THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM
US, 1933, 77 minutes, Black and white.
Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell, Frank Mc Hugh.
Directed by Michael Curtiz.
The Mystery of the Wax Museum was an early American film from prolific director Michael Curtiz. He had begun directing in Germany in 1912, left in 1926 and began a Hollywood career which ended in the early 1960s. He won an Oscar for Casablanca. However, his output ranged over westerns, gangster dramas, musicals and comedies.
Fay Wray had appeared in King Kong the year before this. Glenda Farrell was a popular actress at Warner Bros. Lionel Atwill was a character actor at the time. In this film he portrays a sculptor whose partner burns down the wax museum to get the insurance. Later, with his injured hand, the sculptor appears in New York and opens a museum. At the same time bodies start disappearing. People get suspicious about the sculptures. This was the basis for the 1953 3-D film House of Wax with Vincent Price (which was remade at the beginning of the 21st century) and for many other films including Buckets of Blood.
Curtiz uses a number of the horror techniques of black and white photography, angles, light and shadows which had become popular with such films as Dracula and Frankenstein. These techniques were to pervade classic horror films of the 1930s – of which this is a significant example.
1. The quality of this horror film? Its status from the thirties? The basis of a re-make for the fifties?
2. A film of the thirties, film-making in 1933, studio sets, black and white and colour, the various techniques for creating an atmosphere of horror? Eliciting audience response of horror?
3. The importance of the initial setting of the museum, the details of the characters and their lifelikeness, audience interest in the museum? Audience curiosity about it?
4. The personality of the professor, his identification with his collection? His financial difficulties? The burning, the destruction of the statues and the way this was visualized, the effect on the professor? His hatred for the man who pressurized him into this?
5. The dramatic impact of the transition from England to America, from 1921 to 33? The fact that this was contemporary for the film itself? A point of credibility for the film? The New York of 1933 with its newspapers, society people, fashions?
6. The importance of the museum in New York, the build-up to its opening, the presentation of the statues and their lifelikeness? Audience puzzle about the professor?
7. The build-up of the heroine as an ordinary American girl, her relationship with her fiance, her relationship with her newspaper friend? The importance of Fay Wray in this role? Audience expectations for her to be in the predicament at the end? The build-up to the danger, the sense of menace with the professor, her being tied up, the impending fall of the wax, the last minute rescue? Audience response to these thrills and dangers?
8. The character of the fiance hero, his role with the Professor, helping in the museum, his friendship with the newspaper girl, with his fiance? The importance of his rescuing her at the last moment?
9. The importance of the girl reporter and her style, the brassiness of the character, her clashes with her boss, her curiosity, scoops, interviewing murderers, seeking out corpses at the morgue, following clues? The humour of the character? The irony of her relationship with the boss at the end?
10. The sense of menace as regards the missing corpses, the mysterious assistant getting the corpses? The sub-plot of the society murder?
11. The build-up to the character of the Professor, his vengeance and his madness, the stealing of the corpses and framing the statues, his vengeance on his original partner, the heroine taking away his mask and the visual impression of horror? His motives for turning the wax on the heroine?
12. The appropriate build-up for a climax to this kind of film? Last minute dangers and hair's breadth rescues? How would this kind of film be made now?
