Fiche technique
| Durée | 84 minutes |
| Année de sortie | 2024 |
| Genre | Horror |
| Pays |  - United States |
| Réalisation | André de Toth |
Présentation
House of Wax is a 1953 American period mystery-horror film directed by Andre DeToth. A remake of Warner Bros.' Mystery of the Wax Museum from 1933, the film stars Vincent Price as a disfigured sculptor who repopulates his destroyed wax museum by murdering people and using their wax-coated corpses as displays. It premiered in New York on April 10, 1953, and had a general release on April 25.
House of Wax was the first color 3-D feature film from a major American studio and premiered two days after the Columbia Pictures film Man in the Dark, the first major-studio black-and-white 3-D feature. It was the first 3-D movie with stereophonic sound to be presented in a regular theater.
In 1971, it was widely re-released to theaters in 3-D with a full advertising campaign. Newly struck prints of the film in Chris Condon's single-strip StereoVision 3-D format were used. Another major re-release occurred during the 3-D boom of the early 1980s. In 2005, Warner Bros. released a remake of the film, but its plot was very different from the other films and received negative reviews from critics.
In 2014, the movie was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress, and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Bande-annonce
Synopsis
Professor Henry Jarrod is a talented wax figure sculptor with a wax museum in early 1900s New York City who specializes in historical figures such as John Wilkes Booth, Joan of Arc, and Marie Antoinette, which Jarrod feels is his best work. Jarrod is aware that his business partner, Matthew Burke, wants out of their partnership, especially since he refuses to add more sensational exhibits, giving a private tour to renowned art critic, Sidney Wallace, who agrees to buy Burke out in about three months, after financing some excavations in Egypt. Impatient, Burke sets the museum on fire to obtain the insurance money. Jarrod attempts to stop Burke and save his life's work, only to be doused in kerosene and left for dead in the fire. Some time after acquiring the insurance money, Burke is murdered by a disfigured man in a cloak, who stages the murder as an act of suicide.
Burke's fiancée, Cathy Gray, is murdered by the cloaked figure weeks after Burke's body was stolen from the morgue, who is then caught in the act by Cathy's friend Sue Allen, who flees to the home of Scott Andrews. When Sue visits the police station the following day, she learns that Cathy's body was taken from the morgue. Wallace meets a wheelchair-bound Jarrod at that time, the sculptor having survived with his hands too damaged to sculpt. Jarrod explains his intention of building a new wax museum with his assistants, the deaf-mute Igor and Leon Averill, conceding to popular taste by including a chamber of horrors showcasing both historical acts of violence such as Anne Boleyn's decapitation and Anne Askew's torture and recent events that include William Kemmler's electrocution and Burke's apparent suicide.
Sue attends the opening of the wax museum and is troubled by the strong resemblance of the figure of Joan of Arc to Cathy. Jarrod claims that he used photographs of Cathy to make the sculpture. But Sue remains unconvinced while Jarrod hires Scott as an assistant, with Jarrod developing an interest in Sue over her resemblance to his long-lost Marie Antoinette sculpture, the police agreeing to investigate the museum while recognizing Averill from his criminal background. Sue arrives after hours to meet with Scott, whom Jarrod sent on an errand, and uncovers the horrifying truth that many of the figures are wax-coated corpses stolen from the morgue, including Burke and Cathy. Sue is confronted by Jarrod, revealed to have pretended to be bound to his wheelchair while wearing a wax mask to conceal his disfigured face and identity as the murderer. He subdues Sue with Igor's help and prepares to use her living body to recreate his Marie Antoinette sculpture. The police, having learned the whole truth from Averill, arrive at the museum and arrest Igor, who attempts to kill Scott before they storm into Jarrod's workshop. They free Sue in time as Jarrod is killed after being knocked into the workshop's vat of wax.
Distribution
| Acteur | Rôle |
|---|---|
| Vincent Price | Henry Jarrod |
| Frank Lovejoy | Tom Brennan |
| Phyllis Kirk | Sue Allen |
| Carolyn Jones | Cathy Gray |
| Paul Picerni | Scott Andrews |
Sources
Serial killer - 27 juillet 2021
Publicité
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