene. The film ends on a bit of humor, with Brennan holding up a wax head of Igor and commenting, "You know, Shane, by the time this guy gets out of Sing Sing, this head will grow a long beard."

Like Joe Worth, his counterpart in the 30's film, Matthew Burke (Roy Roberts) is more of a true villain than Prof. Jarrod, coming across as shifty and untrustworthy from the start, with how he sneaks into the wax museum and tries to go upstairs to look at the account books without Jarrod spotting him. He has no interest in the artistic side of the business he's invested and cares only about the bottom line, which isn't so good, as the museum is hardly a booming success and he really wishes that Jarrod would put in a chamber of horrors like another, much more successful, wax museum nearby. Burke is eager to dissolve his partnership with Jarrod and is interested when presented with a possibly lucrative buyout option, but when he overhears that it won't go through for another three months, he's unable to wait, as he wants to invest in something else. That's when he comes up with a plan to set fire to the museum for the insurance, which is worth $25,000, and offers to split the money with Jarrod, only for the sculptor to staunchly refuse and threaten to kill him if he dares try it. Rebuffing his opposition, Burke sets fire to the place anyway, fighting with and stopping Jarrod from extinguishing the individual fires that he sets. This is where Burke proves himself to be even worse than Worth, as he never tries to pull Jarrod out of the burning building, as Worth appeared to be trying to do with Igor, and deliberately knocks him unconscious and leaves him there to die. Even more despicable is how, when we later see him romancing Cathy Gray, he goes on about how he and Jarrod were the closest of friends and "laments" about how he might have saved him if he'd only been there. Burke doesn't spend much time mourning for Jarrod, though, immediately telling Cathy of large sum of money he made off of the insurance and, despite having misgivings about her suggesting marriage, intends to go off with her somewhere. But, when he goes back to his office to get it, his old friend is there waiting for him, strangling him with a rope and making it look as if he committed suicide by hanging his body in the elevator shaft.

Cathy Gray (Carolyn Jones), Burke's intended conquest, proves to be a rather ditzy gold-digger of a woman, as she seems genuinely sad for Burke's "loss" but immediately brings up the subject of the insurance money, being rather giddy when she hears how much it came out to. Moreover, after Burke is found dead and is believed to have hanged himself, Cathy, as she's talking to Sue, laughs it off in her distinct high-pitched, chortling giggle and says, "Oh, Matty was such a card." She's too busy getting ready to go off and see a new sugar daddy that she's found, having Sue tie her corset much tighter than it should be and ignoring the fact that she's having a bit of a hard time breathing as a result, going by the philosophy, "If a girl don't watch her figure, the men won't." As for what she thinks of this man she's going to see, she says, "A little bit older than I like them, but awfully distinguished looking... I'm moving up, honey. No girl ever hits the jackpot till after she passes 14th street." In spite of her shallow and selfish nature, Cathy isn't all bad, as she's given Sue a place to live as her roommate at her boardinghouse and offers to giver her some money when she goes out for a job interview. But, as it turns out, Cathy picked the wrong man to try to sponge off, as it was Jarrod, who murders her and later steals her body from the city morgue to make into a new Joan of Arc figure. Her murder and Sue's being chased by the killer haunts her for the rest of the film and spurs her on when she becomes convinced that the Joan of Arc really is Cathy's body.

While the man who initially became interested in Ivan Igor's work in Mystery of the Wax Museum appeared only in the opening scene, his counterpart here, Sidney Wallace (Paul Cavanagh), has a more expanded role. As in the original film, he's absolutely amazed by the quality of Prof. Jarrod's work and believes that the museum would do much better than it is if it were promoted better. He becomes interested in buying Matthew Burke and investing in the museum himself but, because of an impending excavation in Egypt that he must supervise, it would have to wait for another three months. By the time he returns to the United States, the museum has burned down and Jarrod is presumed dead, but when Wallace follows the directions of a letter he receives, he's shocked to find Jarrod alive and ready to open a new museum. Once again, he asks Wallace to be a potential backer and he accepts, although he's clearly disappointed when Jarrod tells him that he's going to cater to those who want shock and horror. Significantly, Wallace is friends with Scott Andrews and introduces him to Jarrod on the House of Wax's opening night, recommending him as a sculptor. His last scene is when he's interviewed by the police regarding Jarrod and vouches for him being a man of character, if a little bit odd.

Some other noteworthy characters include Mrs. Andrews (Angela Clarke), Scott's very compassionate mother who allows Sue to stay with her and her son after the traumatic experience she goes through and is often comforting her when she's upset, including when she wakes up screaming after having a nightmare about Cathy and sees the same disfigured man in her room, only to think it was a hallucination after he quickly leaves; Mrs. Flannigan (Riza Royce), the less than compassionate landlord of the boardinghouse who threatens to throw Sue out on the street unless she pays her rent, leading to her going up to the bedroom and finding Cathy's body, as well as her killer; a barker (Reggie Rymal) for the House of Wax who works the crowd by showing off his impressive paddle ball skills by playing two at once and hitting them extremely close to the spectators without actually touching them (he also plays up the 3-D gimmick by breaking the fourth wall); and, last but not least, Jarrod's two cronies. When I watched the segment of 100 Scariest Movie Moments on this film, I learned that one of them, the deaf-mute Igor, is played by a young Charles Bronson (billed here by his birth-name, Charles Buchinsky) and, while he doesn't look like the now iconic image of Bronson, as he's clean-shaven and was only in his early 30's at the time, you can tell it's him when you get a good look at his face. When the time comes, Igor serves as the muscleman of Jarrod's cronies, fighting with Scott, almost managing to kill him with the guillotine in one of the exhibits, as well as locking Sue in the museum and blocking her exit when she's cornered by Jarrod (Phyllis Kirk apparently didn't enjoy working with Bronson). Jarrod's other henchman, Leon Averill (Nedrick Young, who's uncredited because he got blacklisted as a result of the Red Scare after filming), serves the same role as Professor Darcy in the 30's film. He's an artistically-gifted ex-con with a bad drinking problem who handled the actual sculpting of Jarrod's victims but who made the mistake of keeping an item from missing deputy city attorney Wilbur Patterson, leading to the police grilling him about it when they bring him in. They use his alcoholism to get him to talk, torturing him by slowly pouring whiskey into a shot-glass until he finally breaks and tells them the gruesome details, including a warning that Sue will end up as one of the museum's macabre figures if they don't stop Jarrod. As soon as they head off to the museum, Averill immediately placates his need for a drink.

In addition to its classic status in the genre, House of Wax is an important movie in film history in general because, while it wasn't the first 3-D movie, nor was it even the first color 3-D one, it was the first to be put out by a major studio, as the film that had kicked the craze off, 1952's Bwana Devil, was an independent movie. It was so popular amongst its peers that used this gimmick that it was released twice, in 1971 and, not surprisingly, during the revival of 3-D in the early 80's. That said, though, there aren't many blatant 3-D effects in the movie. Granted, I myself have never actually seen it in 3-D but still, the ones that I could recognize include foreground flames during the opening fire sequence, the dancing can-can girls in one scene, and especially the part where the barker is playing with his paddle-balls games. As I mentioned up above, while he's meant to be playing to the crowd who've gathered at the House of Wax, he breaks the fourth wall when he starts hitting the ball towards the screen and plays to the audience in the theater, making comments like, "Careful, sir. Keep your head down, or I'll tap you on the chin! Look out! Duck!", and, "Ah, there's someone with a bag of popcorn. Close your mouth; it's the bag I'm aiming at, not your tonsils. Here she comes. Well, look at that. It's in the bag." These moments only last for a minute or two and are not what the movie is wholly built upon; the focus is on the story and the mood, while the 3-D is just kind of there, which is good, because it keeps the movie from becoming obsolete for those who are unable to experience the gimmick (I don't have a 3-D television, so that Blu-Ray release of the film that does have the 3-D version wouldn't do me any good even if I did buy it). In fact, a lot of the movies that were originally released in 3-D, like Creature from the Black Lagoon, Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder, and even the two Three Stooges shorts that were filmed in it, are well-made and enjoyable enough that I can enjoy them without it.

Putting the 3-D aside, the movie simply looks really good. The color, while not the most vibrant-looking example of the time, is still pretty rich and the cinematography is very well done, making the streets of New York look very pleasant and inviting in the bright, warm sunlight during the day but then becoming foreboding at night, especially in the sequence where Sue is chased through the empty, foggy streets by the disfigured Jarrod (those scenes would make you think you were watching a Jack the Ripper with how they look). The cinematography is also exceptionally atmospheric during the scenes in the darkened House of Wax when Sue wanders around the creepy-looking place by herself, unknowingly being stalked by Igor and uncovering the horrific truth about the place. Normally, if you're going to shoot a lot of darkness and shadows, I would prefer black-and-white, as I think that works better (as I'll get into when we talk about a couple of Val Lewton movies this month), but this movie does that really well in color. Finally, while the filmmaking in the movie isn't particularly showy, there are a couple of nice examples, like how Sue literally becomes Marie Antoinette for a few seconds when Jarrod first brings up how much she looks like her and how, when she's wandering around the museum, she walks by a display with some wax heads, only for the camera to zoom in after she passes to reveal that one of the heads is actually Igor, who's crouching behind the display and being completely still (I don't know how Sue didn't seem him back there when she walked by the side of the display before but whatever).

I don't know why but I've always preferred this film's setting the story in the early years of the 20th century (specifically, the year 1902, as one of the displays in the House of Wax is of the first man to die in the electric chair and Jarrod mentions that as having twelve years before) to Mystery of the Wax Museum being set during the time it was released in the 30's. I'm sure that was Andre DeToth's doing, given all the westerns he made that were set around this general period, and it feels like it gives the movie more of a touch of class when you see men wearing those same, old-style suits and ties and the women wearing the types of dresses and hats from the period (in fact, this movie kind of feels like a horror film combined with that western aesthetic you saw in those John Wayne movies made during the 50's). I also prefer the look of turn-of-the-century New York City to 1930's Depression New York in the original film, as I like seeing the old-style architecture, especially when it comes to the public entertainment venues like the House of Wax itself and the music hall where Scott and Sue watch the can-can dancers (I like seeing that type of old-style entertainment in and of itself, too), the quaint, still intimate feeling of the city before it became a huge, smothering metropolis, and the sense of how it's the final days of the "horse-drawn" era, as the invention of the automobile is only a few years away. I would say that another reason why I like it is because of the juxtaposition of the simplicity of the period and the ghastly acts that are being committed behind closed doors but I don't think that's really it. I just like seeing a horror movie that was made in this type of western-like style, during the very period when that style was at its peak of popularity in the movie world. There aren't too many other examples that I can think of.

The art direction by Stanley Fleischer is nothing too flashy or extravagant but it gets the job done and provides the story with some nice-looking sets to play out on, the most significant of which are Prof. Jarrod's little museum in the opening and the House of Wax itself. The former is a quaint little building that doubles as both an art studio and a showcase for Jarrod's impressive work, with an area upstairs that serves as the accounting office, and it makes for a very memorable setpiece when it's burning all-around him. The House of Wax is basically a larger, fancier version of the first museum, only this time with plenty of exhibits that cater to the macabre, and there's a small studio in the back where the sculpting is done. As I said earlier, the place is made to look rather spooky at night when it's shrouded in darkness and Sue wanders around the exhibits depicting historical scenes of murder and torture, as well as finds herself in the small studio in the back, which has objects like a fake skeleton, miscellaneous wax figures and heads, a wooden Indian, and the like back there. And then, down in the basement is the workshop, where Jarrod makes wax figures out of the bodies of his victims by placing them in a box beneath an apparatus that showers them with hot wax from a vat up above. It looks very similar to the room in Mystery of the Wax Museum (although, I think the boiling wax looks much better, as it has a thickness to it) and, like I said in my review of that film, I'm sure that it particularly had a major influence on Tim Burton when he did the Axis Chemicals scenes in Batman. Speaking of the wax figures, they do look really good, especially those that are meant to be the bodies of murder victims coated in wax, and are nice pieces of sculpture on the part of the film's crew. Besides those major sets, the art department managed to give the whole movie a believable feeling of being set around the turn of the century, making especially good use of the stages on the Warner Bros. lot for the exterior scenes in the streets of New York.

In the introduction, I mentioned how Mystery of the Wax Museum was able to be rather daring in its content because it was made in the Pre-Code days, whereas House of Wax is more restricted in the type of adult content it depicts due to its being made in the more conservative 50's. As a result, Leon Averill, this film's equivalent of the drug-addicted Prof. Darcy from the original film, is made a simple alcoholic and you're not going to hear anyone ask the question, "How's your sex life?" here, as it's a much less seedy film. That said, though, there are some more subtle hints at a rather dirty underbelly of the world presented, like the obvious flirtations between Matthew Burke and Cathy Gray when you first see them together, their talking about going away somewhere together, and the fact that you actually see Cathy getting her corset tied tight so she'll have a thin waistline that the men will pay attention to. That's to say nothing of the can-can girls that Sue and Scott watch at the music hall, with the latter remarking, "You never saw a show like this in Provincetown!", Sue mentioning how it feels indecent for the girls to be showing their "talents," and the way that scene ends not only with the dancers giving you a really nice view of their legs but also their rear ends when they turn around, bend over, and flip their skirts. Plus, at the House of Wax, there's that artificial belly-dancer that has both the men and women turning heads, and while you only see her from the shoulders up, along with close-ups of her shackled hands and feet, it's very clear during the climax that Sue has been totally stripped of her clothes by Jarrod in-between scenes. It may have nothing on what films of the early 30's could get away with but there's no denying that House of Wax knows its story is set in an adult world, no matter the period.

When he featured it on an episode of CineMassacre's Monster Madness, James Rolfe mentioned how he feels that the big setpiece at the beginning of the movie, with the burning museum, is such a spectacle that it slightly hurts the film and it's never able to top it. There is some truth in that, I feel; while the movie is certainly good as a whole and has a fair number of other memorable sequences, the actual climax isn't quite as amazing as this first one. It happens a little over ten minutes in, when Matthew Burke comes up with the idea to burn the wax museum down and collect the insurance. Prof. Jarrod says he won't allow such a thing, threatening to kill him if he dares try, but Burke ignores him and strikes a match and sets the hem of the Marie Antoinette figure's dress on fire. Horrified, Jarrod to put the fire out, when Burke sets fire to another figure across from it. He shoves him away from it and tries to stomp out that fire, only to see Burke attempting to strike another match. He punches him for that, only to get punched himself and fall backwards into a figure, with Burke then throwing a chair at him. The two of them exchange more punches when Jarrod tries to stop him from setting fire to the display featuring John Wilkes Booth, resulting in Jarrod getting knocked unconscious at the foot of another display. Burke goes into the storeroom in the back and douses all the sculptures covered in sheets back there with a flammable chemical, turning the gas on as he comes back out. He splashes the liquid on sections of the museum itself, including at the foot of the display that Jarrod is lying on unconscious on (which he also lights himself), and heads upstairs to the accounting office. The fire begins to spread throughout the building and engulf and melt the wax figures, with Burke, having finished setting fire to the upstairs, coming back down and going into the storeroom again.

Jarrod then awakens and, seeing how bad the fire has gotten, walks into the storeroom, the back of which is now on fire, and brings out a dishpan of water, only to get grabbed from behind by Burke and punched in the face. Burke is then shoved backwards into a stand with a clay figure on it and Jarrod rushes at him, as gas continues to fill the building. The two of them keep fighting in the storeroom, as the fire is now firmly out of control and burning away all of Jarrod's work, and then, Jarrod comes out of the room with a bucket of water, followed by Burke, avoiding burning pieces of the ceiling that fall down. Jarrod futilely splashes his Marie Antoinette with the water, when he sees Burke rush past him to the front door and chases after him. He grabs Burke and punches him again, only to get punched twice and fall at the foot of the burning railing. He dodges a bottle that Burke flings at him, only to get punched several more times until the railing collapses under him and he falls onto the main floor of the museum. With that, Burke unlocks the door and runs outside, head down the street as the fire threatens the last wax figure that remains untouched. Jarrod comes to crawls along the floor, watching as everything burns around him. He momentarily collapses, as it's shown that one of his favorite figures, the Joan of Arc, is almost completely destroyed, and he gets back up as the figures' heads begin to collapse and the eyes fall out. When he runs and sees his Marie Antoinette almost completely melted, he tries to go into the storeroom but that's completely engulfed in flames too, and he then futilely looks around at the inferno surrounding him, knowing that there's nothing he can do to save his beloved sculptures, as they completely completely. He ducks into a room beneath the staircase right before the arch above it collapses and the gas that's been filling the museum finally combusts with an explosion that blows the windows out. The scene ends with the horse-drawn fire engine arriving, followed by the police patrol wagon.

When Burke goes to his office to get insurance money from the fire so he can use it to take a trip with Cathy Gray, little does he know that the disfigured Jarrod is waiting for him there, rising up from behind a couch in the corner as he takes the money out of his safe and sits at his desk, preparing to put it in a cash-box. Jarrod creeps over to the light (without Burke seeing him, which is a sign to me that he has no peripheral vision) and turns it out, jumping Burke when he least expects it and strangles him with a piece of rope. Looking out the office door once he's done the deed, Jarrod ducks back in to avoid being spotted by a cleaning lady as she walks down the stairs, and then walks over to the elevator. He opens the door, ties a long rope to one of the bars, goes back into the office and carries Burke's body out, puts him over the elevator, ties a noose around his neck, and drops the body down the shaft. Hearing the sound of the body tumbling from where she's scrubbing the stairs down below, the cleaning lady walks up to see what's going on and runs off screaming when she sees Burke's hanging body.

When Sue Allen comes back from a failed job interview, she's cornered by Mrs. Flannigan, the boardinghouse's stern landlady, who demands that she goes upstairs and get the rent money from Cathy Gray, or else she'll be sleeping on the street. Going upstairs to their room, she knocks on Cathy's bedroom door and calls to her, but gets no reply. She goes in and, seeing her lying in bed, calls to Cathy again, trying to wake her up. She takes her hand and shakes it, only to still get no response, prompting her to light the lantern by the bed. That's when Sue realizes that someone else is in the room and she turns around to see Jarrod, the sight of his horribly burned face causing her to scream. Downstairs, Mrs. Flannigan and a couple of the other borders hear the scream, while Sue escapes out of the window and runs across the adjoining roof. The others head upstairs to look into what's going on, as Sue drops down to the street below and make it through the locked gate, with Jarrod in hot pursuit. He chases her through the foggy city streets, while back the boardinghouse, Mrs. Flannigan and the others have discovered Cathy's body, with one of the borders whistling for the police. There's then a moment when Sue runs down a street, only to be confronted by Jarrod, who chases her down another street off to the left. Reaching another intersection, Sue sees a carriage pulling away at the other end of the street and runs for it, calling. But, the driver doesn't hear her and drives off, forcing her to run off down another street, with Jarrod not too far behind. She rounds a corner, runs through an alleyway, and makes it across the street, hiding behind another corner, as Jarrod, following the same path she took, stops, having apparently lost her. Knowing he's nearby, Sue quietly removes her shoes and listens as Jarrod walks out of the alleyway and into the street, wandering very close to the corner where Sue is hiding (with his costume and the way he's lit, he looks a lot like Lon Chaney as the Phantom of the Opera). Following a tense moment where she stands still, as he tries to figure out where she went, Jarrod heads off down the street in the opposite direction. Seeing her chance, Sue runs the other way and makes it through the gate of Scott Allen's house. She bangs on the door and yells for help, attracting Jarrod's attention and allowing him to pinpoint her location. However, Mrs. Andrews comes downstairs and lets Sue in, after which she tells her and Scott what happened.

Later that night, at the city morgue, there's a moment similar to the one in the 30's film where two morticians wheel Cathy's body into a large room where the bodies are kept, when another one of the bodies suddenly rises up due to the embalming fluid. Once they've left the room, Jarrod, acting like one of the corpses, sits up on his slab and gets off of it, searching the room for Cathy's body. When he finds her, he takes out a rope and begins tying the body up, while outside, two shadowy men with a carriage are waiting below the window. Once he's tied the body up, Jarrod opens both of the nearby windows and signals for the two men to come over, before slipping the body out the window and lowering it down the wall of the building. The two men take the body and carry it over to the carriage, as Jarrod uses the rope to climb down out of the morgue himself.

There's a brief scene the following day where Sidney Wallace, following an address on a letter he's received, shows up at a building in town and is greeted at the door by Igor, who takes him in and leads him to the small studio in the back, where's he shocked to see the wheelchair-bound Jarrod. After giving him an explanation of how he survived the fire, he tells him that he's building another wax museum with the help of his underlings, one that will cater to the crowd who craves sensationalism. He has Igor take him down into the basement, while he goes down his own way, and once there, he demonstrates how he creates the wax figures by placing a body made of plaster of Paris beneath the apparatus attached to the vat of boiling wax. The wax is shown heating up rapidly and then siphoned down through tubes that lead to above the sculpture, raining down on it in a shower. As they watch the process, Jarrod tells Wallace that he had him come over to invest some more money into the wax museum, which Wallace says he'll think over. The scene ends with Jarrod showing off the figure of Matthew Burke in a coffin-like box, with the body falling to the floor, and the movie goes to intermission (so they can change film reels, which took longer than usual because they were projecting from two at once for the 3-D).

On the House of Wax's opening night, as the barker works the crowd outside, Jarrod gives some customers a tour of the museum. First, he shows them a figure of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, just as she's about to have her head cleaved off, with Jarrod adding, "He was a thoughtful husband, Henry; it was he who invented the shortcut to divorce." The second display shows Charlotte Corday about to stab Jean-Paul Marat as he sits in the bathtub, and when one woman comments, "What a shocking thing to do," Jarrod comments, "Yes, wasn't it? The poor man was dreadfully embarrassed." He leads the crowd into another room, stating that the displays they're seeing will be added to now and again to keep up with recent crimes that are committed. One of the displays shows a caveman dragging a woman by the hair and he says that it's how their ancestors carried their brides across the threshold. He then leads them over to a display representing the guillotine and, after giving a brief version of its history, the device is demonstrated by slicing off the head of a figure in the box below it. One woman in a group of three mentions how she doesn't think her nerves can take much more, as Jarrod leads them to over a figure of William Kemmler, the first man to die in the electric chair, and he then leads them to a display of the rack and a figure of a woman suspected of treason on it. This further horrifies the women from before and then, when he leads them over to a figure of Bluebeard and mentions that he killed eight wives, the one woman faints, with Jarrod giving her friends smelling salts for them to use. After that, he shows them the hanging figure of Burke in a display meant to represent an elevator shaft, asking, "Was it murder, or suicide? Only time will tell."

At that moment, Scott and Sue show up at the museum and meet with Sidney Wallace, who begins showing them around. There's a moment where Sue is separated from them and sees the Joan of Arc figure. Shocked at how much the face looks like Cathy, she climbs up onto the display to get a better look, as Jarrod watches from nearby, and she's so shaken by it, she has to turn the drapes behind it, as she begins to cry. When Scott and Wallace find her, she tells them what's gotten her so upset, and Jarrod, overhearing her, introduces himself and tells her that the figure's face looks like Cathy because he based it on a photo of her in the newspaper. After agreeing to take Scott on as one of his apprentices, Jarrod and Wallace both remark on how much Sue looks like Jarrod's long-lost Marie Antoinette and asks her to help him bring her back to life. He then leaves, as Sue tries to come to terms with the figure being simple wax molded to look like Cathy, while outside, the barker continues working the crowd. He hits three paddle-balls into the air one after another and catches them all in his mouth, a sight that causes the same woman from before to faint again.

That night, Jarrod, his burned face uncovered, appears on a balcony across Sue's bedroom window at the Allen home, watching as she opens it up and turns out the light before getting into bed. When she's gotten into bed, he throws a rope over to the roof of the house and, when it's secured, uses it to swing over, through the window. He approaches her as she lies restlessly in the bed, when she suddenly bolts up awake and screams upon seeing him. He climbs out of the window and swings away, as Mrs. Andrews comes in and asks Sue what happened. She tells her that she dreamed about Cathy and that she saw the face of her killer, thinking it was part of the dream too, as Mrs. Andrews tries to comfort her.

Following her meeting with Lt. Brennan and telling him of her suspicion, Sue goes back to the House of Wax and happens to be there while Brennan and Sgt. Shane are looking at the Joan of Arc, convinced that it is nothing more than wax. When they've walked away, Sue walks up to the figure and climbs up onto the display again, rubbing off some wax on another figure nearby while doing the same to Joan of Arc's face. Jarrod comes in and catches her. He promptly forgives her for touching the figure and introduces her to Leon Averill and Igor, the former of whom he says sculpted the Joan of Arc's face. After they talk about how he got so much detail from a photograph, Jarrod has him open up a wooden box he's carrying, revealing a wax replica of Sue's head, a cast taken from one Scott had sculpted of her. Sue is quite shocked at this startling sight but says that it is a good likeness; Jarrod disagrees, feeling it doesn't look enough like her and that, for his Marie Antoinette, he needs the "real her." He asks her to come to see him again some time and the three of them leave, with Sue standing there, still unsure what to make of the figure with Cathy's face. Meanwhile, Brennan and Shane are flabbergasted at how Jarrod was able to replicate a figure of Burke so well, especially since the body is missing. As they continue walking through the exhibits, Brennan notices the figure of John Wilkes Booth and notes how it looks an awful lot like Wilbur Patterson, the deputy city attorney who's gone missing, especially when the moustache is covered; Shane just kind of shrugs it off as being coincidence. When Averill admonishes them for touching the figures, Shane clearly seems to recognize him from somewhere.

The climax begins when Jarrod sends Scott, whose sculpting a face in clay, on an errand to fetch some artificial flowers for a display, notably after he tells Jarrod that Sue is going to meet him outside the museum. As the police interrogate Leon Averill at the station after they've brought him in, Jarrod keeps an eye on Sue as she paces back and forth outside the museum. Sue eventually gets tired of waiting for Scott and goes through the front door, into the dark building. Unbeknownst to her, Igor locks the front door, and after she calls for Scott and glances at the Joan of Arc, she wanders further into the place, with Igor watching and stalking her at every turn. She becomes quite unnerved by the creepy wax figures that appear to be staring at her in the darkness (as in the 1933 film, there is a shot of an executioner figure's face but here, it is merely a figure rather than a henchman disguised as one) and there's a moment where Igor steps on a creaky board and has to duck behind a display when she turns around. Still finding no sign of Scott, she walks through the door that leads to the studio in the back, but finds nothing there but more creepy figures and objects, particularly a model skeleton, wax heads, half of a mask, and a cherub figure hanging from the ceiling and swaying back and forth. The sound of dripping water from the sink there also gets to her and she turns it all the way off, when the door slowly swings shut by itself. Gasping, Sue runs through the door and goes back out into the museum, heading back to the door, when she again finds herself drawn to the Joan of Arc figure. Deciding that this is her chance to learn the truth once and for all, climbs up onto the display and removes the black wig, revealing blonde hair underneath it. She then hears Jarrod tell her that she shouldn't have done that and she turns around to see him sitting near her. Knowing now that her grim suspicion was right, she runs for the door, only to find her way blocked by Igor, as Jarrod gets out of his wheelchair and walks towards her. When he reaches her, he makes clear his intention to recreate his Marie Antoinette through her, and grabs her. She smacks at his face, cracking the wax mask and revealing his true, burned face underneath it, the sight of which causes her to faint.

Once he has Sue down in the basement, Jarrod prepares his apparatus and places the box containing the nude and unconscious Sue underneath it. He tells her, "This is where I recreated my Joan of Arc. It's an interesting process. If you have patience with me, my dear, I'll show you how it's done," and lights the firebar beneath the vat of wax. Meanwhile, as Scott waits outside the museum for Sue, the police finally get Averill to talk and, knowing the grisly truth of the House of Wax, they get into their wagon and race for the museum. Back in the museum's basement, with the wax now boiling, Jarrod decides to do something about the horrified expression on Sue's face, as he doesn't want it to show through the wax. While he walks up to the vat to check it, Scott has come back inside the museum, searching for Sue, and sees that the Joan of Arc's wig has been removed. Walking into the back, he finds the door to the studio locked. Thinking Sue may be in there, he tries to take a mace from a nearby suit of armor, only for Igor to show up and block the door with his body. Knowing now that something's up, he tries to make Igor tell him where Sue is, only to get thrown aside and crash into another suit of armor as he hears her scream down in the basement. He grabs its mace and throws it at Igor, only for him to duck. He tries to punch Igor when he comes at him but he dodges it and easily overpowers Scott, putting him a submission hold, taking some punches with complete ease, and tossing him over his shoulder. Down in the basement, Jarrod prepares a sedative for the hysterical Sue, as Scott and Igor continue their fight, trading punches and throwing things at each other before struggling up against the rack and ending up on the floor, with Igor trying to choke Scott. With the police still on their way, Igor plans to finish the unconscious Scott off using the guillotine display, removing the execution figure and hoisting the deadly blade up.

As the wax continues boiling, Jarrod walks back over to Sue with the sedative, telling her, "The end will come quickly, my love. There is a pain beyond pain, an agony so intense it shocks the mind into instant bliss. We'll find immortality together, for they'll remember me through you." Sue continues to struggle helplessly in her shackles, scratching at the sides of the box's interior with her fingers and lets out more screams as Jarrod prepares to inject her. The police arrive at the House of Wax, as inside, Igor carries Scott over to the guillotine and slips his head in under the blade. The officers walk in and rush at Igor just as he's about to drop the blade, restraining him and pulling him away from the device. He struggles, managing to punch one of the officers in the face, but he's ultimately restrained, as Lt. Brennan tries to make him tell them where Jarrod is. Obviously forgetting that he's deaf-mute, Brennan slaps Igor to get him to respond but then gives up, as he and Shane remove Scott from the guillotine, right before the blade comes crashing down. Scott comes to and tells Brennan that Jarrod is down in the basement and that he has Sue down there as well. He and Shane have some of the officers take care of Scott, while they and the others use the weaponry from the suits of armor to break through the door leading into the studio. Jarrod hears them break through it and when they begin working on doing the same to the door that leads to the basement, he runs to the panel on the wall to try to coat Sue in wax as quickly as he can. Some of the officers find the other entrance that he uses but he easily knocks out one of them and, running up the stairs, fights with and throws another that catches up with him over the railing. After kicking a third officer back down the stairs, he tries to escape through either of the doors up top but finds himself surrounded when they're both broken through. He gets into a struggle with Brennan, picking him up and shoving him aside, before getting punched by Shane and returning the hit. He shoves Brennan aside again after taking a punch and fights off an officer with a nightstick, as the lieutenant runs down the stairs to save Sue. He sees Jarrod get punched back and smash through the railing, falling to his death in the vat of boiling wax, and quickly pulls the box containing Sue away from the apparatus, as its tubes and beakers overflow with wax until they burst. Brennan covers Sue with his coat as the officers rush down to join him, while the wax continues to overflow. After that, the movie ends on Scott and Sue thanking the officers and Brennan's comment when he holds up a fake head of Igor that they came across.

The film's score was composed by David Buttolph, a veteran composer who worked on over 300 hundred pieces of music for movies during his lifetime (the same year as House of Wax, he did the score for The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and, five years earlier, he did what little music you hear in Alfred Hitchcock's Rope) and also worked extensively in television, most notably creating the theme for Maverick. There's not much I can really go into about the music other than to say that it suits the movie well. It's not something that's 100% memorable or that you'll find yourself humming after seeing the movie but it fits the images well, especially the distinctively eerie, sort of whistling main theme, which you often hear whenever you see the disfigured Jarrod, and this big horn piece with a very memorable melody to it. You also have this upbeat, old-timey fanfare for the opening of the House of Wax when the barker's working the crowd, a similar-sounding bit of music for the show with the can-can girls, and other music that fits all the other scenes well, whether they big and exciting, like the opening fire and the climax, comedic, like the last gag with the wax head of Igor, or quiet and creepy, like when Sue is wandering around the dark museum.

There are no two ways about it: House of Wax is a well-made and entertaining classic horror flick, definitely among the best true ones in a decade where the genre was dominated mostly by giant monsters and alien invasions. Everything about it just works: it has a fine cast of actors who give good performances all around, especially Vincent Price, solid direction by Andre DeToth that doesn't allow the 3-D gimmick to overwhelm the story, good use of the time period of the early 1900's, great production design that's added to by the well-done wax figures, well-done cinematography and use of color film, a number of memorable setpieces and scenes, particularly in the opening and at the end, a memorable makeup design for Prof. Jarrod's burned face, and a music score that may not be among the most memorable ever but fits the movie it accompanies perfectly. Most significantly, though, the film is an improvement over Mystery of the Wax Museum in how it adds more life and charm to the story and vastly simplifies things in terms of the plot-points and the characters. While I would recommend checking out both movies, if you can only see one, I'd most definitely say that this is the one to go for.