Mystery of the Wax Museum

A sculptor runs a wax museum in London; the work is extraordinary and nobody comes. His partner burns the place down for the insurance and the sculptor is badly injured in the fire. Years later a new wax museum opens in New York and the figures are better than before. In the same period bodies go missing from the morgue. Florence, a reporter, goes after it. Michael Curtiz directs. Lionel Atwill plays the sculptor, Glenda Farrell plays Florence and Fay Wray plays Charlotte. It was shot in two colour Technicolor, one of the few early colour films, and the process was abandoned shortly afterwards. It was long considered lost; no print could be found for years and one turned up in Jack Warner's private collection in the sixties. The most modern thing in it is the reporter. Florence talks fast, is afraid of nobody and runs the investigation; she is outside the female template of the period. It was made before the Hays code was strictly enforced and the scenes involving drink, drugs and a corpse are explicit; such a film would not have been possible in later years. It was remade in three dimensions in 1953 as House of Wax, and that version is better known. Who it is for: anyone interested in early horror and the history of colour film. Who it is not for: the rhythm is uneven, the comic passages interrupt the horror, and the ending is rushed.