User Reviews

Along with his turn in the super-sleazy 'classic' THE TOOLBOX MURDERS (1978), this is considered the ultimate bad Cameron Mitchell horror vehicle. It's a little too slow-moving for my tastes, has zero likable characters and not much action until the very end, but Mitchell's dedicated central psycho performance as a vengeance-minded whack-job is good. Not Anthony Perkins good, mind you, but definitely fun enough. As a spoof of the shallow conceit that is Hollywood, it's only so-so; as a horror movie it's also only fair. Even as a simple vintage exploitation picture, it's just OK. I'm a big fan of the unnecessary gratuitous dance sequence, so I was also thankful for the appearance of the Gazzarri Dancers, who just rule. Five of them do a crazy hair- thrashin', floor-slidin', hip-shaking' go-go dance routine to "Don't Cry, Look For the Rainbow" by the T-Bones. Watching these ladies bounce around with huge smiles on their faces in their fringe-covered bikini top and parachute pants ensembles is a major reason why I'm giving this a slightly higher rating than it probably deserves.

Former movie make-up man Vincent Rinard ("The best since Lon Chaney!") goes after people at Paragon Studios. A flashback shows how Max Black (Berry Kroeger), a jealous and drunk studio executive, flung wine in Vinnie's face right when he was about to light a smoke. He's engulfed in flames and dives into a pool, but not before scarring up one side of his face and losing an eyeball (not to mention his sanity). Now employed by the "world-famous" Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park, California, Vincent uses a special serum (described as a mixture of truth serum, nerve medicine and special "vitamins and minerals") to paralyze victims. They disappear and the dense detectives on the case (headed by Scott Brady) act baffled as new 'statues' are put on display in the museum. Vince talks to himself ("I'm a terribly nice man!"), chain-smokes, mumbles, hisses and describes how he gets "excited" by the sound of women's screams.

Vinnie also has to deal with a bunch of back-stabbing scumbags and self-absorbed witches, most of whom will deserve what's coming to them. Aside from Max (a real Grade-A jerk... who doesn't even die!) and the stupid cops, the other two lead roles are women and both are pretty atrocious. Marie Morgan (Anne Helm) is not your typical innocent heroine; this tramp has been engaged to no less that five different characters in this movie, including Vince, Max and two of the wax dummies / missing male stars (I guess she never had time to make a go at the one missing girl). For some reason, she begs and pleads in her irritating baby-voice for Vince to give her a 'replica' of the head he's designing of the newest missing actor (and fiancé Number 5) Tony Deen (Phillip Baird). She doesn't know that Vince has already jabbed a syringe in the back of his neck, but I love it when Mitchell dryly agrees with her demands "so you can completely retreat from reality." He also wants her to 'pose' for him, which means she's eventually held prisoner in a box. Unfortunately, the box has a hole where her head sticks through so she can continue to talk and whine.

The other "woman" is Theresa (Victoria Carroll), one of the go-go girls, who's first seen proving she is thoroughly rhythm-deficient by jiggling on stage in a lime-green fringe bikini. Theresa is tolerable before she talks, but when you realize her grating presence combines the abrasiveness of Lorraine Bracco with the airhead mentality of the Landers sisters, you'll be hoping Vincent injects her with the serum as soon as possible. Unfortunately, we're first subjected to a scene of her making endless demands to the studio head honcho and running around in the museum trying to avoid Mitchell. She and the rest of the characters are completely unsympathetic, but function as a way to poke fun at the Hollywood system in general, I guess. And I'm probably giving this movie more credit than it actually deserves. The pluses are few and far between, but include (other than Mitchell and the dance routine), colorful, slightly stylized lighting and a bizarre ending that seems to suggest that Rinard will be severely punished for his crimes by spending the rest of his life in his own personal hell... Married to Marie!... Yikes, now that is scary.

Also in the cast are director John "Bud" Cardos (also the production manager) as a police sergeant, James Forrest as a film director, Virgil Frye as a statue, Rini Martin and Kent Osborne as a bartender. Many of the people who worked on this one (including executive producer and script-writer Rex Carlton) also worked on the Al Adamson movie BLOOD OF DRACULA'S CASTLE and other atrocities.

My Score: 4 out of 10

Certainly not a bad purchase for only £1.97, especially not when you're, like me, a fan of minimally budgeted and legendary BAD horror cinema of the older days. Genre regular Cameron Mitchell ("Blood and Black Lace", "The Toolbox Murders") gives another tremendously grotesque performance, this time as the deranged & deformed sculptor-artist/curator of a wax museum in Hollywood. Vince Renard wasn't always an eccentric loner... Once he was a celebrated make-up artist in a big production studio and engaged to a beautiful and promising young actress. The sneaky studio boss, however, fancied the actress too and he set fire to Vince's face when he lit a cigarette. Now Vince, wearing an eye-patch and still smoking like a chimney, puts all his anger in his skillful and extremely detailed wax statues that are strangely exhibited in the museum simultaneously with the real actors disappearing. Rex Carlton's script shamelessly imitates the success of "House of Wax" when it comes to the psycho's motivation, but his modus operandi is different as he keeps the victims alive like mindless zombies. There's very little suspense and/or creepy atmosphere, because the situations are so exaggeratedly absurd, and all the characters are incredibly stupid. At one point police detective Haskell asks himself, if Vince is a maniacal killer, then where exactly in his museum does he hide the corpses? Um, what do you think Sherlock? But no one beats Theresa, who's so stupid she doesn't even understand simple English words like "discreet". There's very little gore (probably due to the lack of budget), apart from the bloody flashback scene illustrating how Vince lost his eye, but still "Nightmare in Wax" is never really boring and at least it's bad in a fun way. The ending, however, is unforgivably retarded even though it makes sense if you follow the plot literally.

This is one of those clunky, underpowered movies that doesn't seem to know what to do with itself once it establishes the basic premise, which seems to be to rip off a better known (and much better) Vincent Price movie. (Or to take the idea in a different direction, if you are feeling generous).Price's movie was a classic - this one, well, isn't.

Cameron Mitchell does his usual workmanlike job from behind an eye-patch, scars, an omnipresent cloud of cigarette smoke, and a cape that must be there to invoke the spirit of Quasimodo...or is it the Phantom of the Opera? (That costuming choice indicates everything that's wrong with the movie right there.) Give him credit,he's the best thing about "Nightmare", which gives you an idea of how dull and dumb the rest of the movie is, but I was thoroughly tired of him (and his character) by the end of the movie.

The director (and the screenplay) can't decide whether to go for horror, or soap opera, or Hollywood-is-a-snake-pit "Day Of The Locust" style intrigue. Problem is, the writing and the dialog isn't sharp enough to make any of those styles work.

One of the choices that sinks it is the casting of the role of main "diva" movie starlet, who is supposed to be the romantic desire of all manner of Hollywood leading men and producers. The role calls for Elizabeth Taylor - what we get is Anne Helm, who is mousy,immature, and unimpressive...and who talks in a little girl voice that is not at all compelling. She's OK to look at (if you like kewpie dolls), and she may have been the best they could get for this movie,but a sex bomb? Not hardly. She pretty much deflates every scene she's in. I see in IMDb that she actually got a lot of work in television (and good for her), but the director and cameraman didn't do her any favors here.

What the movie is really lacking, is energy and a sense of conviction. Do this same basic treatment with a British film crew, who would treat it like Shakespeare, and the odds are very good that the results would be quite watchable. But the movie just mopes along from one plot point to the next, and the whole thing just goes down the drain well before the end of the first act.

Also, the ending really sucks - it's a "surrealistic" cop-out that basically admits to the audience that the writer couldn't think of a good ending either.

This re-run of the classic horror films MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM and HOUSE OF WAX is more of a time waster than a real full-blooded horror yarn, as this poverty-row cheapie doesn't offer up much in the way of chills, thrills or spills. Instead what we have is a bare minimum of nonsensical plot, padded out with endless scenes of cars driving around and people talking. In fact, around the hour mark the plot seems to fall apart altogether, and instead the film opts for endless stalking sequences portraying Cameron Mitchell as he chases a blonde around his museum and later as he himself is pursued by a pair of bumbling, dim-witted cops.

Cameron Mitchell's delightfully hammy portrayal of the scarred, deranged curator of the wax museum is probably the only reason to see this film. Complete with a bizarre cape, eye patch, and scarred face (achieved with cheap clay-like makeup), Mitchell is a delight as he converses with his dummies and the dead, plots, and mutters bizarre threats and the like. It's a shame that the rest of the cast can't match his performance and just end up boring as a result, a factor which isn't help by the total lack of characterisation other than that of Mitchell's Vincent Renaud; Anne Helm is a pretty but vacuous actress and the detectives are just plain stupid (one of them played by John 'Bud' Cardos, who went on to direct THE DARK). The only character of interest is the slimy Max Black, as played by Berry Kroeger as an egocentric lecher wanting to have his wicked way with the ladies.

The film seems to have added in an unbelievable and unnecessary subplot that states that Mitchell's victims are not dead, but in a state of suspended animation; unfortunately a side-effect of the serum Mitchell uses on them means that they become animated again within a period of days so the fluid must be reapplied over and over. Surely it would be easier - and more fitting - just to kill the people and be done with it? Not in this film. The direction is static and unimaginative, the sets cheap-looking and lacking in atmosphere, despite being filmed in a real waxworks. Apart from Mitchell's colourful character, everything seems to be lacking in life and flourish.

The one good horror scene comes when Mitchell is horribly scarred by Black, who throws a glass of wine in his face which is then ignited by a lighter is holding. Mitchell jumps through a window and into a pool outside, where he grasps his horribly bleeding features, Grand Guignol style. Good sleazy stuff, but unfortunately the only scene in the movie to offer a real low budget thrill. The bizarre ending sees all of the dummies come back to life to dunk Mitchell in a pot of boiling wax, then Mitchell awake to discover that the entire film was just a nightmare - only for him to relive that nightmare once more and wake up once again to discover it wasn't real after all. Huh? Seems to this reviewer like they were just stuck for an ending so filled it with rubbish in a hope to appeal to those easily impressed instead. For Mitchell completists and sadists only...

BAD VERY VERY BAD but very entertaining in a so bad it's good way. Cameron Mitchell's hilarious over the top performance was perfect and made me have a huge grin on my face throughout the film. The dialog is terrible and especially cheesy (I want to hear you scream it excites) me. The film is very cheap and the blood looks laughably fake but the delightful over the top performances laughable dialog are all part of it's charm. Plus it has a really funny ending. This was another one i got on that 8 horror disc set. There is a bit of gore but it's laughably fake. we get a needle in the neck and face, a laughable looking burnt face with blood all over it, and a bloody stabbing. The acting is horrendous Cameron Mitchell is AWESOME here and he kept the movie alive with his great over the top performance, and was just downright hilarious. Anne Helm was very pretty but her acting wasn't good at all and her chemistry with Mitchell was off. Scott Brady is TERRIBLE as the detective and he had some terrible dialog. Victoria Carroll was pretty but almost had me in tears from laughing so hard with her clumsy performance. Overall seek this out one of the best so bad it's good movies i have seen! *** Out of 5

***SPOILERS*** Ridicules remake of the 1953 horror classic "House of Wax" with a deranged Cameron Mitchell, who's seen better day and was in far better movies, as the mad as a hatter wax museum curator Vincent Rinard. Rinard who's face had been disfigured when his boss Paragon Pictures CEO Max Black, Barney Kroeger,spilled a glass of brandy at him while he was lighting up a cigarette. That happened during a fight he had with him over Paragon Pictures' top star Marie Morgan,Anne Helm, over whom of the two suiters, Rinard or Black, she was to marry.

Recovering from his injuries Rinard opens up the famous Hollywood Wax Museum and uses his talents to kidnap and turned into wax like zombies those that he has it in for including his love Marie's former boyfriend actor Tony Dean, Phillip Brird, among others. We also have two bumbling policemen Det. Haskell, Scott Brady, and his partner Sgt. Carver, Johnny Cardos, on the case of the missing actors whom Rinard turned into living and breathing wax figures. Rinard's big plan is to kidnap Max Black and punish him for what he did to him by having him join his victims as members of his wax museum encourager. And he uses the not too bright go-go dancer Thereas, Victoria Carroll,to entice Black to go there and be turned into a ball or man of wax.

***SPOILERS***The movie really goes nowhere with Rinard too crazy to accomplish his devious plans which is to turn all is enemies into wax figures and soon goes completely nuts, if he wasn't already, when the love of his life the beautiful actress Marie Morgan turns him down cold for her true love the waxed and drugged up Tony Dean. It's Tony whom Rinard, in trying to impress her with his skills of waxing people, introduces Marie to in order to get her, in seeing that Tony is no longer able to satisfy her anymore, to fall in love with him. The films final sequence has all of Rinard's immobilized wax zombies suddenly come alive after their shocked back to life during an electoral storm.

The ending is a real letdown in it having really nothing to do with whats been happening during the entire movie but to finally and mercifully put an end to all this insanity. It takes some time to figure out what exactly happened in the films final few minutes which by then you've just about lost all interest in it! The only saving grace in the movie is Cameron Mitchell's acting as the crazed and off the wall wax museum curator Vincent Rinard. It's Mitchell who seemed to have put his entire heart and soul into the part. Mitchell seems so caught up with his role that what would have caused most actors to crack up and break into uncontrolled hysterics he actually takes seriously!

Given that Nightmare In Wax was made in 1969, when some of horror's most visionary auteurs were readily pushing the boundaries of what they could present on the screen, this toothless offering seems to have arrived about a decade too late. The macabre elements at play here are tame even by the genre's earliest standards, and since the story itself is far too time-worn and harebrained to generate any real suspense or thrills, it hard to find much to like about the dull pastiche that unfolds over the course of this 90 minute slog.

Cameron Mitchell is always a welcome presence, but this is assuredly one of the weakest entries in an extended filmography replete with C-grade gems. As the caper's central villain, disfigured in a fiery attack and driven to aimlessly dwell like a Phantom without an opera in the bowels of a workshop beneath the Movieland Wax Museum, most of Mitchell's screen time here is devoted to numerous lugubrious scenes of him spouting angry monologues at his waxen creations, all of which play out as more silly than sinister. The dollar-shop burn prosthetics that bring his character to life don't help matters either, especially since every good glimpse we get of his scarred countenance creates the impression that the makeup department merely glued a couple strips of sandpaper to his cheeks and called it a day.

Unfortunately, not much else in the film is any better. The happenings will be readily familiar to anyone who has ever seen a horror film set in a wax museum (hint: not all of the displays are made entirely of wax), and the awkward plot Mitchell utilizes his special creations to carry out is so convoluted that even he never seems quite sure whether his goal is to fiendishly imprison the people he has lured into his lair by turning them into living statues, or to use narcotic injections and hypnosis to make them act as his malevolent slaves. There are a couple of detectives roaming around throughout the movie investigating the strange fates of the disappeared people in Mitchell's orbit, but despite the cameras following them away from the main storyline enough times for half of the film to resemble one of the era's TV cop shows, the police angle ultimately has no bearing on the resolution and their attendance ends up being largely extraneous.

No one in Nightmare In Wax seems to find it strange that a deformed recluse took it upon himself to speedily sculpt perfect effigies of several prominent missing actors he was personally acquainted with and put them on display in his gallery--not even those brilliant detectives, who come face to face with the mad waxer's most recent victim just days after he vanishes without a trace and simply stand there marveling at the realism of Mitchell's craftsmanship. Even more obtuse is the museum's tour guide, who catches one of the exhibits blinking at him yet subsequently writes it off as a totally normal occurrence after Mitchell explains that his waxworks talk to him all the time so seeing one of them blink isn't really that big a deal.

The whole point of Mitchell's bonkers and long-winded plan seems to be orchestrating revenge on the movie mogul scoundrel who maimed him, but since their final showdown above a vat of boiling wax ends the exact same way every showdown above a vat of boiling wax in movie history has ended, we're left supposing that the dude should have probably thought up a better location to take a flying leap at his nemesis. The tepid climax is further hampered by a needless wrap-up montage that flashes back to several flashbacks we already saw earlier in the flick, which serves no purpose other than making this film even longer than it already feels like it is.

About the only item of interest here is that much of the picture was shot on location inside the original Movieland Wax Museum, a Southern California landmark that served as a delightful attraction for cinema fans until its doors were sadly closed in the early 2000's. A few of the gallery's most iconic dioramas are shown prominently throughout the film, and had the characters spent more time exploring additional exhibits, I might have been tempted to give this thing a couple more stars for nostalgia's sake alone.

Nevertheless, as it stands, Nightmare In Wax is dumb, tedious, and a chore to last through. And worst of all, its badness isn't even fun, it's just bad. The only chance of this film generating nightmares for anyone is if they fall asleep while watching it, which I did three times before finally making it all the way to the end. Don't bother with this one unless you have a really comfortable chair and a nap sounds nice.

You know your movie is in trouble when it has to have alien propaganda sound effects to begin your film.

A better title for this movie would have been Nightmare in earwax.

Is that Agent 99 from Get Smart with the beehive hair?

So, 007 is being followed in a multilevel car park while smoking a laramie.

And a silhouetted Hitchcock figure holding a hypodermic needle backstabs Bond. He calls the mysterious murderer "You" after being stabbed.

We've established that our killer is called You. Cool beans.

Love the thunderous title introduction music. So dramatic and in your face.

So, Captain Kirk has a collection of heads as a hobby in some sort of lab with all these smoking liquids. There's bubbly test tube and wind noises, too. (Where's Frankenstein, I wonder?) One of these pet heads looks like Sean Connery. (Another Bond victim.)

The shoegum detectives are already onto him so early in the movie.

The Captain Kirk lookalike even has added lizard skin facial features and probably some gills as well under his Batman cape? He's either gunning for a Terminator endoskeleton look or it's a bad case of bubblegum blown back? Or is he a lizard character from that 80's TV series V?

Apparently our lead actresses character dated a dude called Max in the film? Is that a Get Smart reference? She even sounds like the actress from Get Smart. Agent 99 from Get Smart lets her hair down in this scene and now resembles the B-52's singer. (Roam if you want to.) These dancing bargirls warrant a few points for swinging and shaking it, but I can't say much for the lazy song being belted out by the T-bones though. (Its too Partridge Family for me.) Actually, our main actor, Captain Kirk, guy with the metallic lizard skin, eye patch and cape? He looks like Tom Jones at times.

If you have to get up to go to the toilet, or get a bag of crisps while watching this movie, don't bother pausing or stopping this movie as you won't miss a thing.

I guess it's wrong to be dissapointed in a film like "Nightmare in Wax" but the first half is lively, redicuous junk, and in the second half they just seem to lose intererst in there own shlockfest.

Right about the time the dumb blonde character shows up (badly written and probably not the actresses fault for fizzeling) the film degerates into a series of chase and action sequences that go nowhere slow. Then a "was it all a dream?" ending to which, at that point, we can only answer "who cares?"

Terrible sound and soundtrack. Again, if you can just watch the first half, which is fun juck, you can stay ahead of the game.

This is a low-budget horror film from Crown International Pictures. Vincent Renard(Cameron Mitchell)is a former film special effects artists, who is disfigured accidentally on purpose by Max Black(Berry Kroeger), the head of prosperous Paragon Pictures. Black also happens to be competing with Renard for the affections of the pretty Marie Morgan(Anne Helm). Getting out of the movie business, the disfigured Vince opens a wax museum. Within a few months of each other, four popular stars at Paragon disappear. And soon wax figures of the missing stars become featured at Renard's wax museum. Sure seems suspicious and local Detective Haskell(Scott Brady)begins an investigation. Not exactly the worst wax museum flick, but the story line in predictable and the shock value wanes. Mitchell has always been able to make the best of his many roles. Brady is a much used character actor, and a good one. If Miss Helm looks familiar; she was Elvis' love interest in his movie FOLLOW THAT DREAM. Rounding out the cast: Phillip Baird, James Forrest, John Cardos and Victoria Carroll.