House of Wax is a 1953 Warner Bros. horror film, remaking the same studio's Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933). Vincent Price stars as a skilled sculptor for a wax museum. After he's crippled in an insurance fraud fire, the artist resorts to using actual dead bodies as the basis of his wax figures.
The movie was one of the first mainstream 3D films released during the heyday of the process in the 1950s. While it had fewer overt gimmicks than the movies that followed, the notable exception is an extraneous scene where a street pitchman demonstrates paddleballs, bounding them back and forth. The paddleball bit became associated with 3D in general and was used by Sweetums in Muppet*Vision 3D.
A loose slasher film remake was released in 2005.
References[]
- For the "Tales from the Vet" segment in Muppets Tonight episode 201, Dr. Phil Van Neuter promises his viewers Stephen King's Townhouse of Wax, and to look for hotel magnate "Leona Helmsley in a passing cameo as Edwina, the painting that would not die!" (Mulch shows a Christmas party video instead).
- In his May 13, 2005 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Fozzie Bear closes his act by asking if this is an audience or a screening of (the new) House of Wax.
- The "Halloween Film Countdown" short of From the Balcony briefly mentions the 2005 film, and whether or not Paris Hilton was actually made of wax.