HOUSE OF WAX
US, 1953, 80 minutes, Colour.
Vincent Price, Frank Lovejoy, Phyllis Kirk, Carolyn Jones, Paul Picerni, Charles Bronson.
Directed by Andre de Toth.
House of Wax was Warner Bros’ first three-dimension film and was a great financial success. Vincent Price had begun to suggest his eerie presence for horror films by this stage and this was confirmed with House of Wax and The Mad Magician which he also made, in 3D, at this time. By 1960 he was ready to star in the series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations by Roger Corman.
Here he is a mad professor, having his exhibits in his House of Wax as real-life people covered in wax. (This was a theme also of Roger Corman’s 1959 A Bucket of Blood.) When he decides to pursue Phyllis Kirk to be his Marie Antoinette, the police intervene and a number of dramatic highlights occur (especially for the 3D lenses). There is an epic climax with the burning of the House of Wax and its figures.
The film was remade in 2005 – on location in Australia standing in for the United States. It is more of the travelling teenagers, sex-preoccupied and subject to violence, a genre very popular at the time. This film also has a spectacular fire at the end – and one of the victims, fortunately, is the headline-grabber, Paris Hilton.
This film was directed by Andre de Toth, a prolific director, especially of westerns and action films during the 1950s and into the 1960s. (It was always commented on, ironically, that he had only one eye and was chosen to make a 3D film.)
1. Was this a successful horror film? The conventions of the genre and their use? American horror? Vincent Price?
2. Audience expectations of horror films and their success? The emphasis on wax,disfigurement, murder, ultimate cauldron?
3. The quality of the colour, wax figures, sets, museum, New York 1900, the attention to detail? For the atmosphere of the film?
4. The film was made in 3D. Is this evident or not? Do tricks for the audience obtrude or are they integrated?
5. The central character of Jarred: Vincent Price and his style, the professor's interest in beauty, his mad obsession with beauty, his suffering in the fire, his bitterness and revenge, his ugliness, the ugliness of the murders? The complexity of his character? A conventional horror figure or a real character?
5. Jarred as monster: ugly, fear, the inevitability of his death? The overtones of science fiction, laboratories, monsters? Did this add to the atmosphere of the film?
7. Sue as heroine? A character, conventional, for fear and screaming and beauty? The contrast with Cathy and overtones of satire in her characterisation? The pathos of her being Joan of Arc?
8. The clash with Bourke at the start? The clash of values? Bourke's fire, his death and its impact?
9. Scott, the police, Wallis? Conventional characters or explored?
10. Igor and Leon as monstrous and menacing figures? how successful?
11. What were the high points of this horror film? The emphasis on the chamber of horrors and Jarred's detailed tour? The dramatic murders? a successful horror film?
