BY HANK REINEKE
Without question, this brand new Blu-ray edition of
director Michael Curtiz’s The Mystery of
the Wax Museum will be heralded as one of the Crown Jewels of Warner Bros. Archive
Collection series. This creaky but historically
significant 1933 classic – once believed to be a “lost film†– has been
painstakingly restored to its original two-color Technicolor glory. Such restoration was made possible through
the financial resources of the George Lucas Family Foundation and the combined
technical and artistic interventions of the UCLA Film & Television Archive
and Warner Bros. entertainment.
The
Mystery of the Wax Museum was not the studio’s first foray into
what is now revered as the Golden Age of horror films. One year earlier, Warner Bros. had released Dr. X (1932), another atmospheric horror
vehicle co-starring the villainous Lionel Atwill and 1930’s Scream Queen Fay
Wray. Like its predecessor, The Mystery of the Wax Museum was
green-lit by studio brass to syphon off at least some of the box-office energy
of several contemporary blockbusters: Universal’s Dracula and Frankenstein
and Paramount’s Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
(all three having been released in 1931). Indeed, Glenda Farrell’s character in
Wax Museum makes a no-so-oblique
comparative reference to the competition when she describes the mysterious
caped and scarred figure in Wax Museum
as a fiend that makes “Frankenstein look like a lily.†It was, perhaps, the first popular culture
reference to confuse the monster with the monster’s maker.
For several decades the original Curtiz cut of The Mystery of the Wax Museum, the first
horror film to feature the revolutionary, but only briefly in vogue, two-color
Technicolor treatment, was believed lost. In his authoritative tome “Classics of the Horror Film†(Citadel Press,
1974), cinema historian William K. Everson suggested that a damaged and
deteriorating print of Wax Museum was
still making the rounds of cinemas in war-torn London of the 1940s. In any event, with the exception of a few
surviving dupey and tattered black and white television prints, the original
film as envisioned by Curtiz was considered lost.
The situation may have remained that way had it not been
for the success of the studio’s celebrated 3D remake of the original, House of Wax. This more familiar version, directed by Andre
DeToth and famously featuring Vincent Price as the mad and scarred wax-figure
artisan, would prove to be one of the biggest blockbuster scores of 1953. The film’s popularity would summarily – at
least among horror aficionados and film historians – reignite interest in the
1933 version. Indeed, as in the case of
many “lost†films, the reputation of the original – stoked by the hazy memories
of those who had actually had the opportunity to see the film two decades
earlier – was, perhaps, slightly over-praised and over-cherished.
It hardly mattered as the original Curtiz version would remain
a stubbornly elusive treasure. It wasn’t
until the late 1960s that a serviceable, though far from perfect, copy of a
nitrate original – apparently cobbled together from several different prints –
was found in the collection of studio boss Jack Warner’s personal library. It’s from this print that the reconstruction
team could use as their primary source in the film’s restoration. A secondary source was an inferior and later
surfacing French work print that helped fill-in the gaps where frames or lines
of dialogue from the Warner print were determined to be missing or damaged
beyond repair.
Age and a decade or more of projections had, sadly, left
both existing prints in sorrowful condition. Both were blighted by such distracting flaws as scratches, emulsion
digs, cue marks, dye-transfer failures and general age-related
deteriorations. The Warner and French
work print were also inconsistent in their presentation of the color palette,
the balancing between the two completely off. Happily, these defects are all but totally absent in this new Warner
Archive release. I strongly suggest that
film fans watch the bonus eight minute long supplemental featurette “Before and
After Restoration Comparison,†moderated by Scott MacQueen, the head of
preservation at the UCLA archive. The
differences between the surviving prints and the post-restoration print is
nothing short of startling.
It should be noted that this is the second appearance of The Mystery of the Wax Museum in a
digital format. The first was in 2003
when Warner Bros. Home Video – generously, if unceremoniously - offered the 1933
film as a flip-side bonus to their DVD issue of House of Wax. If you are a
fan of Golden Age horror and perhaps considered passing on this new Blu ray
restoration, you do so at your own loss. This new issue is incomparable to that earlier release and should rightfully
be on the library shelf of any and every discerning fan.
Whether or not Curtiz’s Wax Museum is a better
film than DeToth’s House of Wax is an
argument that will inevitably result in a feisty parlor game debate. While both films are undeniably similar in
certain sequences - an acknowledgement, I would think, of Curtiz’s deft
handling of the horror elements in the original - there are shortcomings in the
1933 version. These scripting weaknesses,
at least depending on which film you happen to champion, would be satisfyingly addressed
and corrected in the 1953 remake.
Some horror film enthusiasts might find the 1933 version
a cheat of sorts. But the film delivers
exactly what is promised in its title, a mystery. At the center of the mystery is an
incorrigible female reporter for the New
York Express newspaper, Florence Dempsey (Glenda Farrell). This spunky and fiercely independent reporter
provides plenty of entertainment throughout. Her colorful, snappy, and occasionally salty banter – this is a Pre Code
film, after all – between Express editor
(Frank McHugh) and members of the local police department are lively and
smile-inducing. Unfortunately, such
humor comes at the expense of the film’s otherwise morbid and foreboding
atmosphere. Though third-billed in the
cast, the wise-cracking Farrell is the real leading player of the film, and I
suspect she enjoys more screen time than either Atwill or Wray combined.
Wray’s talent, truth be told, is mostly wasted here. She appears intermittently on screen,
visiting the wax museum just long enough to inspire the sinister Atwill to ask
if she’d be willing to model for him. Atwill envisions Wray as the personification and future template for his
Marie Antoinette figurine, the original having been destroyed in a London
“insurance†fire. Otherwise, we don’t
see much of Wray until near the film’s climax when she unwisely visits the
museum again looking for her non-descript sculptor-boyfriend (Allen Vincent). Atwill is a particularly rough mentor to
Wray’s beau, a sculptor-student: “It’s a cruel irony that those without souls
should have hands,†Atwill sighs ruefully in Vincent’s presence.
The only moments of creepiness and suspense are the scenes,
nearly replicated to a fault, in House of
Wax. These include the unholy
goings-on at a police morgue and, of course, when Atwill’s Ivan Igor traps Wray
in the basement of his waxworks workshop. Wray does not disappoint in the film’s final reel, treating us to
several screams that she would perfect as the beleaguered waif, Ann Darrow, in King Kong, released a mere two months following
Wax Museum. I should also mention that Wray doubles as the
Marie Antoinette wax figure we first see in the film’s “London 1921†setting. In an effort to make the wax figures appear
as realistic as possible, the studio reportedly put out a call to the era’s
vaudeville community. They were hoping
to find performers who had the gift of appearing motionless for extended periods
of time. It must be said that, for all
her talent, Wray did not possess this particular gift. Her Marie Antoinette bobbles and sways before
our eyes.
While I wouldn’t care to choose between the two films –
both have their own stylistic strengths – I will venture to say that Wilbur
Crane’s screenplay for House of Wax
is the better woven of the two. He
dispenses entirely with the ace-reporter-looking-for-a-scoop scenario, but
offers more emotionally invested characterizations of the film’s principal
players such as Phyllis Kirk’s “Sue Allen†(Wray’s “Charlotte Duncanâ€) and Paul
Picerni’s “Scott Andrews†(Allen Vincent’s “Ralph Burtonâ€). He also infuses Vincent Price’s Prof. Henry
Jarrod’s with some post-inferno personality and humor. Aside from his earliest scene in early
twenties London, Atwill’s Igor is played as a cold, bitter curmudgeon
throughout… which, to be fair, makes him a bit more menacing in some ways. But, ultimately, it’s nice that we don’t have
to choose, that we can still enjoy both of these classic films in the year
2020.
This Warner Archive Collection region-free Blu ray of The Mystery of the Wax Museum is
presented 1080p High Definition 4 x 3, 1.37:1 and in DTS-HD Master Audio with
removable English subtitles. Bonus
features include two audio commentaries, one by author Alan K. Rode, and one by
the aforementioned archivist Scott MacQueen. There are also two featurettes also included: the nineteen minute Remembering Fay Wray (an interview with
Wray’s daughter Victoria Riskin) and the Before
and After Restoration Comparison moderated by MacQueen.
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