The House of Wax
Wax. It's just not that interesting.

Maybe this is a good, scary movie when seen in its intended 3-D format, with the benefit of those kooky little red and green glasses you were given in the cinema of the fifties -- and got with your Happy Meal in the eighties.

On video, sans kooky red and green glasses, however, it's just kind of boring.

Okay, so horror movies and I, we're not on especially good terms. Discounting the Evil Dead flicks and the first Scream, I can't think of another horror movie I have really enjoyed at all. Well, maybe Arachnophobia, but that was only 'cause of John Goodman's performance. (Which was the same reason I loved King Ralph, and is thus a sign of instability that I probably should have kept to myself.) Nevertheless, no horror movie has bored me quite so much as The House of Wax, and I don't care how "classic" it's supposed to be.

Now, it is feasible that I should consider its age, its cult status, and the inherent creepiness that Vincent Price brings to the table, before pronouncing it unwatchable... but, no. I'm not gonna. I mean, I love old movies. I have every admiration for such great pieces of cinema as Inherit the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, and the collected works of Shirley Temple. I have sat through many an Andy Hardy extravaganza, an Ann Miller fandango, a Jimmy Stewart e-ex-experience with every evidence of delight and wonder. But this House of Wax nonsense is just dull, stilted, poorly acted and even poorer-ly produced. It's a mere gimmick film, a look-how-cool film, and not even a serious attempt at actual filmmaking. Like Episode 1. (Wow, imagine Episode 1 in 3-D?)

You don't wanna hear anything of the plot, do you? Oh, okay. Fine. Be it on your own head.

It all starts with this wax museum. One of the owners, whose name I neither know nor care to learn, decides to burn the silly thing to the ground for the insurance cash. The other -- who may as well be named Vincent Price, really -- isn't so hot on the idea, and the two are soon missing and presumed dead in the ensuing flame.

Price, however, is not really dead. No, he soon emerges from the ashes, soap opera-style, and reopens his ill-advised attraction for the fashionable elite. But he makes one fateful mistake. He hires an assistant. A nosy, smarmy, British assistant, who is all honor and duty and holier-than-thou-y, and strangely disapproves of the way our Vinnie is going about producing such realistic waxworks: ie. stealing dead bodies from the morgue and dipping them in a big cauldron of molten wax.

Take note of that cauldron. It comes up later.

Anyway, Assistant Guy has a girlfriend, and not only has one of her friends been turned into Marie Antoinette, but she also happens to be the good lunatic Price's ideal of a Joan of Arc (though she ain't no Milla Jovovich, that's for damn sure.) And here's where the trouble begins for our anti-hero. After all, it's one thing to put already dead people on display as other dead people; it's quite another to make them dead in order to do so. At least, Assistant Guy seems to think so, and I guess we've gotta go with him on that one.

So, he takes exception to the kill-his-girlfriend-for-decorative-purposes concept, and he foils that plan. The underground chamber of horrors that is Vince's workshop is discovered -- and is that Charles Bronson as evil henchman Igor? -- murder is attempted, a just revenge is exacted (remember the big cauldron of wax?) and that is pretty much that.

Do you see my point now?

Of course, there are those that will tell you that this was the great Vincent Price's break out role, that it is what put him on the heady path to Scooby Doo-appearing stardom, that it is a complex and thrilling horror film of unheard of depth and charm. I think those people are idiots. Or else they happened to see it in the 3-D version, which must be better than the 2-D, if only 'cause it almost has to be. Plus, 3-D stuff is cool.

Which this movie, without it, sure is not. So you Vincent Price aficionados can just keep your silly House of Wax. I don't want any part of it. Just promise me you won't let Jan de Bont or any other such director anywhere near it, okay? It's already a remake, and another one would just about kill me, I think.

Well, unless it starred John Goodman.

-- Rachel Hyland

The House of Wax is currently available on video. Like you care.

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