Mystery of the Wax Museum

Mystery of the Wax Museum
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Michael Curtiz
Produced by	Henry Blanke
Written by	Story: Charles S. Belden Screenplay: Carl Erickson Don Mullaly
Starring	Lionel Atwill Fay Wray Glenda Farrell Frank McHugh
Music by	Cliff Hess
Cinematography	Ray Rennahan
Editing by	George J. Amy
Distributed by	Warner Brothers Vitaphone Pictures
Release date(s)	February 17, 1933 (USA)
Running time	77 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) is a mystery/horror film released by Warner Brothers in two-color Technicolor and directed by Michael Curtiz. The movie stars Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell, and Frank McHugh.

This film is notable as the last dramatic fiction film made, along with Warners' Doctor X, in the two-color Technicolor process.^[1] (Constance Bennett and her husband filmed two documentaries Legong: Dance of the Virgins (1935) and Kilou the Killer Tiger (1936) in the old process.)

Plot

Ivan Igor (Lionel Atwill) is a sculptor who operates a wax museum in 1921 London. When business is failing due to people's attraction to the macabre, Igor's investment partner, Joe Worth (Edwin Maxwell), tries to burn the museum down for the insurance money of £10,000. Igor wouldn't have it but Worth starts a fire anyway. Igor tries to stop him, and both he and Worth get into a fight. Worth knocks Igor unconscious, leaving the sculptor to die.

Igor survives, however, and reemerges 12 years later in New York City, reopening a new wax museum. His hands and legs have been badly crippled in the fire, and he must rely on assistants to create his new sculptures.

Meanwhile, reporter Florence Dempsey (Glenda Farrell) is sent out by her editor, Jim (Frank McHugh) to investigate the suicide of a model named Joan Gale (Monica Bannister). During this time, a hideous monster steals the body of Joan Gale from the morgue. When investigators find that her body has been stolen, they suspect murder. The finger initially points to George Winton (Gavin Gordon), son of a powerful industrialist, but after visiting him in jail, Florence thinks differently.

Florence's roommate is Charlotte Duncan (Fay Wray) whose fiancé Ralph (Allen Vincent) works at Igor's newly opened museum.

While visiting the museum, Florence notices an uncanny resemblance between a wax figure of Joan of Arc and the dead model. At the same time, Igor spots Charlotte and remarks that she looks similar to his favorite figure in his original museum, a sculpture of Marie Antoinette.

Igor employs several shady characters: Prof. Darcy (Arthur Edmund Carewe), a drug addict, and Hugo, a deaf-mute (Matthew Betz). Darcy, at the same time, is working for Joe Worth, who is working as a bootlegger in the city, among whose customers is none other than Winton.

While investigating at an old house where Worth keeps his bootlegged alcohol, Florence discovers a monster who is connected with the museum, but cannot prove any connection with the disappearance of Joan Gale's body. Darcy is seen running from the house and is caught by the police. When brought to the station, he breaks down and admits that Igor is in fact the killer and that he has been murdering people, stealing their bodies, and dipping them in wax to create life-like statues.

Charlotte, going to visit Ralph at the museum, is trapped by Igor. When Charlotte tries to get away, she pounds away at his face, breaking a wax mask that he has made of himself, and reveals that he had been horribly disfigured. He also shows her the dead body of Joe Worth, who Darcy has been tracking down for him for some time. When she faints, he ties her up and sets her on a table, awaiting her to become his lost Marie Antoinette when she is doused with wax. Florence leads the police to the museum just in time: Charlotte is saved, and Igor is gunned down into a giant vat of wax.

When Florence reports her story in, Jim proposes to her. Having to finally choose between money (Winton) and happiness (Jim), she picks the latter.

Production background

Based on an unpublished short story entitled "The Wax Works" by Charles Spencer Belden (1904–1954), Warner Bros. optioned the story's rights after Belden started writing dialogue for the studio in the early 1930s. A follow-up to Warner's 1932 horror success Doctor X, Mystery involved many of the same cast and crew, including actors Fay Wray, Lionel Atwill, Arthur Edmund Carewe; director Michael Curtiz; art director Anton Grot; and cameraman Ray Rennahan. The film also re-used Doctor X's opening theme music by Bernhard Kaun.

Mystery of the Wax Museum was the last First National feature film under a 1931 Technicolor contract. Warner had already noted the public's apathy with the artificial color system. Technicolor was greeted with hostility by critics and public awash in its unreal hues and humdrum quality control since 1929. The considerable additional expense of the compromised two-color spectrum, which was a fine idea when color was a novelty, was now anathema. Warners had tried without success to get Technicolor to permit them to swap out the last feature commitment for a series of shorts, but when the studio violated the contract by filming Doctor X with an additional black-and-white unit (thereby permitting them to process prints at their own lab and avoid paying Technicolor thousands of dollars) Technicolor dug in their heels and refused. Consequently, Mystery of the Wax Museum was the last studio feature in the two-color Technicolor system. It was also one of the very best, with Technicolor founder Herbert Kalmus declaring it "the ultimate that is possible with two components."

The process combined red and green dyes to create a color image with a reduced spectrum. (Technicolor would introduce their three-negative process in 1932 with Flowers and Trees , cutting an exclusive deal for animation only with Walt Disney. Warner Bros. was the first to use the new process commercially for live-action on shorts like Service With a Smile in 1934).

A similar storyline was also used for an episode of the hit radio mystery drama The Shadow, with Orson Welles. It was entitled The Murders In Wax and first aired on July 24, 1938.

The film was remade as House of Wax (1953), directed by Andre De Toth and starring Vincent Price. Whereas the original was more of a mystery film, the remake focused more on the horror elements. However, the two films shared a common theme; while Mystery was shot in the early two-color Technicolor system, House of Wax used two other than-new film making techniques: 3-Dimension and stereophonic sound. A 1965 TV pilot, Chamber of Horrors, was released as theatrical feature in 1966 featured its own gimmick, a "horror horn" that would blare on the soundtrack as the image flashed red prior to scenes of violence and murder.

Preservation status

Mystery was never reissued formally and over time was considered a lost film. In 1936, Technicolor-Hollywood ceased servicing two-color printing after issuing a "last call" to their customers for prints and converted the final imbibition rig for three-color. The response of most studios was to junk the two-color negatives (which had been stored at Technicolor) of their now-obsolete films. Warner Bros. seems to have kept the negatives for only their two-color cartoons.

William K. Everson reports that Warners' London exchange kept a 35mm color print on hand and that the film screened there in the late 1940s. A 35mm nitrate copy of Reel 1, the "lab reference" print, was still held by Technicolor-Hollywood and screened privately in the 1960s; that reel is today in the collection of the Academy Film Archive. A 1970 check of Jack Warner's old personal vault on the Burbank lot, but uncovered a 35mm nitrate print of Mystery in very good condition. With much fanfare the film screened in the summer at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood (with Fay Wray in attendance), and then in October at Alice Tully Hall as part of the 8th New York Film Festival.^[2] Oddly, no attention was paid at the time to the color print of Doctor X found along with it.

A puzzled letter from screenwriter Ray Russell in Variety reported that the film wasn't lost as far as he was concerned; he had screened the color print at the Warner lot in 1965 while working on the proposed TV series Chamber of Horrors. The then-current library owner, United Artists, copied the film and put it into television distribution, but lab work was so substandard that most of the color was drained away. In 1988, its new owner, Turner Entertainment, made a new, color-correct preservation negative of the movie, allowing it to play theatrical double bills with color prints of the previously restored color version of Doctor X. The laserdisc release was carefully transferred from the 35mm nitrate Jack Warner print (in the collection of the UCLA Film and Television Archives) and retained the essence of its unusual color. The current video version on DVD (where it was thrown away as a bonus to the Vincent Price remake, House of Wax) and TCM is an utterly inaccurate and alarming rendering of the film in shades of blue and pink that bears no relationship to the original color scheme.

Circa 2007, film collector and King of the Sabu Cats, Jeff Joseph, located another, near-mint 35mm nitrate Technicolor print in Europe, with English soundtrack but etched French supertitles. This second print is now also at the UCLA Film and Television Archives.

Cast (in credits order)

• Lionel Atwill as Ivan Igor
• Fay Wray as Charlotte Duncan
• Glenda Farrell as Florence Dempsey
• Frank McHugh as Jim
• Allen Vincent as Ralph Burton
• Gavin Gordon as George Winton
• Edwin Maxwell as Joe Worth
• Holmes Herbert as Dr Rasmussen
• Claude King as Mr Galatalin
• Arthur Edmund Carewe as Sparrow - Professor Darcy
• Thomas E. Jackson as Detective
• DeWitt Jennings as Police Captain
• Matthew Betz as Hugo
• Monica Bannister as Joan Gale

Reception

Upon its release, Time magazine felt it was a good mystery film but was disappointed with the abrupt ending and lack of an explaining-it-all scene.^[3]

See also

• List of American films of 1933
• List of early color feature films
• List of rediscovered films
• House of Wax (1953 film)
• House of Wax (2005 film)

Footnotes

1. ^ Mystery of the Wax Museum at the Internet Movie Database.
2. ^ "Showcase: Mystery of the Wax Museum". http://www.tcm.com/thismonth/article/?cid=76262. 
3. ^ "Cinema: The New Pictures: Feb. 27, 1933" -- Time

External links

• Mystery of the Wax Museum at the "Missing Link" web site.
• Mystery of the Wax Museum at Rotten Tomatoes.
• Mystery of the Wax Museum at the Internet Movie Database
• Mystery of the Wax Museum at AllRovi