House of Wax (film, 1953)

New York, 1902 The talented artist and sculptor Henry Jared created a magnificent collection of wax figures of historical characters: Marc Anthony and Cleopatra , the moment of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln , Joan of Arc dances, and in the center of the museum is Marie Antoinette , whose eyes follow everyone around. But the museum is not popular, because in it (according to Matthew Burke, Jared’s companion) there is nothing that attracts the public - violence and horror. Burke repeatedly offers Jared to arrange a horror hall, but all the time receives a refusal.

The visiting critic, a wealthy collector of Sydney Wallace, is delighted with the works of Jared, but he does not dare to buy them immediately, as urgent matters require his departure to Egypt for 3 months, but he kindly promises to think about this proposal. Burke finds out that the sale of his stake in the company is delayed because of this delay (in addition, Jared invites Wallace to become his companion instead of Burke), and arranges arson to get insurance of $ 25,000, while stunning Jared, making sure that he also burned out with the museum. But Jared comes to his senses and tries to save his creations, but realizing that it is useless, he tries to save himself and disappears in the fire. At the same time, due to the explosion of lamp gas, the whole house is engulfed in flames. Jared’s body was not found.

Time passes. Burke establishes a carefree life, receiving solely $ 25,000 insurance, but that very night a man with a disfigured face kills him in his own office and hangs him in the elevator shaft, imitating suicide. Soon after, Burke's girlfriend Katie Gray (a slightly frivolous, but kind and cheerful girl), living with her friend Sue Allen, is going on a date with a certain gallant gentleman and is not too sad about the death of Burke, who was in no hurry to marry her. But after a few hours, Sue finds her friend in the apartment dead. Suddenly, a disfigured man who had previously killed Burke pounced on Sue. The girl manages to escape from the room, but the monster sets off in pursuit of her. With great difficulty, Sue manages to hide in the house of her friend Scott Andrews. Detective Tom Brennan and the entire police are confused: none of the suspects and detainees in the Katie murder case fit Sue’s description of the disfigured man. A medical examination admits Katie is deceased from an overdose of sleeping pills. The employees of the morgue take her body to the storehouse, from where the disfigured person abducts Katie's body, and soon the body of Matthew Burke disappears from the same morgue.

After some time, Sydney Wallace receives a letter from ... Henry Jared. He did not die in the fire, but he was confined to a wheelchair, his hands were badly damaged and he cannot create wax figures himself, and therefore he hired two assistants - a deaf-mute sculptor Igor and drinking artist Leon Avril.

Soon, Jared opens a new wax museum, this time with a horror room filled with scenes of torture and murder. But his characters look real and are surprisingly similar to dead and missing people - Burke, who “hanged himself” in the elevator, was immediately “identified” by Jared’s new companion (although he convinces him that he made the figure “from memory”), and Sue Allen , who came to the exhibition with Scott, recognizes in Joan of Arc the murdered girlfriend Katie Gray. Jared hears their conversation and tells them that there is nothing unusual in the similarity - the image of Jeanne was borrowed from the photographs of Katie, which he saw in the newspaper. Scott, as an aspiring sculptor, receives an offer from Jared to work together, and Sue receives a request to be a model to recreate Jared's best masterpiece - Marie Antoinette.

Sue comes to pose, but she does not leave the thought of the implausible similarity of wax Joan of Arc with a dead friend. She takes off her wig and realizes that Katie’s body is hidden under the wax. But she is noticed by Jared and tries to stop her from leaving, getting up from a wheelchair. Sue punches Jared in the face and it collapses: it was a wax mask, under which Jared's real face was hidden, disfigured after that fire. Sue faints and Jared takes her to the basement of the museum and rivets her to the table, expecting her to replace the lost Maria Antoinette when she is doused with wax. But the police arrive at the museum on time, before which they interrogated assistant Jared Leon Avril, from whom he learns that Jared survived the fire, but lost his mind; they will also learn about Burke and Katie Gray. During an attempt to arrest and fight the police, Jared falls into a tub of boiling wax.

The film is the first Warner Bros. movie to be shot using 3D effects. In an interview (later included in the 100 Years of Horror program), Vincent Price called these shootings one of Hollywood's greatest stories. Andre de Taut, whom the actor paid tribute to as a good director, had only one eye, and generally could not see the film in a 3D volume version: “ Andre de Thot was a good director, but his appointment was, to put it mildly, ridiculous, because he didn’t see . He was in dismay, now and then he said: “What are they doing? Why are they so happy? "He did not understand. But he made a good picture. He created a very good thriller, and the tricks in it were natural, and there were many of them - they literally threw objects at the audience . ”

Due to the fact that the film was shot not only in 3D, but in Technicolor , special attention was paid to the makeup in the form of ugly scars from Vincent Price's burns. The result exceeded all expectations: when Price went into the studio cafeteria for lunch during the break, the saleswoman almost fainted, and all the other visitors quickly left.

In the scene at the beginning of the film, where a fire occurs in the workshop of Henry Jared, Vincent Price did not actually portray fear, but actually experienced it. Before the shooting began, the pyrotechnic team had previously determined in which parts of the scenery the fire would blaze, but when the shooting began, it quickly lost control of it, because of which the latter spread to those parts of the scenery that should not have burned. Since the rapidly melting wax mannequins were very difficult to replace, De Tot continued to shoot even when a fire brigade arrived at the site. The result of the fire was Price’s scorched eyebrows and burnt through the roof of the studio pavilion.

In the scene of rescue Scott Andrews, a real knife is used from under the guillotine. Initially, director Andre de Taut refused to shoot this scene due to the fact that actor Paul Pizerny refused to use the stuntman. However, later, at the insistence of the Warner Bros. studio, the scene was still shot without an understudy and in one take ^[1] .

There is a small blunder in the film - Henry Jared demonstrates to the public the wax figure of the Bluebeard wife-killer, Henri Landry is clearly guessed in appearance. However, Landry’s case was opened in 1919, and the film takes place in about 1902 (this is indicated primarily by Jared’s reservation during the presentation of the figure by William Kemmler (“ electric chair was first used 12 years ago )”, indirectly - preserving gas light in New York and a portrait of President Theodore Roosevelt in the office of Lieutenant Tom Brennan). However, the name "Bluebeard" was not named.