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Nightmare in Wax (1969)

Crimes in the Wax Museum
Monster of the Wax Museum


Cast:

Cameron "Commander Santa Claus from Space Mutiny" Mitchell is Vincent Renard
Anne Helm is Marie Morgan
Scott "I was the Sheriff in Gremlins?" Brady is Det. Haskell
Berry Kroeger is Max Black
Victoria Carroll is Theresa


What the box says:

A shuddering suspense-filled story about a scarred, embittered owner of a wax museum, whose twisted mind devises horrible fates for those who cross him.


Plot:

At the party, Marie Morgan announces her engagement to other star, Tony Dean. Afterwards, Tony is jabbed with a syringe by a mysterious man. Hollywood, land of movie stars, cocktail parties, swanky engagement announcements, and being stabbed with syringes full of strange drugs.

A couple of months later, at the wax museum, the guide shows the group the celebs including several that disappeared in the last few months including a soon to be displayed Tony Dean. A couple of police come to visit Vincent Reynard, the museum owner. Apparently, a couple of years ago, Vince used to date Marie Morgan. The studio owner, Max, didn't want Marie to marry Vince, the head of makeup. The good Max tosses a drink on Vince who smokes more that chimney. The resulting fire BBQed half of Vince's face and makes him lose an eye. In the aftermath, Vince drives Marie away from him...


Never has there been a more trustworthy plastic surgeon...

Marie isn't acting since Tony has disappeared. Max wants her to get over it and get back to work. Later, Marie learns about Vince's Tony figure. She offers to buy it.


Is 'my refrigerator is running?' But why should go and get it?

Later, at the museum, the guide notices one of the disappeared stars start to blink. He tells Vince about it who calms him down. Vince re-syringes the girl.

That night, at a night club, Vince talks with a dancer, Theresa. HE offers to make statue of her if she brings Max by the museum one night.

Max talks with a director that wants Marie to star in his latest picture. Max realizes that with a little changing of the script, they could include the wax museum figure of Tony as a tribute and that'll bring Marie into the fold.

That night, Theresa gets Max to the museum. Vince shows the display of Theresa's head and the Tony head. He explains that Tony is paralyzed. He gets Max. Theresa runs off and is chased before finally getting stabbed. Outside, the cops have started to suspect that Max is somehow involved in Tony's disappearance and have been following him.

Vince sneaks Theresa's body in Max's car and drives away. The cops chase after the car. Outrunning them to a pier, Vince gets off and runs around in the pier and evades the police.

The morning paper headline blasts about Max implicated in the death of Theresa, the dancer. Detective Haskell checks with Vince again about the strange coincidence the model of Theresa’s head and how Max came by, too. Vince has painted Max's head into a clown. Haskell won't give up with his cop-sense tingling.

Staking out the museum, Haskell sneaks into the museum before it is locked up for the night. Elsewhere, Marie comes to Vince's workshop and sees the Tony head. As she settles for Vince to sculpt her face, he reveals that Tony is alive and drugged. He demonstrates that Tony only obeys his commands as well as Max who is now suspended above a tub of boiling hot wax.

The other paralyzed figures start moving and head for the workroom. Haskell gets captured. Somehow, Vince falls into the vat of wax and everyone starts laughing at him when the phone rings...


What I say:

A villain who works in a wax museum and is named Vincent. Does anyone else seem that to be an in-joke? Unfortunately, this isn't Vincent Price's House of the Wax or even the lame remake of it from a couple of years ago. Besides creepy old mansions and realms of mad scientists, wax museums seem to be one of the other major creepy places in horror movies from Samson in the Wax Museum to Waxworks.

Most horror movie wax museums don't paralyze people for figures. They just sculpt them or drop them in wax. House of Wax didn't paralyze figures. Bucket of Blood had Dick Miller learning that using a dead body covered in clay makes the best sculptures. It's funny to think that any man who has figured how to paralyze somebody is very careless about ensuring they don't get re-animated. Mitchell should have been timing when he needed to re-inject those people.

Cops in these kind of movies aren't quite known as crime-solvers. They just wander around to question characters to give the audience some ideas of how the characters are tied into together. They're like incompetent Lt. Columbos. At best, they just get a funny feeling about someone isn't quite right.

We have a guy who's face was set on fire by his boss at a party in front of plenty of witnesses. The fact he wasn't able to do anything to go after good old Max is a little hard to grasp now in this day of lawsuit happiness. Cameron Mitchell may have been disfigured but nowhere as bad as Darkman or the Phantom of the Opera. Waxman going after the boyfriends of his girlfriend who he ran off does make some disfigured-crazed maniac sense. Cameron doesn't do anything rather than smoke more than the Ol' 97 train in this movie.

Movies aren't meant to be totally coherent. However, a plot that gets ended with the "dream or is it?" ending is a cheap knock-off. The "dream or is it?" ending wasn't quite beaten so far into the ground in the 1960s as they they have been in the last couple of decades. It is such a lame ending to excuse things. For recent viewers, the whole idea of the entire movie is in the killer's head is just the way to excuse logic and just have things magically end however the director wants.



2 1/2 NINJAS

Quotable Dialogue

"You could be a great lady."
"The door next to Marilyn Monroe..."
"Maybe some nut doesn't like actors..."
"Insurers don't pay off without a corpus delecti..."
"Ensemble?"
"Why didn't you scream? I wanted you to scream..."


Morals of the Story

Southern accents aren't good for Romeo and Juliet.
Setting a man's face on fire is an accident if you own a movie studio.
Brooklyn accents are commonplace in LA.
Emergency exits don't open if you're being chased by a psycho-killer.
Molten wax has the consistency of water.


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