peytone I watch a lot of classic films, particularly classic horror, and Mysteries of the Wax Museum had been on my watchlist for a long time. I was familiar with the work of Fay Wray and Lionel Atwill, and had seen the remake starring Vincent Price. For those of you unfamiliar with the story; Atwill plays a wax sculpter in London whose gifted hands are maimed in a fire that destroys his failing wax museum. Years later, he sets up shop in New York, and resorts to (spoilers) more grisly methods of making new figures: casting molds from dead bodies.Meanwhile there's a snappy reporter (Florence, played annoyingly by Glenda Farell) who is one bad story away from getting fired. She investigates a recent "suicide" that happened over New Years' and lo and behold, suspects that the dead woman ended up as Atwill's Joan of Arc wax figure. Atwill takes a liking to her roommate Charlotte (Fay Wray) who resembles the figure of Marie Antionette from his former museum. He then plans to use her body as the mold for it.I'll skip to the climax, because there's really not a lot worth mentioning before it. Atwill manages to trap Charlotte in the lower chambers of his building. In the standout scene of the film, he gets up from his wheelchair, and moves closer toward Charlotte, telling her that as his Marie Antoinette, she will always be beautiful. She hits him in the face, and his "face" crumbles off, revealing his startling burned visage (wow!). The good guys and the cops corner Atwill in his chamber, about to douse the now-manacled Charlotte with boiling wax. The heroes break in and shoot him dead, and he falls into the vat of wax.Forgive me if my summary was a bit choppy. It was hard to separate the main narrative from all the boring subplots in my head. This film is, as the title of my review suggests, a mixed bag. The story is pretty solid, and the opening scene where Atwill's business partner burns his old museum down (for insurance money) is pretty good. Afterwards, screen time (for a while) is mostly given to the supporting characters. This is where I started to lose interest. Glenda Farrell's character was, in my opinion, annoying. She talks way too frequently, and too quickly, and with too much 1930s slang for my taste. Any scene with her in it really slows the movie down for me. The other supporting characters are pretty dry, save for Fay Wray, who does an impeccable job in this film. Also worth mentioning is Arthur Edmund Carewe, who plays one of Atwill's thugs.The film spends too much time with dry, poorly acted characters, thus taking away the seriousness of the picture. Until the end, I felt hardly a moment of suspense. There are good scenes in the film, I just think that the boring scenes outweigh them. The set design is worth mentioning though, and adds an air of creepy atmosphere. Unfortunately, most of the actors inhabiting the sets were not as good.I was disappointed by this film. Other horror films of the era surpass it in both quality and performances. Atwill, though gives a good performance and I will be definitely checking out other starring roles he did. Final word: watch if you're curious, but don't expect much.

utgard14 Classic horror movie directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Lionel Atwill as a deranged sculptor with an "interesting" method of making the statues on display at his wax museum. The last (and best) of the three horror movies Lionel Atwill did with Fay Wray. Atwill is fantastic here and Wray is, as always, delightful. Nice support from Frank McHugh, Gavin Gordon, and Edwin Maxwell, among others. The scene stealer of the movie is Glenda Farrell as the fast-talking reporter heroine. She really has fun with the part. A few years later she would star in the Torchy Blane series and play a character very similar to the one she plays here.It's a good-looking movie, filmed in two-color Technicolor with nice atmospheric direction from Curtiz. The sets are great, especially Atwill's art deco laboratory. The makeup effects are terrific. It's a juicy Pre-Coder, as evidenced by the gruesome plot and the junkie character played by Arthur Edmund Carewe. Some viewers might be put off by the fact that a large chunk of the middle of the picture is more like a crime story/newspaper movie but I was always entertained, particularly by the back & forth between Farrell and McHugh. So it's not a straight horror movie from beginning to end but, so what, it's still a great film and worth a look. Remade in the '50s as House of Wax with Vincent Price. That version is more well-known than this one but I like rewatching this one more. It's just more fun.

TheRedDeath30 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.

bkoganbing One of the early two strip color features was this horror classic Mystery Of The Wax Museum. This film starts with a prologue where Lionel Atwill gets into a fight with his partner in Paris and the Wax Museum they own there burns down with both sustaining injuries. Like the Phantom Of The Opera Atwill like Lon Chaney and later Claude Rains and Herbert Lom regards his wax statues as a father does a child.Fast forward to twelve years later where after instructing people to work as he did, he's ready to open shop again in New York. But something about Atwill's operation attracts reporter Glenda Farrell who apparently was doing a dress rehearsal for her later Torchy Blane series. Let's say his figures are way too realistic.Fay Wray who is Farrell's friend is put in as much in harm's way as she was with that giant ape on top of the Empire State Building that same year. And speaking of the Phantom Of The Opera the ending of this film was taken right from said source.Atwill like Claude Rains gives a marvelous performance of a man demented by tragedy. He really dominates the scenes he's in. Farrell and Joan Blondell in their time at Warner Brothers played a lot of the same roles. You could have cast Blondell here and it wouldn't be noticed. Fay Wray did well by her part.But despite all in watching Mystery Of The Wax Museum I saw something I never thought I would see in a film. Frank McHugh who plays Farrell's editor actually gets the girl in a film. Now that alone is worth seeing Mystery Of The Wax Museum.