Horrorfest 2023: The Mystery of the Wax Museum

The Mystery of the Wax Museum

Screenplay by Don Mullaly and Carl Erickson

Based on the story by Charles S. Belden

Directed by Michael Curtiz

Starring Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell and Frank McHugh

USA, 1933

THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM makes a good double feature with DOCTOR X -- they have a lot in common. They're both shot in the weird but cool two-strip Technicolor process, they both star horror greats Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray, and, though I failed to note it on DOCTOR X, they were both directed by Michael Curtiz, who later went on to make such obscure hidden gems as CASABLANCA. You've probably never heard of it.

Once again I thought maybe I had already seen this film, but I was thinking of its remake, 1953's HOUSE OF WAX, a Horrorfest alum starring Vincent Price. Both films follow the same basic plot, though this one takes place in the then-contemporary 1930s while the Vincent Price version is a period piece. Also, being a pre-code movie, this one dabbles in a little more of the lurid stuff like bootlegging, drug addiction and Fay Wray putting on stockings.

Atwill stars as a sculptor who loves his wax figures. Unfortunately his London wax museum is not pulling in the dough so the sculptor's business partner (Edwin Maxwell) hatches a plot to burn the place down for insurance money. Unfortunately, Atwill is not only traumatized by the destruction of his creations but also injured in the fire himself. He resurfaces in New York ten years later with a new wax museum, mysteriously coinciding with bodies disappearing from the morgue. An intrepid reporter (Glenda Farrell) is snooping around, and her roommate (Fay Wray) happens to be dating one of Atwill's assistants (Allen Vincent). Atwill develops a fascination with Wray because she looks just like his favorite sculpture destroyed in the fire, Mario Antoinette.

This movie has all the strengths of DOCTOR X -- the color is cool, the set design is cool, it's never boring with one damn thing after another and the performances are great. 

The ending is a bit of a head scratcher as our fearless reporter decides to marry her jerk of an editor (Frank McHugh) seemingly out of nowhere, when she has developed a perfectly good relationship with a raffish n'er-do-well (Gavin Gordon) who has become her de facto crime-solving sidekick. Maybe you have to be from 1933 to get it?