Word: wax
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...House of Wax may have three dimensions; the plot has one, at best. It used to be known as The Murder in the Waxwork Museum or something close to that, when it was a flattie. If you've seen The Phantom of the Opera or the Hunchback of Notre Dame you have the general outline already. The only thing the latter pictures have that House of Wax doesn't is scenes of people jumping, falling, or being pushed from high places. Hollywood has missed a trick...
...House of Wax also proves that the Warner technique is not yet perfected. Even with the polaroid glasses nestled snugly against your eyes, you will still occasionally see a double image. The resulting flutter is tiresome to the eyes, and only a ten-minute intermission between reels makes the rest of the film bearable...
...House of Wax (Warner), a remake of the 1933 2-D thriller, The Mystery of the Wax Museum, pictures Vincent Price as an insane sculptor who murders his victims and then immerses them in molten tallow for his waxworks display. At the end, meeting a fate he has richly earned, he falls into a puddle of his own wax...
...intermittently gripping shocker, House of Wax. utilizes the process known as Warner Phonic sound (multiple sound tracks and speakers) mostly for recording eerie musical effects and the screams of ingenues. The picture was photographed in Natural Vision 3-D (TIME, Dec. 15, 1952), and calls for Polaroid spectacles. Although the Natural Vision is an improvement on that in Bwana Devil, it still becomes blurry at times, and there is often little illusion of depth, particularly in closeups. The picture's writing and direction are also blurry, and the extra dimension is used primarily as a trick. All sorts...
...process (also requiring Polaroid glasses). It is a black & white cops & robbers yarn about a criminal (Edmond O'Brien) who, as a result of a brain operation (prefrontal lobotomy), forgets where he has stashed away the $130,000 take from a payroll robbery. Like House of Wax, the movie seems tireless in depicting objects jumping out at the audience: surgical instruments, a car, a bird, a spider. In fact, just about everything seems to come out at the moviegoer except a good movie...