![]() ![]() Most belong to a breed of horror movie victims who cannot die soon enough, a regular characteristic of 2000s-era horror. However inspired these alterations may be, the movie lacks compelling characters. The most terrifying images from any version of Belden’s story are the wax faces that droop in the fire, but here, the figures melt to reveal rotting corpses underneath. Fortunately, the filmmakers knew to save the inevitable fire sequence for the climax, when the characters sink into the stairs and dig through walls as the house melts to the ground. The House of Wax itself is a brilliantly conceived set-piece featuring more than just wax figures every object inside, including the walls, is sculpted out of wax. The vacant small town, where much of House of Wax takes place, has an eerie emptiness. This first feature by director Jaume Collet-Serra, who has made a career out of dopey thrillers like Non-Stop (2014) and The Commuter (2018), builds considerable uneasiness given its excellent production designed by Grace Walker. Both movies feature a hulking, masked killer with a deformed face, who works in an unkept space teeming with the evidence of countless victims. While The Texas Chain Saw Massacre featured Leatherface and his family of cannibals turning their victims into chow, House of Wax has twin brothers (both played by Brian Van Holt) who preserve their victims as trophies in their dead mother’s rundown attraction, called Trudy’s House of Wax. The 2005 version has more in common with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), where a group of twentysomethings on a road trip stumble onto the masked killer’s lair, only to become victims in his grueling process. Later, the viewer realizes the sculptor was horribly burned as well, but he wears a wax mask to conceal his freakish appearance. The first two begin with the sculptor watching as a fire consumes his wax figures and their faces melt-imagery so nightmarish that it drives him to murder. ![]() But the movie forgoes the usual structure. ![]() Like the others, the newer version features a murderous sculptor who covers his human victims with liquid wax and puts them on display. However, the 2005 version, written by Chad and Carey Hayes, bears little resemblance to its predecessors. Of course, the 1953 version was a remake of The Mystery of the Wax Museum from 1933, and all three were spawned from “The Wax Works,” a short story by Charles Belden. ![]() These similarities made the intellectual property ripe for remake under Dark Castle’s banner. William Castle wasn’t involved in 1953’s House of Wax, but the movie has all the trappings of a Castle production: he often worked with its star, Vincent Price he also commonly promoted his pictures with exhibition gimmicks, and House of Wax was among the first movies shown in 3-D. House of Wax from 2005 is a nasty remake of a remake whose imagery remains genuinely unsettling, despite its many flaws. Although Dark Castle would explore original horror concepts in subsequent years with Ghost Ship (2002) and Gothika (2003), one of the company’s most memorable efforts came next. In 2001, Dark Castle unveiled the memorable Thir13en Ghosts, a remake of Castle’s 13 Ghosts from 1960, which features some genuinely unnerving specters. Later in the same year, Dark Castle Entertainment-a production company named after horror showman William Castle and launched by producers Robert Zemeckis, Joel Silver, and Gilbert Adler-released House on Haunted Hill, a forgettable rehash of Castle’s 1959 original about an overnight stay at a spirit-infested mansion. Among the first of them was Jan de Bont’s The Haunting (1999), a toothless and CGI-infested take on Robert Wise’s 1963 original, which was not so much spooky as a costly spectacle with a great cast. Although the original productions often featured gimmicks (3-D glasses, buzzing seats, etc.) and winking performances by Vincent Price, the newer versions offered computerized special FX, bloody violence, plenty of nudity, and grim imagery-often with the disappointing results that are typical of remakes. #House of wax cast series#In the early 2000s, a series of remakes tapped into the wellspring of B-movies from the 1950s and 1960s. ![]()
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