Rating: 
Summary: A Classic Double - Dip
Review: This marvelous DVD offers two versions of the same story! First, the 1953 "House of Wax" starring Vincent Price ... plus the original film on which it was based, the 1933 "Mystery of the Wax Museum" starring Lionel Atwill. Each film offered viewers a technological gimmick when first released to theatres: "House" was exhibited in 3-D, and "Museum" was filmed in early two-strip Technicolor.The Vincent Price remake is arguably the scarier of the two versions. Although it duplicates many scenes and sections of dialogue from the earlier film, it adds a couple of effective sequences involving the villain of the piece. In one, the scarred fiend chases heroine Phyllis Kirk through dark, rain-slicked streets in the dead of night; in the other, he commits a gruesome murder. Price is deliciously hammy in the role. He constantly threatens to go over the top, but pulls back just in time (at least until the end, when he lets go with relish). Miss Kirk, with her china doll beauty and deep modulated voice makes a wonderful heroine, and Charles Buchinsky (later Bronson) stands out as a muscled and menacing deaf-mute who lurks among the shadows of the museum. The production's color and lighting are outstanding ... the viewer is often left wondering which figures are human and which are wax, and there are several shocks and surprises along the way. The DVD offers an exceptionally fine film-to-video transfer, and don't forget to watch the Original Theatrical Trailer! It's an example of Hollywood ballyhoo at its best, and features some gorgeous color graphics. The legendary 1933 original version was believed, for decades, to be a "lost film". Film buffs all over the world rejoiced when a surviving print was finally located in the late 1970's; unfortunately, (and unsurprisingly) the actual film was unable to live up to the hype that built up around it during its absence. Despite its considerable virtues, including great performances from Lionel Atwill as the villain and Fay Wray as the gorgeous screaming heroine, "Mystery of the Wax Museum" is marred by an over-abundance of comic relief. Playing a hard-boiled newspaper "dame" who delivers her peppery dialogue in machine gun fashion, Glenda Farrell is neither comic nor a relief. She's simply obnoxious. Still, she's lovely to look at in early two-strip Technicolor. This process, which registers color most heavily in hues of blue and orange, was a crude forerunner of the three-strip "candy-box" Technicolor that made its feature-film debut two years later in the 1935 production of "Becky Sharp". It should be noted that this DVD offers the best restored version of "Wax Museum" yet seen; the color is more vivid and the sound much clearer than that featured on any TV prints or on the earlier MGM VHS version. All in all, this is a DVD package that should please both horror buffs and film historians alike; it's certainly a great value to receive the 1933 version as a "bonus feature". Here's a double feature made to order for a chilly evening; enjoy it with a bowl of popcorn ... and maybe a burning candle.
Rating:
Summary: one of Price's best films
Review: This movie has wit, excellent pacing and a strong supporting cast (including a blonde Carolyn Jones "Morticia" from the Addams Family) and a small role for Charles Bronson (playing Igor and billed as Charles Buchinsky). Prince gets to be both understated and hammy in the brilliant film, that he is likely best know for.
It catches the atmosphere of the Gaslight period, and is lighting speed, as Price goes from a brilliant artist of life-like wax figures, to a scarred man, nearly killed by his partner wanting the insurance. He is forced to watch his two crowning glories, his Joan of Arc and his Marie Antoinette destroyed in the fire. With scared hands, he is forced to use bodies to fill his new house of wax, while Price also manages to meet out a little revenge to his former partner.
At first bodies are vanishing from the morgue, but when Price sees Jones - the living image of Joan of Arc - and Phyllis Kirk, his Marie Antoinette come to life in his mind - he knows he must possess the bodies of both women to see if greatest works recreated.
Is so spooky, and Kirk ably screams her way from one mishap to the next. Just does not get any better.
Rating: 
Summary: perfect movie
Review: this movie maybe intorporopetie but its a fun movie i woild never get enouch of it its nothing but a perfect movie fun pictures but just because theres vilonce in this movie dosent mean that this movie sucks but im giving it 2 stars for rating very perfect movie if my friend watched it than he will watch it every day this can be on the horror channel because the actors in this movie does a graet job i have to watch it than ill be calling it one of my favrite movies i think i have to get it its like the movie freddyvs.jason i blooDy CANT WAIT TO own it on dvd
Rating: 
Summary: Vincent Price at his craziest
Review: This one I have enjoyed since I was a child. Vincent Price stars as an artist who's wax museum is destroyed in a fire. Because he was so badly burned, he is disfigured and begins to rebuild his museum by using the bodies of real people. A must see for all Price fans.
Rating:
Summary: a brilliant horror film
Review: Vincent Price gives a brilliant character study {even though he probably didn't mean to} of a man pushed into insanity when his life goes up in smoke, literally. as the film opens we see Jarrod {Price} at work, his greedy partner later arrives. after happily going over his plans for more sculptures, Price is in for a shock when his partner asks how much insurance the place is worth. the guy later sets the place on fire, and gets into a fight with Jarrod. The man escapes, leaving Jarrod to watch his "family" melt away and the museum going up in smoke. Jarrod, presumed dead, is actually alive. His assistant is a mute man named Igor {played by the action movie legend Charles Bronson in a very early role}. Jarrod is now wheelchair bound and he plots revenge on his assistant; but soon he begins to use dead bodies as wax sculptures. The "incredibly real" look to them amazes many except the woman played by Phyllis Kirk. The opening night of Jarrod's new museum is memorable for the paddleball man scene...hamming it up as the barker. Jarrod's face isn't real {he made one to look like his old face; his real one is hideous due to all the burns}. dressed all in black, he has a memorable street chase scene where he strolls around as if he were Quasi Moto from the Hunchback film. Vincent's radio peer, Frank Lovejoy, co-stars as the policeman on the case of several murders in town {the victim's likenesses all amazingly appear the next day as wax figures in Jarrod's museum}. Paul Cavanaugh, Paul Picerni, Angela Clarke, and Roy Roberts also make appearances. Carolyn Jones {Morticia Addams} has a memorable role in the beginning of the film. this is the role that forever linked Vincent with bad-guys, villains, and horror.
Rating: 
Summary: Great old movie, disappointed in format
Review: Vincent Price is always a win, even if the story is a bit hokey, but it's expected too. We were not disappointed in the movie, the transfer to DVD or the audio. All of these were very well done. However I was disappointed to see that the movie was in full screen mode. Now not being a film expert, that may have been the original format (4:3 ratio), but we also bought "The Pit and the Pendulum" and it was in wide screen, so it was disappointing in contrast.
It was pretty cool to see a very young Charles Bronson, as Igor. He was pretty buff back then!
Worth the money, just be aware that this is not wide screen. It'd be nice if Amazon would note that in the description.
Rating:
Summary: The Wax Mausoleum
Review: Wax museums have been used as a setting for thrillers in the movies at least as far back as Paul Leni's remarkable Waxworks in 1924. But the most memorable waxworks movie still remains Mystery of the Wax Museum made by Warner Bros. in 1933, shot in two strip Technicolor, and directed by Michael Curtiz. The studio apparently thought so too, since it remade the movie in 1953 as House of Wax, using the remake as a vehicle to show off the 3D process. Both films follow basically the same plot line, one that tells of a wax sculptor-Ivan Igor in Mystery of the Wax Museum/Professor Henry Jarrod in House of Wax-whose unscrupulous business partner sets fire to the museum they jointly own, leaving the sculptor horribly mutilated. Some years later, the sculptor, seemingly disabled but ambulatory in reality, reappears and opens a new museum. In the meantime, having become thoroughly crazed by the accident, Igor/Jarrod has become a psychopathic killer who uses the bodies of his victims for the wax figures in his museum.
The 1933 movie supplies an unusual, but mainly satisfactory blending of two distinct genres: the big city movie that was a Warner's staple of the era, and the classic thriller with a demented, hideously deformed villain lurking about in the shadows. The older movie, whose action begins in London in the1920s and then jumps forward to 1933, throws in any number of then up-to-date details, such as a bootlegging racket run by the sculptor's ex-partner, the suicide of a party girl, and the drug habit of one of Igor's minions. An array of familiar faces appears in Mystery of the Wax Museum, among them Glenda Farrell, as a wise-cracking forerunner of Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday, Frank McHugh, as her editor, and Fay Wray, once more as a damsel in deep distress. But it is Lionel Atwill, giving a first-class performance as the villainous Igor, who easily steals the show.
Mystery of the Wax Museum was directed by Michael Curtiz, who worked in nearly every kind of movie genre imaginable during his long tenure at Warners' Curtiz is mainly remembered today for Casablanca, a film which owes more to the chemistry of its performances and to a top-notch screenplay by Howard Koch, Julius and Philip Epstein, and Casey Robinson (uncredited) than to any cinematic ingenuity on the part of Curtiz. But this movie like Doctor X, made the year before, suggests, as do The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, and Mildred Pierce-everyone's favorite blend of soap opera and film noir-that Curtiz had a knack for translating morbid subjects to the screen.
Usually when a studio remade an older picture, the practice was to update the setting. But when Warners' produced House of Wax, it moved the action back into the1890s-not a very happy move, as far I am concerned. If the studio wanted a period setting, then why not have used that of Mystery of the Wax Museum itself? The remake was directed by André De Toth, a man shamefully neglected today, who first gained recognition with the thriller Dark Waters, before doing some memorable westerns. The cast is quite forgettable, with the exception of one name-the only one buyers of this DVD are likely to pay attention to. When he made House of Wax, Vincent Price was not as grandiloquently hammy as he was to become a few years hence as the star of Roger Corman's adaptations of assorted Poe stories. In his years at Fox in the 1940s, Price had given a credible display of his abilities as an actor in such pictures as Song of Bernadette and Leave Her to Heaven, and he had one outstanding performance to his credit, in Otto Preminger's Laura.
But in House of Wax, Price was tackling the kind of role no one could believe in any longer. A deranged genius like Igor was already anachronistic in 1933, as much so as Count Dracula, a latter day descendent of the dandy. Perhaps that's why the studio substituted the WASP-sounding Professor Henry Jarrod for the exotic Ivan Igor. To his credit, Price resists the temptation to camp up his part-later on, he gave up doing ineffectual imitations of old thespians and specialized in doing overripe imitations of himself-and he certainly gives the best performance in House of Wax, but it's a pale imitation of Atwill's. Otherwise, House of Wax is worth watching mainly for a couple of nocturnal chase scenes well staged by DeToth, and the effective color cinematography by the veterans Bert Glennon and Peverell Marley.
Warner Home Video has had the bright idea of bringing out the two movies together, on opposite sides of a single DVD, with results that I found unequal on first acquaintance. House of Wax looks very good indeed. As the 3D reissues of some years back demonstrated, the original color materials have held up very well. Mystery of the Wax Museum, however, was a real disappointment when I watched it using a conventional DVD player and television. Both the color and the picture definition were miserable in many scenes, which is particularly regrettable since the movie contains some beautiful compositions by Ray Rennahan, where blues and greens seem to jump off the screen. However, since I posted this review last year, I have recently looked at Mystery of the Wax Museum on my laptop with Power DVD, and the picture quality was astounding. As a result, I have revised my comments and given the DVD a higher rating. But anyone without the advantage of a program like Power DVD who plans on viewing the picture on a home entertainment center should be prepared to do a lot of fiddling with the controls.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible Memories from the Past
Review: Wow, what a great flashback! I saw this movie as a 6-year old in it's original theater release 3D format. It terrified me then and to this day I still avoid open-cage styled elevators. It also instilled in me an appreciation for well constructed horror films. I had a copy of the VHS release and I must say this DVD version is an order of magnitude better in terms of sharpness of image, color tracking and, perhaps best of all, the quality of the Warner Brothers Studio lush soundtrack. If you're a fan of the golden era of horror then this DVD is a must have!
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