Trailer—Nightmare in Wax

source: Nightmare in Wax

I love this flick. It's sleazy and mean without being xplicict. It's tacky and way entertaining. If you want Citizen Kane, look elsewhere, otherwise this House of Wax rip -off is a clunky blast! Cameron Mitchell is an eyepatch wearin' wax museum curatin' psycho who "freezes" various Hollywood hacks...if you can find it and you like bad movies it's well worth 90 minutes of your life.

***SPOILERS*** Ridicules remake of the 1953 horror classic "House of Wax" with a deranged Cameron Mitchell, who's seen better day and was in far better movies, as the mad as a hatter wax museum curator Vincent Rinard. Rinard who's face had been disfigured when his boss Paragon Pictures CEO Max Black, Barney Kroeger,spilled a glass of brandy at him while he was lighting up a cigarette. That happened during a fight he had with him over Paragon Pictures' top star Marie Morgan,Anne Helm, over whom of the two suiters, Rinard or Black, she was to marry. Recovering from his injuries Rinard opens up the famous Hollywood Wax Museum and uses his talents to kidnap and turned into wax like zombies those that he has it in for including his love Marie's former boyfriend actor Tony Dean, Phillip Brird, among others. We also have two bumbling policemen Det. Haskell, Scott Brady, and his partner Sgt. Carver, Johnny Cardos, on the case of the missing actors whom Rinard turned into living and breathing wax figures. Rinard's big plan is to kidnap Max Black and punish him for what he did to him by having him join his victims as members of his wax museum encourager. And he uses the not too bright go-go dancer Thereas, Victoria Carroll,to entice Black to go there and be turned into a ball or man of wax. ***SPOILERS***The movie really goes nowhere with Rinard too crazy to accomplish his devious plans which is to turn all is enemies into wax figures and soon goes completely nuts, if he wasn't already, when the love of his life the beautiful actress Marie Morgan turns him down cold for her true love the waxed and drugged up Tony Dean. It's Tony whom Rinard, in trying to impress her with his skills of waxing people, introduces Marie to in order to get her, in seeing that Tony is no longer able to satisfy her anymore, to fall in love with him. The films final sequence has all of Rinard's immobilized wax zombies suddenly come alive after their shocked back to life during an electoral storm. The ending is a real letdown in it having really nothing to do with whats been happening during the entire movie but to finally and mercifully put an end to all this insanity. It takes some time to figure out what exactly happened in the films final few minutes which by then you've just about lost all interest in it! The only saving grace in the movie is Cameron Mitchell's acting as the crazed and off the wall wax museum curator Vincent Rinard. It's Mitchell who seemed to have put his entire heart and soul into the part. Mitchell seems so caught up with his role that what would have caused most actors to crack up and break into uncontrolled hysterics he actually takes seriously!

A scarred, embittered owner of a wax museum with a twisted mind devises horrible fates for those who cross him. This piece of trash was written by the prolific Rex Carlton, and directed by Bud Townsend (who went on to direct the much more memorable film, "Alice in Wonderland" -- the * version). It comes to us with below average film quality, at least on the Mill Creek disc. Star Cameron Mitchell ("Blood and Black Lace") probably regretted appearing in this one. There is an interesting, bulky head bandage with the victim smoking... unintentionally scary... but that's like the only nice thing i can say about it. There is a pointless go-go dancing scene with a band called the T-Bones... really dates the film, for better or worse. There is no point in ever seeing this movie.

A former Hollywood make-up artist who now runs a wax museum after his face s disfigured by a movie mogul seeks revenge on all those he feels have wronged him. A nicely subdued performance from Cameron Mitchell is really the only reason to catch this dull low-budget House of Wax remake. The direction and editing are crude to say the least, and apart from Mitchell, the performances are amateurish. Director Bud Townsend does manage a couple of creepy scenes, but that's hardly enough to justify sitting through so much dross.

THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933) with Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray was remade in 1953 as HOUSE OF WAX with Vincent Price. Both of these films are horror classics in their own right. NIGHTMARE IN WAX is a remake of the remake, with Cameron Mitchel in the role of bitter, disfigured, wax figure creator, Vincent Renard. True to the original plot, people are disappearing, shortly before new wax dummies appear in Vincent's studio. There's a new "twist", in that these are more like zombies than corpses dipped in wax. Vengeful and totally bananas, Mitchell plays Renard like he's channeling eeevil Captain Kirk in an eye patch, with oatmeal on his face! Absurd and thuddingly boring, enduring this movie is like swimming through mud. Sans any terror, drama, or suspense, even its attempts at humor fall dead. Seemingly made over a long weekend, the production values are much like those found in TV commercials of the period. This is cinematic cruelty, a dull knife through the viewer's brainpan...

Certainly not a bad purchase for only £1.97, especially not when you're, like me, a fan of minimally budgeted and legendary BAD horror cinema of the older days. Genre regular Cameron Mitchell ("Blood and Black Lace", "The Toolbox Murders") gives another tremendously grotesque performance, this time as the deranged & deformed sculptor-artist/curator of a wax museum in Hollywood. Vince Renard wasn't always an eccentric loner... Once he was a celebrated make-up artist in a big production studio and engaged to a beautiful and promising young actress. The sneaky studio boss, however, fancied the actress too and he set fire to Vince's face when he lit a cigarette. Now Vince, wearing an eye-patch and still smoking like a chimney, puts all his anger in his skillful and extremely detailed wax statues that are strangely exhibited in the museum simultaneously with the real actors disappearing. Rex Carlton's script shamelessly imitates the success of "House of Wax" when it comes to the psycho's motivation, but his modus operandi is different as he keeps the victims alive like mindless zombies. There's very little suspense and/or creepy atmosphere, because the situations are so exaggeratedly absurd, and all the characters are incredibly stupid. At one point police detective Haskell asks himself, if Vince is a maniacal killer, then where exactly in his museum does he hide the corpses? Um, what do you think Sherlock? But no one beats Theresa, who's so stupid she doesn't even understand simple English words like "discreet". There's very little gore (probably due to the lack of budget), apart from the bloody flashback scene illustrating how Vince lost his eye, but still "Nightmare in Wax" is never really boring and at least it's bad in a fun way. The ending, however, is unforgivably retarded even though it makes sense if you follow the plot literally.

While IMDb doesn't say so, this film is a remake of a remake. The original film, "Mystery of the Wax Museum", was okay but the 1953 remake, "House of Wax" is a brilliant horror classic. So why remake it in 1969? And, why bother if you are going to spend so little for makeup or talent? Cameron Mitchell was not a bad actor--but he wasn't very good here in the film. His personality and style didn't put the part over like Vincent Price did in the previous version...and that's an understatement! Additionally, while Mitchell's character is supposed to be horribly disfigured, the facial makeup actually looks like it was made up of a flour/water paste and clumsily applied to him! It simply looks ridiculous. As for the story, it's a lot like "House of Wax" but set in modern Hollywood. And, because of this, the actual Movieland Wax Museum was used as the setting. Aside from this, there is NOTHING in the film that would make it worth recommending. The writing is terrible, the direction is terrible and the entire effort limp and uninspired. The bottom line is that I suffered through this bad film--you don't have to yourself!

I enjoyed Nightmare in Wax, taking it on the pulpy level that it intends and achieves. It's fun. It's not mindlessly sadistic (so if you want that, look elsewhere). Not hopelessly incompetent, either (just a bit, maybe, but hope is there). I admit that at first I confused it with a wax museum horror featuring a curator with a false hand, which is interchangeable with a hook or a cleaver. Were there two versions of this film? No; the man with the cleaver was Patrick O'Neal in Chamber of Horrors (1966). It gave me a restless night figuring that one out. These things worry horror fans. The Patrick O'Neal film is a classier offering. The photography is much glossier, and Wilfred Hyde-White adds his own charm to the proceedings. But Cameron Mitchell in Nightmare in Wax adds his own special (if not too refined) touch of wickedness, pursuing Anne Helm through his Faustian workshop, hypodermic in hand. That chase between tottering dummies and bubbling vats doesn't quite elevate the film into the realms of horror achieved by Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray... but it's pretty good, all the same. A couple of years before Nightmare in Wax, Cameron Mitchell starred in a Spanish/West German co-production of Island of the Doomed (1967) (a.k.a. The Bloodsuckers, The Maneater of Hydra, etc.) I was fortunate enough to see that sharing a double-bill with Slaughter of the Vampires. That was in my long-ago teens. Much more recently I bought it on DVD (with the widescreen sadly cropped). Now wouldn't it be great if someone had the discrimination (I shan't say the taste) to bring out a restored widescreen double-DVD of both Nightmare in Wax and Island of the Doomed. We can only hope!