House of Wax (1953)

Director: Andre De Toth

Writers: Crane Wilbur, Charles Belden

Composer: David Buttolph

Starring: Vincent Price, Frank Lovejoy, Phyllis Kirk, Carolyn Jones, Paul Picerni, Roy Roberts, Angela Clarke, Paul Cavanagh, Dabbs Greer, Charles Bronson, Reggie Rymal

More info: IMDb

Tagline: UNLIKE ANYTHING YOU'VE SEEN BEFORE!

Plot: Professor Henry Jarrod is a true artist whose wax sculptures are lifelike. He specializes in historical tableau's such a Marie Antoinette or Joan of Arc. His business partner, Matthew Burke, needs some of his investment returned to him and pushes Jarrod to have more lurid exposes like a chamber of horrors. When Jarrod refuses, Burke set the place alight destroying all of his beautiful work in the hope of claiming the insurance. Jarrod is believed to have died in the fire but he unexpectedly reappears some 18 months later when he opens a new exhibit. This time, his displays focus on the macabre but he has yet to reproduce his most cherished work, Marie Antoinette. When he meets his new assistant's beautiful friend, Sue Allen, he knows he's found the perfect model - only unbeknown to anyone, he has a very particular way of making his wax creations.

My rating: 8/10

Will I watch it again? YES!!!

#14 on Project: Badass Charles Bronson

BRONSON'S AGE: 40
LEVEL OF BADASSICITY (10 being the highest): 7

This movie is all kinds of awesomeness.  I had the rare pleasure of seeing this in a theater 20 years ago IN 3D!!!!  That paddleball guy is out of sight, man, and that sequence in 3D will blow your socks off.  It's funny and cool as shit all at the same time.  Vincent Price is the man and this picture is one of his many masterpieces (he's that good so he can have several).  Carolyn Jones has no waist.  How is that possible?  Great story, great sets, great everything.  I love this flick.

Charles Bronson is the only man that could handle what evil Vincent Price had to dole out.  Bronson doesn't talk.  He doesn't have to.  His brawn and might do all the talking.  He can recite an entire Shakespeare monologue without uttering a word.  All he needs are his two fists (and that's even hotly debatable as just one would be sufficient) and some unlucky sumbitch that crosses his path to beat on.  He's amazing.  Any experienced Bronson-file can tell you which Shakespeare play his fists are pounding out (reciting) just by how he uses them on some chump's ugly mug.  Brilliant.  Yet another example of how he's one of the most underrated thespians in modern times.  He's got more to say with one grunt in this movie than Laurence Olivier did in all of Hamlet.  Prove me wrong.