Just the Ticket #163: Houses Of Wax
Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a. the Ticketmaster
I posted this review over the Thanksgiving weekend in 2012, my first year on Blogger, as part of Ticket Stubs #33: Sex Wax and Books On Tape, back when Barack Obama was re-elected as President, Niki Minaj was famous, Toddlers & Tiaras was still popular, and Christina Aguilera was still on The Voice.
It was also originally posted on Yahoo! Groups way back on May 12, 2005 (SW@ Ticket #37: Sex Wax, Sideways Stories, and the Star-Spanglish Banner), which I uploaded in separate blogs, the SWAT Ticket Archive and SWAT Ticket's Greatest Hits. As part of my effort to streamline my blogs into Just the Ticket, I've decided to revisit the 2005 "remake" of House Of Wax, similar to what I did for Sideways in July. Prepare for a long read, as I will first reprint the Greatest Hits edit from Ticket Stubs #33, followed by the Yahoo! Groups original from the SWAT Ticket Archive and a more in-depth, mature revisitation of it, and closing things out with a special look at the true remake from 1953.
So buckle in for the exhibit, please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post to keep the immersion feeling three-dimensional, help out my ad revenue so I don't have to get my corpse melted for posterity, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.
Having watched too many scary movies (including the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake of a few years ago), I had seen the abused-deformed-child-with-crazy-parents premise a few times before. Having seen too many zombie pictures (and the unrepresentative trailer of HoW, a re-make of a film I was unfamiliar with), I had expected the wax figures in the house to come alive and go on a murderous rampage at every second, both heightening and gradually dulling my sense of fear. What I did see was a shocking amount of gore (fear gradually sharpening); so many surprise pop-ups and loud noises that while I was waiting for something to happen at a particular time, something happened a little later or earlier than I expected, and I was scared anyway (a few times, I was actually scared by nothing happening); and so much sex and sexual humor (Paris Hilton on the big screen in her underwear, "dropping her lipstick" on her boyfriend's crotch, etc.) that I was distracted into laughter and arousal, and once again scared moments later. But basically, House of Wax was a wax "reimagining" (because "remake" isn't a cool word anymore) of Texas Chainsaw Massacre: deformed lunatic (think Waxface instead of Leatherface) and equally crazy brother move into small, off-the-map town, turn it into an overblown waxburbia, and kill out-of-towners who are just passing through. The current victims include Hilton, Elisha Cuthbert, and Chad Michael-Murray. On the way to a football game, their car is mysteriously sabotaged and they must go unwittingly into the wax town for help. These idiots split up every chance they can get, and are rewarded by being killed off every fifteen minutes--except for two survivors who manage to play hero and get the State police involved.
Great special effects on the House itself, scares that were actually scary, and Paris Hilton almost naked. Who could ask for more? Me! I know it makes the story progress, but why do scary movie characters have to be so stupid?
C+
The "Books On Tape" portion of the Ticket Stubs post included Critical Quickie format reviews of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (B-), Treasure Island (A-), and Moby Dick (F), but if you want to know my decade-old thoughts on those, you can visit the link back at the beginning of this post. The focus today is on the House Of Wax movies, so even though I see plenty of ways that I could have improved the professionalism of my language in the Greatest Hits edition, know that it was mid-2000s internet shock humor bad in the Yahoo! Groups/SWAT Ticket Archive original, and could have been much worse. So, here's that FROM May 12, 2005 (SW@ Ticket #37: Sex Wax, Sideways Stories, and the Star-Spanglish Banner): A lot of S's in that title.... On to the exclusive horror. Oh yeah; there's sex, too.
First, SW@'s review of the CASE presentation of House of Wax. You know it'll be a good movie when you have to pass through a metal detector and have your backpack searched for cell phones and camera equipment. You know it'll be good when you oooh and ahh at the production company logos. You know it'll be good when the first previews are of Star Wars III and Batman Begins. Then it starts, and you're simultaneously creeped out and underwhelmed.
Having watched too many scary movies (including the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake of a few years ago), I had seen the abused-deformed-child-with-crazy-parents premise a few times before. Having seen too many zombie pictures (and the unrepresentative trailer of HoW), I had expected the wax figures in the house to come alive and go on a murderous rampage at every second, both heightening and gradually dulling my sense of fear. What I did see was a shocking amount of gore (fear gradually sharpening); so many surprise pop-ups and loud noises that while I was waiting for something to happen at a particular time, something happened a little later or earlier than I expected, and I was scared anyway (a few times, I was actually scared by nothing happening); and so much sex and sexual humor (Paris Hilton on the big screen in her underwear, "dropping her lipstick" on her boyfriend's crotch, etc.) that I was distracted into laughter and arousal, and once again scared moments later. But basically, House of Wax was a wax "reimagining" (because "remake" isn't a cool word anymore) of Texas Chainsaw Massacre: deformed lunatic (think Waxface instead of Leatherface) and equally crazy brother move into small, off-the-map town, turn it into an overblown waxburbia, and kill out-of-towners who are just passing through. The current victims include Hilton, Elisha Cuthbert, and Chad Michael-Murray; on the way to a football game, their car is mysteriously sabotaged and they must go unwittingly into the wax town for help. These idiots split up every chance they can get, and are rewarded by being killed off every fifteen minutes--except for two survivors who kick ass and call the Staties.
Great special effects on the literal House of Wax, scares that were actually scary, and Paris Hilton almost naked. Who could ask for more? ME! I know it makes the story progress, but why do scary movie characters have to be so damn stupid?
C+
And now, here I am, almost twenty years after my first and only other viewing, and for the sake of satisfying my OCD and doing some mental and digital house-cleaning, I've decided to subject myself to House Of Wax (2005) once more.
House Of Wax began its life in 1932 as a short story by Charles S. Belden, called "The Wax Works," which was adapted into the 1933 film, Mystery Of the Wax Museum, which received a remake twenty years later as the first House Of Wax. Many unconnected, but obviously inspired, wax museum-based horror movies would follow in the ensuing half-century, such as the Waxwork duology and Tourist Trap, before the 2005 film came along to be incredibly 2005.
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan and The Shallows) and written by former Doublemint twins Chad and Carey Hayes (The Conjuring), House Of Wax (2005) features popular young stars of the time, a nu metal- and emo-heavy soundtrack (Disturbed, Deftones, Marylin Manson, My Chemical Romance, etc.), and a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-meets-Saw-meets-Jeepers Creepers industrial torture porn body horror aesthetic.
Following a poorly acted opening flashback to the kind of villain origin that would put Rob Zombie to sleep and make the acting in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation feel subtle, we are introduced to such memorable characters as Final Girl (Elisha Cuthbert, 24), Final Girl's Boyfriend (Jared Padalecki, Supernatural), Final Girl's Asshole Brother (Chad Michael-Murray, One Tree Hill), Amateur Filmmaker Douchebag Sidekick (Jon Abrahams, Scary Movie), Paris Hilton (The Simple Life), and Black Guy (whose first name is literally old English for "black," and his last name is Johnson, and his entire character arc is "have sex with Paris Hilton and die," so do with that what you will as I tell you he is played by Coach Carter's Robert Ri'chard).
Most of what I said in my old review holds true here. Our uninteresting and unlikable stock characters are on their way to scalp tickets to "the biggest game of the year" when a storm and/or construction detour force them to stop for the night and camp within wafting distance of a roadkill pit (and driving distance of an abandoned town where the titular and literal House Of Wax stands). Having pissed off an unseen truck driver because they're stupid assholes who didn't watch Jeepers Creepers or Joy Ride, they wake up the next morning to find one of their vehicles was tampered with, and must hitch a ride with roadkill collector Lenny (Damon Herriman, Justified) to the town to get a replacement part from auto shop proprietor Bo Sinclair (Brian Van Holt, Cougar Town). But all it takes is bothering to stop and look before the reveal finally comes that Bo and his masked, deformed, mentally impaired twin brother Vincent (because Vincent Price was in the 1953 version) had been surgically separated as children and were doing the road trip slasher villain thing to populate their town with wax-coated corpses in honor of their late mother's grandiose vision, creating something like that scene from Home Alone where Kevin puppeteers cardboard cutouts and inflatable people to trick the Wet Bandits into thinking he isn't...Home Alone, but on a municipal scale.
The pacing is atrocious (it takes almost an hour of enduring the future murder victims' personalities before anything mildly interesting happens), the plot is so stitched together and done to death that it should be coated in wax while it's still barely breathing and left in a torture museum to rot, everyone makes as many easily avoidable mistakes as possible to ensure their own deaths (being assholes to the locals, getting drunk, having sex, splitting up, not looking at things that would help them survive and/or figure out what's going on, not leaving immediately when they find the roadkill pit, not making sure the killers are dead,...), the theming is blatant (twins write script about estranged siblings who fight murderous conjoined twins who were separated as children and get fused together in death by their mother's favorite artistic medium), and the ending is abrupt and easy to see coming (Dewey Crowe was a third Sinclair brother all along!). Add in that I no longer have those misconceptions of what to expect from the wax town's population to fuel my suspense, I recognize the cheap jumpscares for what they really are, and I've seen the true remake from 1953, and I definitely don't like this movie as much as I did as an immature college student watching it on the big screen. I still like the mix of practical and digital effects and the old school, Hollywood set-based filming (on a WB studio lot in Australia), and the majority of the performances are better than the characters themselves (Padalecki is a solid actor, Herriman and Van Holt give the villains plenty of personality, Cuthbert and Murray grow into - and beyond - their roles as the production goes on, and even Hilton gets her time to shine as a badass before her virally marketed death, but the rest are just stock caricatures waiting to die).
So while there is plenty to criticize with the passage of time (being a dated, shallow, derivative patchwork of concepts that were better executed in the movies they were lifted from), there is also more for the mature eye to appreciate, reducing House Of Wax (2005) from an above-average disappointment to just being unequivocally okay.
C
Because the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake would do it the following year, House Of Wax was also planned to have a prequel, which was canceled in the wake of the "original" movie's box office failure.
But worry not, because there was already a decent but dated predecessor in 1953!
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Adhering closer to Belden's story and the 1933 Mystery original (changing character names and context, but keeping to the basic structure), this House Of Wax stars the late horror legend Vincent Price (Roger Corman's Poe films, among many other credits, but 90s kids like me know him as the narrator of Michael Jackson's Thriller video) as Henry Jarrod, a proud and talented wax sculptor who is betrayed and left for dead in an arson/insurance fraud scheme by his greedy business partner Burke (Roy Roberts, Chinatown). Some time later, a "mysterious" killer with inhuman strength, a limp, and a burned face begins targeting those who wronged Professor Jarrod and stealing their bodies from the morgue, including those of Burke and his annoyingly ditzy girlfriend Cathy (whose laugh makes me want to melt my own bleeding eyeballs with a faulty blowtorch, even though she's played by the OG Morticia Addams, Carolyn Jones).
As if the audience were dumber than a block of wax, shortly after the killings and thefts begin, Jarrod shows back up to open a new wax museum, where the exhibits are more gruesome and feature more lifelike sculptures than ever before. But he can't be da killer cuz he's in a wheelchair!
Unfortunately for Jarrod, Cathy had a roommate named Sue (Phyllis Kirk, The Thin Man) who is plagued by nightmares of her friend's murder, and thinks the Joan Of Arc exhibit looks a bit too familiar for comfort. Unfortunately for Sue, Jarrod thinks she's the spitting image of his destroyed Marie Antoinette sculpture from the beginning...and he isn't working alone (Jarrod has an assistant named Igor - because 50s horror movie - played by a young Charles Bronson, of the Death Wish series).
The acting and effects (particularly Price and Kirk, the realistic wax figures, and yes, even the hammy barker breaking the fourth wall with his mad paddle-ball skills) were top-notch, the fights and thriller elements were intense and gripping for their time (the latter perhaps even being timeless in their effectiveness), and the pacing was breakneck right from the start.
Unfortunately, the ease with which one can put together what's going on (aside from that "the killer isn't working alone" reveal at the morgue, which took me by genuine surprise) makes the middle drag its feet for way too long, and the portrayal of women here (the ditzy, superficial blonde, corsets and petticoats, Sue being dismissed as a hallucinating hysteric by her own boyfriend! And the police! In the middle of an ongoing murder spree! While those bodies are going missing from the morgue!) is painfully archaic.
Are we sure the men aren't the real blondes in this movie?
It takes our heroine forcing them to acknowledge common sense and do actual police work (but mostly they just detain Jarrod's other assistant, who is a criminal alcoholic, and bribe him with alcohol until he flips, which basically suggests that in the 50s, a male criminal who'd do or say anything for a drink was more credible than an upstanding woman who was best friends with one of the victims) before anyone starts to believe her, by which time she has decided to take matters into her own hands and stumbles her way into being a damsel in distress because she's persistently nosy, she looks like Marie Antoinette, and her boyfriend Scott (Paul Picerni, The Untouchables TV series) needs something to do to justify being in the movie at all. Following a suspenseful fistfight, Scott and the police rescue her in the nick of time and send Jarrod plummeting to his death in a vat of boiling wax.
Add on that Jarrod was somehow able to fully emote and enunciate through a solid wax mask that no one noticed him wearing to hide his burned face (because it was just Vincent Price's actual face the whole time, imagine that), and I struggle to like or be impressed by any part of House Of Wax (1953) that doesn't have fire or Vincent Price's acting in it.
I know this is a hot take, but the only real reason to hate on the 2005 version is that it dares to call itself House Of Wax. But that doesn't necessarily make it a worse movie than the 1953 version, just a safer one. And personally, despite having better early pacing, better acting, and more interesting villain, I found more about this one that aged poorly, and for more socially uncomfortable reasons, than the 2005 one simply being "incredibly 2005."
It still deserves its technological accolades and consideration for the effort put into its production, but I didn't like the 1953 version nearly as much by the end of it as I thought I would.
D+
In the year 2024, with 2025 ahead of us, let's all remember to look closer when we don't know what's real, listen to common sense, and treat our fellow human beings with kindness so they don't try to kill us for being immature, disagreeable assholes.
And as always, please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post to keep the immersion feeling three-dimensional, help out my ad revenue so I can make it through winter, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.
Ticketmaster,
Waxing Out.
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