House of Wax (2005)
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
A group of unwitting teens are stranded near a strange wax museum and soon must fight to survive and keep from becoming the next exhibit.
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What critics say influenced House of Wax
Meanwhile, the film pays tribute to Robert Aldrich's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1965) in a bizarre, wax-figure movie theater scene.
Up the road from the cinema (where "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" is the seemingly perpetual offering) is Trudy's House of Wax, a grotesquerie of morbid history and familial horrors.
Likewise, it effortlessly tops Michael Curtiz's static, two-strip Technicolor original, Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933).
Just as Marcus Nispel reworked Tobe Hopper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the MTV generation, Serra similarly tricks-out André de Toth's 1953 classic (it's doubtful he's seen Michael Curtiz's 1933 film Mystery of the Wax Museum), except the film more accurately brings to mind the groove of David Schmoeller's underrated 1979 chiller Tourist Trap, in which a bunch of teenagers stumble upon a mannequin museum operated by two brothers, one a mysteriously-masked freakazoid.
House of Wax is a vague remake of a 1953 film of the same name which starred Vincent Price, and the conceit is strong.
Take a horror movie that the old gorehounds admire (1953's "House of Wax"), a modern remake that made a lot of money ("The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"), and a forgotten old cult thriller that's just prefect to steal from ("Tourist Trap") and you get this muddled concoction, a horror flick that's mercilessly dry and boring for 2/3rds of its running time ... and hopelessly loud, stupid, and gore-soaked for the final third.
Andre de Toth's excellent 1953 House of Wax included a frighteningly surreal sequence in which a fire breaks out in the museum (run by Vincent Price), licks the wax figures and melts them.
Based on the classic 3D film of the '50s starring Vincent Price, "House of Wax" is an almost 2-hour long exercise in bad film making.
I didn’t have high hopes for House of Wax, an extremely loose adaptation of the 1953 Vincent Price horror classic.
The 1953 "House of Wax," which starred Vincent Price, is one of the most fondly remembered of the 3D movies of its period.
Just as Marcus Nispel reworked Tobe Hopper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the MTV generation, Serra similarly tricks-out André de Toth's 1953 classic (it's doubtful he's seen Michael Curtiz's 1933 film Mystery of the Wax Museum), except the film more accurately brings to mind the groove of David Schmoeller's underrated 1979 chiller Tourist Trap, in which a bunch of teenagers stumble upon a mannequin museum operated by two brothers, one a mysteriously-masked freakazoid.
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Avoiding the copious Asian-influenced expressionistic imagery of "The Grudge" and the recent remakes of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "The Amityville Horror," "House of Wax," a remake itself of a 1953 Vincent Price vehicle, has more in common with the bare-bones fright classics of the 1970s, such as "Halloween," the original "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and "Deliverance."
Joining the quartet are a couple of unwelcome additions: Carly's "evil twin" Nick ("One Tree Hill" heartthrob Chad Michael Murray, trying to play tough and seeming about as imposing as Justin Timberlake) and his dorky buddy, Dalton (Jon Abrahams), whose ever-present video camera allows Collet-Serra to pay tribute to "The Blair Witch Project."
After all, I am one of the few critics who actually recommended Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses, which was even gorier and more sadistic than this movie (and which had a very similar setup).