11/8/2023 0 Comments Wax musuem 1933![]() ![]() ![]() The story is well staged, and the novelty and beauty of the two-strip Technicolor presentation (which is discussed more in the “Video” section below) is one of the main reasons to view the film today. Mystery of the Wax Museum is a lot of fun, and at 78 minutes, the proceedings never drag. I also must add that the final outcome of her character’s amorous adventures in Mystery of the Wax Museum are refreshingly unexpected. She is a true pre-code dame (in the best sense of the word), and it is natural that fast-talking female reporters became her specialty (see the “Torchy Blane” series). However, the true MVP of the picture is Glenda Farrell, who knows how to toss off a wisecrack with aplomb. Fay Wray is fetching in the “Lady in distress” role, but she also manages to inject some character into the part, which probably wasn’t on the page. Lionel Atwill is excellent (Was he ever anything less?) as the obsessed artist, conveying both likability and menace. You can probably guess where this is all going. When Florence ends up at the wax museum, Igor is especially taken with Florence’s roommate (Fay Wray), due to her uncanny resemblance to his favorite lost sculpture, Marie Antoinette. Around the same time, Florence Dempsey (Glenda Farrell), a feisty female reporter, is investigating a rash of disappearances, and the trail leads to the wax museum (after some side treks involving bootleggers and dope fiends). A decade later, Igor, who survived the fire with major burns, opens a new wax museum in New York City. Unfortunately, Igor’s wax museum goes up in flames, when his unscrupulous partner (Edwin Maxwell) sets it ablaze for the insurance money, with Igor inside. Lionel Atwill stars as Ivan Igor, a London artist singularly obsessed with his wax sculptures of famous historical figures. The story-line is very similar to House of Wax, but with a little more bite, due to the fact that the film came out before the production code was strictly enforced. Now the once-lost film is available on Blu-ray from the Warner Archive for new audiences to discover. Happily, with the help of a second discovered print, the UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation have restored the missing footage and cleaned up the film to look like new. The single existing print was even missing a few seconds of footage and dialogue here and there. However, rare theatrical screenings and a standard-definition video release, did not fully restore the film’s reputation, as wear and decay somewhat hampered the viewing experience. It wasn’t until 1969, when a single damaged print turned up from Jack Warner’s private collection, that audiences were able to view Mystery of the Wax Museum again. ![]() Most importantly, by the time television came along, the film was not only forgotten it was considered lost. Secondly, two-strip Technicolor was a short-lived process that was quickly considered out-of-date (and weird-looking), so there was no opportunity for theatrical re-releases in the days before television. For one, the film was produced by Warner Brothers, a studio that made very few horror films in the 1930s (unlike monster-king Universal or even MGM), so those few films received less notice by historians than the gangster films, musicals, and dramas that were more plentiful from the studio. There are multiple reasons that Mystery of the Wax Museum is lesser-known than other horror films produced around the same time. The early process mixed red and green dyes to represent a limited range of colors. Unlike three-strip Technicolor and later full-color processes, two-strip Technicolor could not represent a full spectrum of hues. Where House of Wax was the first color feature shot in 3-D, Mystery of the Wax Museum was an early example of a full-length film shot completely in color, using the early two-strip Technicolor process. Belden and like the remake, the original showcased a technological novelty. The pre-code original was based on the same unpublished short story, “The Wax Works”, by Charles S. Many film fans are unaware that the popular 3-D horror film House of Wax (1953), starring Vincent Price, was actually a remake of the 1933 Michael Curtiz film, Mystery of the Wax Museum, starring Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray. ![]()
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