House of Wax is a very loose remake of the 1953 film House of Wax, itself a remake of the 1933 film Mystery of the Wax Museum, based on a short story or a play by Charles Belden called The Wax Works[1]. It has extraordinary wax effects and a superior cast grafted onto a fairly standard Teen Horror plot (kids on a road trip break down near a weird old town, they split up and nasty things happen to them). I don't have the notes with me, so can't tell you the exact time when it becomes gruesome[2], or the time that Paris Hilton starts running around in her bra and pants[3] (a role for which she won both the Teen Choice Award for Choice Scream Scene, and the Golden Raspberry for Worst Supporting Actress). All in all, missable but some excellent effects towards the end. Some good stuff on the soundtrack too - Beretta noted New Dawn Fades by Joy Division.
From Youtube: The Trailer (gruesome), The Gag Reel (which shows one or two bits with wax effects), a pretty funny video where one of the actors has qualms about being covered in hot wax, the final bit where the House of Wax, which is made of wax, burns down (from maybe 2:40 onwards) and Joy Division's New Dawn Fades. All the videos in a playlist and also below, but it doesn't always work when you embed a playlist:
Update: I've changed the footnote numbers so they make sense. Hooray!
[1] I've done a swift google, but frankly don't feel the need to go further to track down the origin, unless we start to work our way backwards through the predecessors.
[2] I think we may have disagreed; the prologue is pretty unpleasant but more by implication than actual nastiness. V__ wasn't with us to give a definitive answer.
[3] This caused more disagreement. "Nudity at 1h4m (or whatever it was)" said Heckler. "Nude?" says I, "She's running around in her bra and pants. They're clothes! Covering up her rude bits!" "You write what you want in your notes," said Heckler, which I had no answer to.
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