![]() ![]() The odd color enhances the odd nature of the story, especially the vivid greens in a few creepy closeups. As we see the picture today, two colors were not a handicap for these folks. Ray Rennahan and set designer/art director Anton Grot worked with the process’ limited color palette to create plenty of atmosphere. Mystery Of The Wax Museum was the last feature shot in two-color Technicolor. The hot lights needed for Technicolor photography didn’t get along with the wax figures. ![]() There are times when it’s quite obvious the wax figures are played by people. Ray Rennaham (behind camera), Lionel Atwill and Michael Curtiz. And of course there are numerous opportunities to gawk at Fay Wray’s legs. And we get to spend time in the morgue, with a body rising to a seated position, an eery result of the embalming process. One, Darcy (Arthur Edmund Carewe), is a junkie who the police question until his DTs cause him to spill. Atwill’s employees are quite a seemly, leering bunch. The picture seems to wallow in its more lurid aspects. Some of it’s a real hoot - and some a little suggestive, which helps remind you that this is a pre-Code picture. The dialogue has that snappy early-30s cops and reporters repartee going on, which we know from pictures like The Front Page (1931). Seeing it look this good, and with its sound cleaned up to an astonishing degree, there are some things about the film that really strike you. From there, things get even weirder and far more sinister as Atwill’s evil plan and despicable working methods are discovered. (Obviously, House Of Wax was a very faithful remake.) Then, as luck would have it, Fay Wray wanders into the museum, and she’s the spitting image of Atwill’s melted masterpiece, Marie Antoinette. A young reporter (Glenda Farrell) notices that the Joan Of Ark figure looks a lot like a young women who died a few days ago, and whose body disappeared from the morgue. Years later, that sculptor has relocated to New York and is about to reopen a new museum with recreations of his greatest works. A sculptor (Lionel Atwill) is disfigured when a London wax museum is burned by its owner for the insurance money. And while it might not reach some of those lurid, lofty heights, it really holds its own. This restoration (a second print was later discovered in France) levels the playing field to let it compete with its ghoulish gang of contemporaries - 30s horror masterpieces like Frankenstein (1931), White Zombie (1932), The Black Cat (1934) and so on. We don’t have to imagine what it looked like back in ’33. And I’m happy to say, man, this thing’s creepier than ever.Ĭome to think of it, it’s like it’s been found again! We don’t have to look past or through anything anymore. And its color, while still a little weird, shines like a diamond (or an emerald since there’s so much green). But thanks to Warner Archive’s new Blu-Ray - from a miraculous restoration by UCLA and The Film Foundation, with funding from The George Lucas Family Foundation, it’s certainly not lost. In fact, it’s probably better known now as the movie House Of Wax (1953) was a remake of. To most folks, it’s just a creaky, creepy old horror movie with weird-looking color. Well, enough time’s gone by that Mystery Of The Wax Museum isn’t a lost film anymore. (The story goes that the picture’s cinematographer, Technicolor artiste Ray Rennahan, attended one of those screenings, and he was so dismayed by what was on the screen, he left.) ![]() Sadly, the 16mm color prints (pulled from Jack’s 35) that made the rounds of colleges and film festivals weren’t much to write home about. Same goes with what it looks like - we’ll take anything, it’s lost!* When a 35mm Technicolor print of Mystery Of The Wax Museum (1933) turned up in Jack Warner’s personal archive (about 50 years ago!), all that mattered was seeing it. It’s lost, good or bad doesn’t matter anymore. There’s something about a “lost” film that magically lifts it above the usual concerns about quality. Rasmussen), Arthur Edmund Carewe (Darcy/Sparrow) Igor), Fay Wray (Charlotte Duncan), Glenda Farrell (Florence), Frank McHugh (Editor), Allen Vincent (Ralph Burton), Gavin Gordon (George Winton), Edwin Maxwell (Joe Worth), Holmes Herbert (Dr. Screenplay by Don Mullaly and Carl EricksonĬast: Lionel Atwill (Mr. Blu-Ray Review: Mystery Of The Wax Museum (1933) ![]()
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