IMDb RATING
6.8/10
6.9K
YOUR RATING
The disappearance of people and corpses leads a reporter to a wax museum and a sinister sculptor.The disappearance of people and corpses leads a reporter to a wax museum and a sinister sculptor.The disappearance of people and corpses leads a reporter to a wax museum and a sinister sculptor.
Thomas E. Jackson
- Detective
- (as Thomas Jackson)
Bull Anderson
- Janitor
- (uncredited)
Frank Austin
- Winton's Valet
- (uncredited)
Max Barwyn
- Museum Visitor
- (uncredited)
Wade Boteler
- Ambrose
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThis film was produced before the Production Code. When it was remade 20 years later, as House of Wax (1953), all references to drug use were removed, and a character was changed from a junkie to an alcoholic.
- GoofsIvan Igor says that Jean Paul Marat's assassin, Charlotte Corday, was his mistress. Not so - they had never met until she came to his office posing as a courier and quickly stabbed him to death. After her execution a few days later, she was found to be virgo intacta.
- Alternate versionsThis film was shot in two versions. One camera unit shot the film in two-color Technicolor. A second camera unit shot the scenes at the same time in black and white. The black and white version was meant for theaters who could not afford the higher rental cost of the color prints.
- ConnectionsEdited into Mame (1974)
Featured review
"You can go to some nice warm place and I don't mean California."
Classic horror movie directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Lionel Atwill as a deranged sculptor with an "interesting" method of making the statues on display at his wax museum. The last (and best) of the three horror movies Lionel Atwill did with Fay Wray. Atwill is fantastic here and Wray is, as always, delightful. Nice support from Frank McHugh, Gavin Gordon, and Edwin Maxwell, among others. The scene stealer of the movie is Glenda Farrell as the fast-talking reporter heroine. She really has fun with the part. A few years later she would star in the Torchy Blane series and play a character very similar to the one she plays here.
It's a good-looking movie, filmed in two-color Technicolor with nice atmospheric direction from Curtiz. The sets are great, especially Atwill's art deco laboratory. The makeup effects are terrific. It's a juicy Pre-Coder, as evidenced by the gruesome plot and the junkie character played by Arthur Edmund Carewe. Some viewers might be put off by the fact that a large chunk of the middle of the picture is more like a crime story/newspaper movie but I was always entertained, particularly by the back & forth between Farrell and McHugh. So it's not a straight horror movie from beginning to end but, so what, it's still a great film and worth a look. Remade in the '50s as House of Wax with Vincent Price. That version is more well-known than this one but I like rewatching this one more. It's just more fun.
It's a good-looking movie, filmed in two-color Technicolor with nice atmospheric direction from Curtiz. The sets are great, especially Atwill's art deco laboratory. The makeup effects are terrific. It's a juicy Pre-Coder, as evidenced by the gruesome plot and the junkie character played by Arthur Edmund Carewe. Some viewers might be put off by the fact that a large chunk of the middle of the picture is more like a crime story/newspaper movie but I was always entertained, particularly by the back & forth between Farrell and McHugh. So it's not a straight horror movie from beginning to end but, so what, it's still a great film and worth a look. Remade in the '50s as House of Wax with Vincent Price. That version is more well-known than this one but I like rewatching this one more. It's just more fun.
helpful•231
- utgard14
- Jul 13, 2015
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- The Mystery of the Wax Museum
- Filming locations
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime1 hour 17 minutes
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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Top Gap
By what name was Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) officially released in India in English?
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