Best movie of this year hands down!

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The Plot. In London, sculptor Ivan Igor struggles in vain to prevent his partner Worth from burning his wax museum...and his 'children.' Years later, Igor starts a new museum in New York, but his maimed hands confine him to directing lesser artists. People begin disappearing (including a corpse from the morgue); Igor takes a sinister interest in Charlotte Duncan, fiancée of his assistant Ralph, but arouses the suspicions of Charlotte's roommate, wisecracking reporter Florence.By any estimate, this is not a good film. I'm convinced the good reviews have everything to do with this film being a curio in two strip technicolor.To be honest, this genre would fare far better in black and white.

MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM is one of those '30s grand guignol-style horror films that I so love, and as an added bonus it's filmed in Technicolor, which makes it pretty unique. Seeing actresses and actors such as Fay Wray and Lionel Atwill starring in full colour makes a refreshing change from their typical greyscale performances so the film wins points for novelty value alone. For those looking for originality, it would probably be best to try elsewhere, as MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM's plot has been re-used so frequently since its concept that it now seems familiar and a little stale. There was a decent '50s remake with Vincent Price called HOUSE OF WAX and a remake of that remake with the same name in the early 2000s. Add in all the countless B-movies and Z-flicks like NIGHTMARE IN WAX (even Mexican wrestler Santo visited a wax museum for one outing) and you have a movie that leaves you feeling a little fidgety despite the short running time.Anyway, it's business as usual for a '30s horror, with strong direction and great style. The art design is spot on and the waxworks are effortlessly spooky in themselves. This was made just before the onslaught of film censorship so it's intriguing to see drug addicts featuring in the cast. The performances are uniformly excellent, with Lionel Atwill reminding us of why he was one of the true titans of horror – a man who deserved his crown every bit as much as Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi until his virtual blacklisting around 1940. Fay Wray's lovely too, although her role here amounts to an extended cameo, if that. While the others can't be faulted, I did find Glenda Farrell's brash reporter to be pretty irritating – this is no criticism of the actress but rather the script, which overdoes her rattling dialogue and smug nature – I found myself wanting to chuck her in the vat of boiling wax rather than Atwill! There are plenty of good horrible moments, some of them inspired by German expressionist works as disfigured, be-cloaked figures in dark hats wander around bodysnatching and the police are always one step behind. There's an iconic 'unmasking' scene which is only slightly lessened by the fact that we've seen Atwill's face before – bad move, filmmakers – and a classic ending which was memorably spoofed in CARRY ON SCREAMING. This is a film that horror lovers and fans of classic cinema will enjoy no matter what as one of the highlights of the period.

Classic horror movie directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Lionel Atwill as a deranged sculptor with an "interesting" method of making the statues on display at his wax museum. The last (and best) of the three horror movies Lionel Atwill did with Fay Wray. Atwill is fantastic here and Wray is, as always, delightful. Nice support from Frank McHugh, Gavin Gordon, and Edwin Maxwell, among others. The scene stealer of the movie is Glenda Farrell as the fast-talking reporter heroine. She really has fun with the part. A few years later she would star in the Torchy Blane series and play a character very similar to the one she plays here.It's a good-looking movie, filmed in two-color Technicolor with nice atmospheric direction from Curtiz. The sets are great, especially Atwill's art deco laboratory. The makeup effects are terrific. It's a juicy Pre-Coder, as evidenced by the gruesome plot and the junkie character played by Arthur Edmund Carewe. Some viewers might be put off by the fact that a large chunk of the middle of the picture is more like a crime story/newspaper movie but I was always entertained, particularly by the back & forth between Farrell and McHugh. So it's not a straight horror movie from beginning to end but, so what, it's still a great film and worth a look. Remade in the '50s as House of Wax with Vincent Price. That version is more well-known than this one but I like rewatching this one more. It's just more fun.

Good horror flick. I was surprised at how good the color was for 1933. I don't know about the early "two strip" process, but it certainly worked here. Atwill's his usual demented self, this time turning people into wax mannequins for his "museum". Like King Kong of the same year, he's got his eye on Fay Wray. Poor Wray, she always seems to attract the wrong kind of guy. Good thing she's got motor-mouth Glenda Farrell as a chum to stir the pot with the cops. Seems like Atwill's got a policy of hiring the deformed, which may be charitable, but is sort of scary for everyone else.What a great wax tub set WB popped for. The catwalks are a marvel of placement and design making those scenes real eye-catchers. To me, Farrell's light comedy is a matter of taste in a horror movie, but at least it's not clownish. And how did they get their mannequins to pose like blocks of marble for an extended camera period. Apparently they used real people since wax figures melted under the stage lights. Strikes me that remaining stock-still is maybe harder than delivering a bunch of dialog. I hope they got triple pay as a result. Anyway, the movie belongs to the great line-up of 30's horror flicks, maybe not first-rank but close to it, especially when we see the real Igor (pronounced eye-gore). Ugh!