List Price: $14.96 Our Price: $11.97YOU SAVE $2.99!
Buy it
DVD House of Wax
House of Wax brought Vincent Price into the horror genre, where he fit as snugly as a scalpel in a mad scientist's hand. A remake of the 1933 film Mystery of the Wax Museum, this entertaining Gothic shocker casts Price as a sculptor of wax figures; his unwilling victims--er, "models"--lend their bodies to his lifelike depictions of Marie Antoinette and Joan of Arc. The film was one of the top 10 moneymakers of its year, thanks in part to the 3-D gimmick, which explains why so many things are aimed at the camera (why else would the paddleball man be there?). Footnote to history: director Andre De Toth was blind in one eye, and thus could not see in three dimensions.
Not at all a musty relic of the early-sound era, the original Mystery of the Wax Museum (shot in a soft, trial version of Technicolor) is saucy, pre-Code fun. As corpses disappear from the morgue, Lionel Atwill's wax museum adds to its displays. Coincidence, or the work of the hideously deformed fiend stalking the Manhattan night? Most of the snappy dialogue comes courtesy of reporter Glenda Farrell, a vintage wisecracking dame. --Robert Horton
It's 1953, and Vincent Price is about to appear in his first horror film, a move that of course predicated what was to be the genre we remember this marvelous actor for. Filmed in 3-D, a feat in itself for fifty years ago, this tale revolves around Price, a wax museum curator, who is badly disfigured in a fire set by his greedy partner (the effable Roy Roberts) in order to get the twenty five thousand dollars in insurance money. A few years later, a now demented Price wants revenge and gets it, while setting up a fanciful new wax museum whose figures have a secret twist. We all know how they're made, but it's fun guessing along. Carolyn Jones (Addams Family), Phyllis Kirk, Frank Lovejoy and Charles Bronson all show up in supporting roles and the end result is a campy, enjoyable thriller, actually much more interesting than the confusing 2005 remake. Price fans will love this one.
Vincent Price enters the world of horror movies via the "House of Wax"
With the new "House of Wax" out on DVD this week I thought it was time to go back and see the original version with Vincent Price. Of course, director André De Toth's 1953 film was based on Michael Curtiz's slightly superior 1933 film "Mystery of the Wax Museum," which why those two films have much more in common that the two "House of Wax" films. Besides, this "House of Wax" was shot in 3-D and part of the fun in watching it again is to spot the 3-D effect. The opening titles and the ping pong player (Reggie Rymal) going after our popcorn are the most obvious ones, but you will notice the film is not full of obvious 3-D shots (pay attentions to limbs and such, especially on the Can-Can dancers). The craze was launched the previous year with the release of "Bwana Devil," in an attempt to win back audiences from the exploding success of television. Fortunately, "House of Wax" stands on its own.
This time the setting is in Baltimore before the Civil War rather than contemporary New York City. Henry Jarrod (Vincent Price) is a brilliant artist when it comes to making wax figures, although the way he talks to his creations makes us doubt his sanity. When Jarrod's partner, Matthew Burke (Roy Roberts), tries to burn down their wax museum for the insurance money, Jarrod fights him and is presumed killed in the inferno trying to rescue his beloved creations. Years later a hideously disfigured man kills both Burke and his gold digging mistress, Cathy Gray (Carolyn Jones), whose bodies are stolen from the morgue. At this same time Jarrod, now rolling around in a wheelchair with his hands horrible burned by the fire, opens up his new House of Wax. Jarrod has become interested in using Sue Allen (Phyllis), the ex-roommate of Burke's dead mistress, as the model for his new Marie Antoinette. Sue is seeing Scott Andrews (Paul Picerni), who is working as one of Jarrod's assistants, along with the deaf-mute Igor (Charles Bronson when he was still going by Buchinsky) and the squirrelly Leon Averill (Nedrick Young). Meanwhile, Lt. Brennan (Frank Lovejoy) and Sgt. Jim Shane (Dabbs Greer), are investigating the disappearing corpses and trying to figure out the mystery.
The problem is that from the viewers point of view it is clear who is doing the murders, so there are no real surprises here. The only really spooky part is when the shadowy figure is following the damsel in distress through the misty streets. But there is fun to be had in just seeing the displays of wax works in the two museums, both of which are filmed in such rich colors that you forget their are dead people underneath the wax. If you have ever been to a real wax museum, that is to say a good one like one of Madame Tussaud's (in London for me), the only real difference is that the chamber of horrors is dimly lit to heighten the effects (and the shocks), while Jarrod's displays are bathed in light (all the better to see them in). Besides, it is the idea of what those figures really are that is at play here.
The whole idea of preserving corpses as art, whether you use wax or plaster (as in "A Bucket of Blood") is pretty creepy. The whole idea of displaying perfectly preserved corpses, as was done with Vladimir Lenin and Eva Peron, seems rather ghoulish if you are not part of those respective cults of personality. The recent controversy over whether sending plastinated corpses on exhibition tours crosses the line between science education and desecration speaks to this as well. The climax of these films always comes when the wax breaks or melts away and the horrible truth is revealed. "House of Wax" also has the added advantage of letting us see Vincent Price's face crumble away to reveal the horrors beneath, which would be repeated in the Dr. Phibes movies. In fact, it was "House of Wax" that effectively launched Price on his career in horror films for which he is ultimately remembered.
House of Wax
The oldies but goodies are still the best horror films on the market. Unlike todays movies the blood and gore is more implied then in you face, but still very frightening.
PT Barnumish producer/director William Castle hit his stride in this 1959 classic. In theaters, he used a gimmick called PERCEPTO, which would send a little shock through selected seats in the theaters, causing some real frights to unsuspecting moviegoers.
The movie is really hard to believe, but it's done with such panache and Vincent Price is at his excellent hammiest best, it rates as a real horror classic. THE TINGLER is a physical embodiment of fear that looks like a centipede with claws and snaps the spinal cord of the victim IF they don't get to scream. Price is joined by Judith Evelyn as a deaf mute whose nerdy husband (the excellent Phillip Coolidge) decides to use this tingler effect to scare her to death and run off with her fortune. The movie has a classic sequence... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Vincent Price - Judith Evelyn Director(s): William Castle DVD Release Date: Released the 07 September 1999 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $9.95 Your Price: $9.95YOU SAVE $0!
Buy it
William Castle's gimmick-laden comic thriller is not so much a horror movie as a fairground funhouse come to life. Vincent Price stars as a deliciously silky millionaire married to a greedy gold digger (Carol Ohmart) who refuses to divorce him. When he turns his wife's idea for a haunted-house party into a contest--$10,000 to whoever will spend the night in "the only truly haunted house in the world"--it seems he may have found an alternative to divorce. Five strangers gather to test their stamina, Price hands each of them delightfully twisted party favors (loaded handguns, delivered in their own tiny coffins), and the spook show begins. Blood drips from the ceiling, zombielike apparitions float through rooms, severed heads and skeletons suddenly appear, and then a guest is found hanging... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Vincent Price - Carol Ohmart Director(s): William Castle DVD Release Date: Released the 21 August 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.98 Your Price: $13.48YOU SAVE $1.5!
Buy it
The plot device is so damned great that it simply had to be revisited: a scientist invents a device that transmits matter by disintegrating it in one chamber and reintegrating it in another. When he attempts to transmit his own body, he accidentally allows a fly into the chamber, and the resulting man-insect hybrid runs rampant across the Canadian countryside. Philippe, the son of that ill-fated scientist, is told the family history by a benevolent uncle (an oddly prim Vincent Price); possessed with the scientific will-to-know, he becomes determined to re-create his father's experiments. The legendarily silly costuming of the original Fly returns, and with it, the perplexing logic of transmogrification--it becomes difficult to decipher which of the man-insect hybrids we're meant to... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Edward Bernds DVD Release Date: Released the 04 September 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.98 Your Price: $13.48YOU SAVE $1.5!
Buy it
The Masque of the Red Death (1964) is Roger Corman's, and most people's, choice as the best of the Edgar Allan Poe pictures. Masque offers the expected creepy atmosphere and violence against peasants, plus metaphysical ponderings and pointed satanic cruelty. (Corman was operating as much under the influence of Ingmar Bergman as of Edgar Allan Poe.) Nicolas Roeg's color cinematography and Daniel Haller's elaborate production design would be stellar in any Hollywood A-movie; the mono-colored rooms of the prince's castle are a startling effect. Vincent Price is in fine fettle as Prince Prospero, the devil-worshipping sadist who throws lavish parties while the countryside is ravaged by the plague.
The Premature Burial (1962) substitutes Ray Milland in the usual Price... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Vincent Price Director(s): Roger Corman DVD Release Date: Released the 27 August 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.95 Your Price: $13.46YOU SAVE $1.49!
Buy it
I enjoy the master of horror Vincent Price in movies like this one, along with Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre. This is a cult classic that anyone who enjoys comedy mixed with a little terror will surely want to watch. This very early performance by Jack Nicholson is great to see. The picture quality of this DVD is very good. More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Vincent Price - Peter Lorre - Boris Karloff Director(s): Jacques Tourneur DVD Release Date: Released the 26 August 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.95 Your Price: $11.96YOU SAVE $2.99!
Buy it
