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Review by Sam ★★★½

The problem with all these films where Vincent Price plays a villainous character is that he's always so much more charismatic than the protagonists that you can't help but want him to come out on top.

Is that really a problem, actually?

4

This film is less than 90 minutes long, and still has a 10 minute intermission. I was truly born in the wrong time.

Review by Ian West ★★★½ Liked

Enjoyable career revitalizer for Price but not one of my go to watches when it comes to his huge catalogue of macabre, still though, House of Wax has a lot going for it—nice camera work, an amazing setting, shadowy street chases, long takes, and the great ending reveal that we all know is coming. Plus the cultural significance of 3D and what this meant for career of Vincent Price. 

Speaking of the third dimension, the fact that this was filmed in 3D by a man who was blind in one eye fascinates me, as does young Charles Bronson’s muscles and the future Morticia Addams.

1

A remake of the classic Mystery of the Wax Museum; this time in startling 3D and starring the always amazing Vincent Price in the role that would redefine his career from secondary character to horror maestro. The film follows broadly the same narrative thrust as the 1933 original, lifting whole scenes and lines of dialgoue in places, but drops the newspaper reporter angle in favour of a story that ramps up the more macabre elements. The film is apparently a mystery - though it won't take many viewers long to work out exactly what is going on. The appeal of this film is all about the spectacle really; its a veritable house of horrors. The wax figures in particular provide…

12

1st André de Toth

Still holds up on a second watch as one of the great horrors and a significant improvement on its predecessor. A deeper and more unsettling film not simply because of the brilliant central performance by Price (giving such a preposterous villain real depth and tragedy) but in the way it constantly plays with ideas of what is real and what is grotesque parody. Unlike the original, the figures here are very clearly wax replicas, but that only adds an extra level of discomfort, so close are the waxworks in skin tone to the live actors. That's the wonders of Three-Strip Technicolour; smooth flesh looks like wax, and when the statues are meant to be humans covered…

Review by Crowne ★★★★ Liked

Vincent Price is a legend

1

Watched this on my grandpas old dvd for the first time since he ed. I miss him

4

Creepy, stately, but remarkably spry for a mid-century horror film, Andre De Toth's "House of Wax" begins with bang before settling into drier yet engrossing horror beats. Starring Vincent Price as a sculptor of wax figures, the film is a capable thriller that may not have a lot of narrative depth but makes up for that with atmosphere, entertainment value, and a mostly committed tone.

Its plot revolving around revenge, sinister sculptors, and wax-dipped corpses, "House of Wax" takes its color-by-numbers story and elevates it with Price's robust magnetism and a spirited energy. The narrative does not offer much beyond man-is-wronged and man-seeks-vengeance plot points, but it serves as a sturdy foundation for wax museum mayhem.

Price is entertaining, but…

8

There's no such thing as a bad or even boring Vincent Price performance. No matter the production or the state of the script you can bet your entire savings that Price will give it his all. The sheer level of commitment to, at the time, a frowned upon genre is something that should be revered. "House of Wax" is probably one of his most famous films and for good reason. It's a delicious slice of macabre, gothic mischief.

Price stars as Henry Jarrod, a wax sculptor, in 1900's New York. His partner tries to convince him that he shouldn't bother with historical exhibits and instead cash in on the gruesome, sensationalised horror figures. Jarrod, sticking to his principals of having…

7

This was fun! But, really, any movie with Vincent Price is going to be pretty ok with me.

Here he plays a wax sculptor who is killed in a fire and mysteriously returns to reopen a new wax museum where the exhibits bear a striking resemblance to recently deceased locals! It’s really not hard to see where the plot is going from the beginning but it’s also not trying to hide anything...and does manage a good surprise or two in spite of that predictability...so I guess you probably won’t see everything coming. Even if you do, it’s still a lot of fun. I should add that I have seen the remake (with a certain Paris Hilton) a few times so…

Review by Graham ★★★½

An entertaining 50s classic Vincent Price film, with an unsettling premise leading to an ending that we all see coming but still gets a gasp when it finally arrives.

After a dispute with his wax museum business partner and subsequent fire, artiste Henry Jarrod recreates his lost figures, only this time they seem much more lifelike.

Full of beautiful cinematography and a cracking score from David Buttolph, House of Wax is a solid entry in Warner Bros. thriller collection and their first foray into the wonderful world of 3D.

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HorrorX52 2022 - 39. 1950s

Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★ Liked

Couldn't turn down turn down the opportunity to see this one for the first time in a theater and in 3D which is certainly deployed in all the gimmick-y ways you expect (look no further than the meta-winking paddleball guy) but arguably has one of the greatest textually baked in excuses for it I've ever seen. In that the goofy formal trickery is adopting the exact same kind of artificial showmanship that Vincent Price's wax figure sculptor deploys in his uncannily creepy tableaux art installations, even before he is violently disfigured by his moneyman-turned-arsonist and driven into deranged serial killing madness and gothic horror revenge.

The material itself is quite comically morbid and most of the cast hams it up…