Deathmatch: "The Mystery of the Wax Museum" (1933) vs. "House of Wax" (1953)

History

"To be sure, stories of the fantastic, the horrible, the bizarre have been told with fullest success in black and white photography. But it has always been a question in my mind whether those very stories would not have been more gripping, more realistic, if they had been photographed in color such as we have employed with such unusual success in "Mystery of the Wax Museum" (1933) and "Doctor X." (Press Book. Mystery of the Wax Museum, from the Theater Collection of the New York Public Library.) After the success of "Doctor X" (1932), Paramount purchased the Charles Belden play "The Wax Works" in early July 1932 before "Doctor X" even premiered in New York the next month.

The acquisition was not as easy than for other stage to screen film adaptations for Paramount. Without the copyright registration, the studio had already payed Belden one thousand dollars before discovering that Film Daily, a New York trade magazine, was about to option the film. Before optioning, Ralph Murphy, the co-author of the Broadway play "Black Tower," had threatened a copyright infringement suit for the similarities in stories. The only thing the two plays had in common was the use of the killer infecting their victims with embalming fluid then turning them into statues. The New York office of Warners' was quickly spooked when Rogers and his lawyers had suggested that "The Wax Works" was possibly an infringement of "Black Tower."

The west coast wasn't ready to go down with a fight, a studio attorney writing Morris Ebenstein in the New York office that "Zanuck of the studio says that we are really just going to use the title, The Wax Museum, and write a complete original story around such title, though at the same time using a few ideas of the original manuscript." With MWM nearing production, the shooting script was compared to both stageplays resulting in Ralph Lewis reporting back to Ebenstein again that "the story had not been rewritten at all" and "the studio script is almost identical with Belden's story, except for a change of scene from London to New York, and a change of dialogue from upper British to American newspaper English."" "The Wax Museum is a newspaper story and Murdered Alive is strictly a horror proposition" seemed to be the final word on the whole copyright issue. (Koszarski, Richard. Balio, Tino. Mystery of the Wax Museum (Wisconsin/Warner Bros Screenplays. 1979)

Production started in September 1932 with many of Hal B. Wallis and Henry Blanke's cast and crew from "Doctor X," Michael Curtiz helmed the film that "resurrected the principles of German expressionist film." "It is very easy, in a story like The Mystery of the Wax Museum, for instance, to overdo the use of bizarre, startling angles. That is why I used them throughout the picture sparingly, and always with a definite purpose in mind." (Press Book. Mystery of the Wax Museum, from the Theater Collection of the New York Public Library.) Brought over from "Doctor X" (1932) as well, cinematographer Ray Rennahan and set designer Anton Grot further amplified the expressionism through two-strip Technicolor. "Developed in 1920, [...] the film camera  recorded two adjacent frames simultaneously on a single strip of film, one frame filtered to capture the green color record and the other filtered to capture the red." (Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) - Articles - TCM.com)

"Mystery of the Wax Museum" premiered in New York February 16, 1933, turning a handsome profit of $80,000 in the states although far more successful in Europe. Reviews were erratically mixed. TIME magazine considering the experiment in color as "better than the ones which most major companies tried a year or two ago" and praising the colored cinematography as "lurid and realistic [...] appropriate to mystery stories."  Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times found the film "too ghastly for comfort." "It is all very well in its way to have a mad scientist performing operations in well-told stories, but when a melodrama depends upon the glimpses of covered bodies in a morgue and the stealing of some of them by an insane modeler in wax, is going too far." Glenda Farrell and Frank McHugh's roles as comic relief were, however, praised. Variety dubbed it as "a loose and unconvincing story [and] manage[s] a fairly decent job along with Frankenstein and Dracula lines. Loose ends never quite jell but it's one of those artificial things."

Where Weimar expressionism was a heavy influence on "The Mystery of the Museum," 1953's "House of Wax" was the first of its kind in both sight and sound. United Artists had distributed "Bwana Devil" (1952) which writer-director-producer Arch Oboler had utilized 3-D on screen which required special glasses for film-goers to get the full effect and Warner Brothers wanted in on the gimmick. It was only poetic that the director, Hungarian Andre de Toth, was blind in one eye. Vincent Price remembered that "it [being] one of the great Hollywood stories. When they wanted a director for [a 3-D] film, they hired a man who couldn't see 3-D at all! Andre de Toth was a very good director, but he really was the wrong director for 3-D. He'd go to all the rushes and say, "Why is everyone so excited about this?" It didn't mean anything to him. But he made a good picture, a good thriller. He was largely responsible for the success of the picture. The 3-D tricks just happened--there weren't a lot of them. Later on, they threw everything at everybody." (House of Wax (1953) - Articles - TCM.com)

With a visual method would have also been the perfect time to utilize the sound already being used in the Mike Todd demonstration film "This is Cinerama" currently in theaters. Calling it WarnerPhonic Audio, a primitive precursor of surround sound, WarnerPhonic had a few differences than the full sweeping audio already out in New York theaters. 35 mm of fully coated magnetic film which contained the audio tracks for left, right, and center were interlocked with two dual-strip Polaroid system projectors. One strip carried a mono optical surround track and the other a mono backup track.

But the greatest innovation of the whole film was how the "House of Wax" propelled Vincent Price's career. Mostly playing supporting roles with the occasional maniac and/or aristocratic victims, Price had his hands full with this role between makeup and the rarer moments of stunt work for the actor. "I had to get to the studio every morning at 5:30 AM to put that makeup on. It took three hours to put on and it was agony, absolute agony." He also added that the film "was made with two enormous cameras photographing in a mirror, so that you could get two tracks, and because of the unwieldy camera I had to do my own stunts. They couldn't do a close-up of me and then cut to a double. The most difficult stunt was at the beginning when the fire starts in the museum, and I run under this balcony that's in flames just before it falls. I actually did that. I worked it out with a stuntman. Anything on the floor that I might trip over or slide on was moved away and we figured out a course for me to take around these burning figures so that I could get into a tiny closet when this 3,000 lbs of burning balcony fell. It was scary." (House of Wax (1953) - Articles - TCM.com)

"House of Wax" premiered in New York on April 10, 1953 at the Paramount Theater and then was released nationally on April 25th. It became the one of the biggest films of 1953, receiving $5.5 million in rentals from the American box office. Reviews were just as mixed as its predecessor if not a little more negative.  Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it "a display of noise and nonsense as has rattled a movie screen in years, may well cause a dazed and deafened viewer, amazed and bewildered, to inquire in wonder and genuine trepidation: What hath the Warner Brothers wrought? For this mixture of antique melodrama, three dimensional photography, ghoulish sensationalism and so-called directed sound [...] raises so many serious questions of achievement and responsibility that a friend of the motion picture medium has ample reason to be baffled and concerned." Variety was more forgiving although "uneven, nonetheless gears it to the medium -- chairs flying into the audience, cancan dancers pirouetting full into the camera, the barker's pingpong ball, as a pitchman's prop, likewise shooting out at the audience, the muscular menace springing as if from the theater into the action." Vincent Price is equally lauded as "the No. 1 menace." Harrison's Reports were even more forgiving calling it "a first-class thriller of its kind" and "the best 3-D picture yet made."

From London to New York

The beginning of both films begin with disaster. The career of a wax figure artist is even further destroyed when his business partner attempts to murder him. Instead, all of his creations as well as the museum itself burns in the process and he manages to get out supposedly unscathed with the exception of his hands. Too burnt to sculpt ever again, the artist employs a deaf-mute sculptor to help with his vision as well as another assistant (1953). In MWM, Igor's staff also includes an addict and a professor whose main purpose is to link him with a bootlegger whose customer is the wrongly convicted Winton. 

In 1933, it's business as usual as Igor starts over completely from memory but in 1953, Professor Jarrod steps up with the modern times and creates a "chamber of horrors" depicting famous historical crimes as well as current events. One current event also includes the so-called suicide of his business partner who was murdered by a cloaked disfigured killer then made to look a suicide. More bodies begin to mysteriously disappear from the morgue including a beautiful young woman.

This is when the newspapers come in in MWM, soon-to-be-fired reporter Florence Dempsey needing to find a great story to keep her job. With the intent on discovering more on a model's suicide, the body was taken from the morgue. It's even more perfect that Florence's roommate, Charlotte, is also currently dating one of the staff members of the newer wax museum. Igor becomes enamored with Charlotte looking so much like his original Marie Antoinette. Officially on the hunt for the real killer, Dempsey finds herself accidentally having to save her roommate's life.

In 1953, Jarrod takes another victim who just happens to be his dead business partner's fiancee but soon a friend of hers starts poking around the museum at night. It also does not help that Jarrod finds her startlingly like his original Marie Antoinette. But during Sue's midnight hunt, she encounters Jarrod and finds herself in his clutches with very few people to save her unless the wax museum staff is not entirely faithful to their employer.

Deathmatch

A deathmatch often constitutes two films inspired or adapted from the same material, but what came from Charles Belden's "The Wax Works" exists in either or the genres of suspense and horror. "House of Wax" is clearly the horror film and is one of my personal top 10 films that I need to watch every Halloween. But in terms of the sturdiest of the two, "The Mystery of the Wax Museum" has the strongest legs and script.  The American newspaper B-storyline helps stabilize the horror against the witty humor and lightning-speed delivery between whoever is in the scene with Glenda Farrell. It also helps to have an additional perspective in attempting to solve the suspense as it continues to progress.

The look of "The Mystery of the Wax Museum" also makes it the superior film. While the main floor of the wax museum is super detailed and well lit as the stage set for a Hollywood movie is, the further down the viewer goes into the basement, the cinematography becomes progressively Weimar-inspired. In the hallways is where there's the best use of lit and shadowed angles as well as the diagonal shapes of stairs until the viewer goes further down into Igor's more secret and murderous business. It's a fascinating cinematographic choice in placing Curtiz's influences between the two worlds.

"House of Wax" packs far more the horror punch and there is no other reason than what is Vincent Price's presence. While it is his first all-out horror film, the seeds of what eventually becomes his craft is very there although it is clear Price sticks very close to the script. He is the reason that makes the whole film although the aesthetics are full of atmosphere and gloom but the supporting cast a little low-lit compared to Glenda Farrell's vivaciousness and Fay Wray's grace.

Despite the rushed and abrupt ending of "The Mystery of the Wax Museum" and its attempts to give Florence a love life outside of career appropriate for its time, it's too clear the original is technically and the better written iteration. 

House of Wax airs on TCM October 31st at 8 pm EST/7 pm CST