Schlock Locker review of The House of Wax

House of Wax

Salutations one and all! Lurking from the Locker tonight is a ghoulish tale of love and madness; from 1953 we have another Vincent Price classic, House of Wax. It also stars my favorite Morticia Addams, Carolyn Jones and a young Charles Bronson in his pre-vigilante days. I seem to be stuck in a “Vincent Price rut” of late, probably due to the Halloween season and seeing a number of his flicks on AMC as well.

Price’s character, Henry Jarrod, co-owns a wax museum with a tool/ass-hat partner; a dickhead businessman who feels that in the turn-of-the-century, cut-throat arena of competitive wax-museums, that their wax museum is falling behind! Jarrod, who is a wax-artist and renown sculptor, likes the more “historic” settings and Fart-Knocker McDouchbag feels that they should be doing more “gory” and “macabre” settings to rake in more money. This is somewhat refreshing since this is the one and only time I have ever seen Price’s character go for the mundane as opposed to the macabre. When Dick-zilla wants to torch the place for the insurance money, a struggle breaks out and becomes a good old 1950’s era rock-em sock-em slug fest. Unfortunately, the place burns and Jarrod escapes and begins plotting his revenge. He re-opens a wax museum and strange things begin happening such as a deformed figure killing innocent people and stealing bodies. This all leads to a dramatic crescendo and sadly ends in a bubbling vat of poetic justice.

Yeaaaaahhh! I'm thinking you are gonna need a few more buckets there, Vincent!

All in all, not a bad movie. Of course, it is highly predictable but when it isn’t trying to keep us on the edge of our seats with a harrowing chase scene though the mostly deserted city, the movie makes LAME attempts to show us the “3-D Vision” experience. It was highly comical. The producers of the film went OUT OF THEIR WAY to throw shit at the audience. Up to an including, and this was just sad, having some guy in a tux at the new House of Wax’s opening night walk around outside and threaten every paying customer with one of those crazy paddles which has a rubber ball attached to it via a rubber band. By God, they paid that guy to be there, they were gonna film it! I don’t know about you but MY experience with those things were not too good! After the third “whack”… which was about the 40th time I actually TRIED to hit the ball, the rubber band broke, the ball disappeared, and now my father had a ready-made paddle! So, when these things made it into the house, they disappeared rapidly.

I found the plot and many of the situations straining credulity, at best, and had difficulty suspending disbelief to make it work. Also, one of the villain’s victims, this gold-digging social climbing pretender.. I didn’t really shed too many tears when she bought it! Her laugh was irritating as hell. I was hoping she would choke on a saspirilla and spare us all. Now THAT would have been entertaining!!! I’d LOVE…hell, might even pay to see that in “3-D O’VISION!”

But, all in all, House of Wax (NOT the remake of the remake..just the remake) was worth my time. Until next time, keep rockin the Schlock.

See.. a guy threaten you with a paddle ball in the STUNNING THIRD DIMENSION!!!

Here is the rather funny trailer..

But don't get TOO worked up.. Its a full two minutes of carrying on about the 3D

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"House of Wax"