From Distinctive Dummies comes a fantastic new 12"
figure featuring Vincent Price as disfigured sculptor turned demented killer Henry Jarrod from 1953’s classic murder mystery, The House of Wax.
Artist Steve Thompson has done a great job in capturing Price’s likeness under
the gruesome fire scarred makeup and this is certainly one I’ll be adding to my
collection, which already includes all four of Distinctive Dummies Mego-style
Price figures from the two Dr Phibes films, Madhouse and The Masque of the Red
Death, as well as the 12" figure of Price as Frederick Loren in The House on Haunted Hill (which came in colour and mono versions).
Thanks to Dread Central, here's the print sell sheet for the forthcoming US Blu-ray 3D release of House of Wax which will be priced at US$35.99 and due for release on 1 October. But no news yet whether it will be just NTSC or region free.
Special Features
House of Wax: Unlike Anything You've Ever Seen Before featurette (NEW)
As a teenager, Mario Bava's 1972 horror Baron Blood was the scariest film I had ever experienced, and I have
never forgotten one particularly gruesome scene in which the Baron lifts
up a coffin lid to reveal iron spikes dripping with blood, gore and
goo. Four decades later, director Mario Bava’s film may no longer shock
me, but it still remains an atmospheric ghost train ride – with a close connection to Vincent Price's 1953 film House of Wax.
Shot on location at Burg Kreuzenstein in Leobendorf, Austria, Baron Blood
is probably the closet thing to a Vincent Price horror film NOT featuring the merchant of menace in residence, as it looks like a 1970s
version of Price’s 1953 chiller, House of Wax (you know its the 1970s by the eye-wincing clobber, naff zooms and the Pan Am 747 cameo).
When Price turned down the film (he was probably still smarting over appearing in Bava’s terrible Dr Goldfoot sequel), Joseph Cotton (who appeared with Price in The Abominable Dr Phibestwo years previously) got to ham it up as the film’s villain. The similarities between Cotton’s Baron and Price’s House of Waxcharacter,
Henry Jarrod, are plain to see. Both have been disfigured by fire, and
both wear a black fedora and cape while despatching their victims. They
are also both wheelchair bound when in their human disguise. There’s
even a scene, in which Eva is chased through some foggy streets, that
mirrors Price stalking the heroine of the 1953 film.
With the exception of a couple of gory thrills (like that coffin
scene), which were removed for the American release, the style and tone
of Baron Blood evokes the funereal excesses of Bava’s problematic, but deliriously wonderful, Lisa and the Devil (which has already been given the Arrow treatment). The US version also replaced Stelvio Cipriani’s soundtrack with one by Les Baxter, who did scores for Roger Corman’s 1960s Poe cycle of films, that also featured Price.
Arrow Video’s R2/B release
(available from 29 April 2013) features a HD Blu-ray and standard definition DVD
presentation of three versions of the film: the Italian original, Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga,
the European export version with English audio, and the re-edited and
re-dubbed US version with the Les Baxter score. I have watched all
three, and while I much prefer listening to Joseph Cotton’s fruity voice
in English, the Italian version is visually superior, but hearing the
Les Baxter score for the first time is a real pleasure.
1953’s box-office hit House of Wax is 60 today. It may not
be a timeless masterpiece, looking a tad clunky in today’s clime, but it did
provide Vincent Price with a springboard to fame, thanks to his brilliant
performance as Henry Jarrod, a sculptor who gives into the public’s appetite
for shock and sensationalism following a fire that leaves him disfigured. No
longer able to create wax figures with his own hands, Jarrod resorts to murder
and ‘waxing’ his victims, who then become displays in his new museum, the
eponymous House of Wax.
The colourful period melodrama also featured fantastic
supporting roles from Carolyn Jones (later TV’s Morticia in The Addams Family)
as giggling victim and future action star Charles 'Buchinsky' Bronson as Price’s mute
assistant.
Here are 10 more fun things to know about the film.
1.It was the first 3D film from a major studio (Warner Bros Pictures), as
well as the first horror film shot using in the stereoscopic process.
2.After 14 years appearing in a range of character roles, House of Wax
established Price as a horror star.
3.Price’s make-up took three hours to apply.
4.The cumbersome 3D cameras resulted in the actors performing many of
their own stunts. Watch out for the collapsing balcony in the opening sequence
where Price narrowly escapes serious injury.
5.André de Toth, who directed the film, only had one eye.
6.House of Wax took some US$5.5m at the North American box office,
mainly due to the 3D gimmick, which was used the combat a new threat, colour television.
7.A number of 3D films followed in its wake, not the least being The Mad Magician (1954), which was written by House of Wax scribe Crane Wilbur and
again starring Price.
8.Price gave up the opportunity to pay the lead in a Broadway play, My Three Angels, in order to star in House of Wax. Regarding this decision, Price
said, years later, ‘It was a great hit [the play], but it didn’t help them in
their careers. Whereas House of Wax changed my life.”
9.Bela Lugosi was hired to go on a publicity tour for the film’s
release. But the two horror stars never got the chance to meet during the tour.
10.House of Wax inspired 1966’s Chamber of Horrors, starring Patrick O’Neal, which was intended as a pilot for a potential TV series; and also the Mario Bava horror Baron Blood (1972), which is getting a new Blu-ray/DVD UK release on 29 April 2013, from Arrow.
