Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)

Memorable, crazy movie

Just perfect...

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Big bucket of hollywood stars in this one! Fay Wray, from King Kong! Glenda Farrell, Frank McHugh. Strange coloring in this one... the backgrounds are blue, due to the color process, but there are mostly pinks where the other colors ought to be. Shenanigans at the wax museum owned by Igor and Worth ( Atwill and Ed Maxwell). Worth wants to collect the insurance money by burning up the museum, but Atwill is much more attached to the shop, and doesn't like that idea. This was before Frank McHugh had really gone off on his own style of comedy... he's a little more serious here, as the big shot at the newspaper. Glenda Farrell comes on really strong here, always on the go, trying to get the big scoop. It's pretty good. they keep remaking this film, so the story must be pretty solid. Directed by Michael Curtiz... this was about halfway through his career. had started in the silents, and made many a talkie. Curtiz had won best director for Casablanca (and rightfully so !). Wax Museum shows on Turner Classic now and then.

MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM is one of those '30s grand guignol-style horror films that I so love, and as an added bonus it's filmed in Technicolor, which makes it pretty unique. Seeing actresses and actors such as Fay Wray and Lionel Atwill starring in full colour makes a refreshing change from their typical greyscale performances so the film wins points for novelty value alone. For those looking for originality, it would probably be best to try elsewhere, as MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM's plot has been re-used so frequently since its concept that it now seems familiar and a little stale. There was a decent '50s remake with Vincent Price called HOUSE OF WAX and a remake of that remake with the same name in the early 2000s. Add in all the countless B-movies and Z-flicks like NIGHTMARE IN WAX (even Mexican wrestler Santo visited a wax museum for one outing) and you have a movie that leaves you feeling a little fidgety despite the short running time.Anyway, it's business as usual for a '30s horror, with strong direction and great style. The art design is spot on and the waxworks are effortlessly spooky in themselves. This was made just before the onslaught of film censorship so it's intriguing to see drug addicts featuring in the cast. The performances are uniformly excellent, with Lionel Atwill reminding us of why he was one of the true titans of horror – a man who deserved his crown every bit as much as Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi until his virtual blacklisting around 1940. Fay Wray's lovely too, although her role here amounts to an extended cameo, if that. While the others can't be faulted, I did find Glenda Farrell's brash reporter to be pretty irritating – this is no criticism of the actress but rather the script, which overdoes her rattling dialogue and smug nature – I found myself wanting to chuck her in the vat of boiling wax rather than Atwill! There are plenty of good horrible moments, some of them inspired by German expressionist works as disfigured, be-cloaked figures in dark hats wander around bodysnatching and the police are always one step behind. There's an iconic 'unmasking' scene which is only slightly lessened by the fact that we've seen Atwill's face before – bad move, filmmakers – and a classic ending which was memorably spoofed in CARRY ON SCREAMING. This is a film that horror lovers and fans of classic cinema will enjoy no matter what as one of the highlights of the period.

I have seen the Vincent Price remake HOUSE OF WAX several times and consider it one of my favorite classic horror movies, but I just got to see this original for the first time. I really tried, as a viewer, to be fair to this movie and review it on its' own merits as the original rather than making any comparisons to the de Toth version. However, in put into its' own context, this movie doesn't really come close to the level of the best 30s horror movies.The idea for the story itself, taken from an unpublished short story is excellent and, in the end, is what carries this movie. It seems a little cliché to a modern audience, but the idea certainly originate here. A genius sculptor is content to create works of art, rather than play up the grand guignol for the masses. This puts the museum in financial trouble and his partner's solution is to torch it for the insurance money. Having lost everything important to him, our master artist (played by Lionel Atwill), descends into lunacy and starts casting corpses in wax to rebuild his attraction. The idea of so sinister and clever and just rings of the sort of story popular in the horror pulps of the time.Lionel Atwill is very good as the deranged artist. He's been a role player in probably a dozen period horror movies that I've seen, but tends to play the scientist or police inspector. It's nice getting to see him play the villain here and shows me he should have been given that opportunity more often. His makeup is also excellent when he see his "true face". A withered, burnt up visage that mirrors the twisting of his soul, its' one of the better makeups I've seen in old horror, outside the legendary Jack Pierce's work.The problems with the movie start with the bad script. Like the title implies, this plays much more as a detective mystery than straight horror. The fright scenes are few and far between, spending more time focusing on the whodunit aspect led by a news reporter. This may have been able to work had the plot not meandered all over the place, bringing in unnecessary characters and plot points that only bog things down and slow the pace. The worst aspect of this is our main character, a newspaper gal played by Glenda Farrell. She eats up far too much of the run time playing an annoying character who talks to fast and makes witty quips with her editor that may have been funny at the time, but are not now. Had the writers chosen to spend more time with Atwill and less on our heroine, things might have turned out much differently.The other thing worth mentioning is the two-color technicolor. I have read a bit about this coloring in this movie and it would seem that the version you watch makes a huge difference. Apparently, the stream I saw was from the DVD release, which is not very true to the original coloring and looks very bland and washed out. I'm not, personally, sure where to see the more pastel technicolor that it's supposed to be seen in.Too many times I found myself struggling to keep my attention going, mostly when our intrepid reporter is eating up scene time. The beginning and ending are quite worthwhile, but this is not quite at the level of Universal's work in the same time period.

Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray and Glenda Farrell encounter strange goings-on in two-strip Technicolor. Due to the technology, the blending of green and blue actually gives the story a more appropriately sinister look. But it is all very anachronistic. In several scenes, we are met with Miss Farrell acting more like a depression-era news hound than a reporter from an earlier era. Miss Wray also seems to act and look a little too contemporary. But she is very good, though given less screen time than her female costar (despite Wray having higher billing). Director Michael Curtiz often cuts to medium shots of the characters. He seems to realize that the true ambiance of this story does not depend on dramatic close-ups, but rather emanates from the characters and their space filled with bizarre energy. This does not necessarily involve an overdressed set, which is something that does bog down the remake.