Film

House of Wax (1953)

Director: André De Toth

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

One of the better 3-D epics (Warners' first, pioneering effort). Handsomely mounted and directed with great care, it nevertheless remains oddly lacklustre by comparison with the 1933 Mystery of the Wax Museum, despite being an often word-for-word remake. One reason is that where the original acquired an additional charge of bizarrerie by locating its Grand Guignol monster within a private enclave of bustling, contemporary New York, this remake is much more conventionally set in the fantasy world of gaslight, ground fogs and opera cloaks. Still, Price is fun (this was the film that typed him as a horror star), the fire in the waxworks is good for a gruesome thrill, and De Toth brings off one classic sequence with Kirk fleeing through the gaslit streets pursued by a shadowy figure in a billowing cloak.

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