MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933)

Warner Bros. tried, tried & tried again for that Universal Horror mojo, but never quite turned the trick.  Here, they improve on last year’s DOCTOR X, also with director Michael Curtiz, stars Lionel Atwill & Fay Wray, ‘glorious’ 2-strip TechniColor, even repurposed Anton Grot sets from the earlier film.  That one, more creepy whodunit than fright-fest, long held an advantage with better source material for the tricky early TechniColor, but a recent digital restoration reveals WAX as best of the pair, if something of a curate’s egg (‘it was good in part’).  Still, the old yarn about a wax museum that uses dead people in tallow as exhibits remains good for a shudder.  The prologue especially fine, with Lionel Atwill’s artistically inclined sculptor losing everything in a fiery blaze before the story restarts twelve years later in a new museum with new historical wax figures now created by embalming actual human corpses under a hot wax finish.  And if few surprises remain, lots of horrified shrieks from a terrified Wray help make up for it.  Turns out she’s the Marie Antoinette figure Atwill has long been searching for.  Yikes!  Meanwhile, gal-pal/roommate Glenda Farrell (with the most screen time) investigates as a reporter looking for a scoop and a husband.  Good guys & cops awfully bland, but Atwill does gets a nasty pair of assistants to order about while working up a solid John Barrymore impression* as the disfigured Monsieur Tussauds.  Worth a look for the prologue’s fiery wax meltdown and Grot’s spectacular sets alone.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, DOCTOR X/’31  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/doctor-x-1932.html           OR: The 3D remake with Vincent Price, HOUSE OF WAX/’53.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Why Barrymore?  DOCTOR and WAX more or less part of a series John Barrymore started at Warners before moving to M-G-M in 1932: Archie Mayo’s stiff SVENGALI/’31 (a hit) and Curtiz’s far superior THE MAD GENIUS/’31 (a flop).