House of Wax (1953)

DVD review from The Movie Snob

House of Wax (C). No, this isn't the remake starring Paris Hilton; this is the 1953 original starring Vincent Price (Edward Scissorhands) and featuring a young Charles Bronson (Crime Wave) as Igor. Price plays Henry Jarrod, a fey and eccentric master sculptor of wax figures who refuses to sensationalize his work so as to pander to the crowds. His business partner wants out, and when Jarrod refuses to let him torch Jarrod's display room so as to collect the insurance money, his partner beats Jarrod senseless and leaves him in the burning building. Soon thereafter, a mysterious and disfigured villain starts stealing bodies from the morgue and terrorizing a young woman who's a dead ringer for Marie Antoinette. Jarrod himself reappears, wheelchair-bound and crippled, to open a new wax museum devoted to shocking and appalling its patrons. But how does he make his new creations so lifelike? It's not scary at all by today's standards, but it held my interest reasonably well.