Time Machine

HOUSE OF WAX

Directed by ANDRE DE TOTH

Screenplay by CRANE WILBUR

Slipping on the special Polaroid glasses for this revival is an instant time trip. Back you go to the advent of 3-D in the early '50s, when Bwana Devil had a lion jumping out from the screen and It Came from Outer Space landed a meteor right in your lap. House of Wax, which combined the pop-out tricks with the grue of the traditional horror movie, seemed the best of them all.

It still does. Originally released in 1953, it stars Vincent Price in his first horror role. He is in splendidly clammy form as a sculptor of meticulously realistic wax figures who is presumed dead in a fire that destroys his waxworks. He mysteriously reappears, however, to open a hall of waxen horrors that quickly becomes the talk of turn-of-the-century New York City. Meanwhile, corpses start disappearing from the city morgue. A horribly deformed figure in a black cape is stalking the streets, terrorizing the likes of Phyllis Kirk and Carolyn Jones. There are several suspicious deaths.

The police, led by Frank Lovejoy, are firm of jaw but slow of wit, and lag far behind the audience in solving the transparent mystery. But no matter. Time makes this hokum endearing. Director Andre de Toth comes up with several chilling images--for instance, the faces of the wax effigies being put to flame and melting into mush--and keeps the action moving briskly along its hopelessly illogical course.

The 3-D process is at its best in giving the illusion of depth to a composition. One recalls that several more serious films (Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder was one) were made in 3-D but released flat when studios discovered that the craze was dying down after audience complaints of headaches from imperfect projection. These days the process is used only for an occasional exploitation item like The Stewardesses. Too bad. Besides supplying some nostalgic shudders, House of Wax fleetingly suggests that in the right hands, 3-D could have been a good deal more than a stunt.

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