House Of Wax Details

[Highly rated reviewer]

House of Wax

Dear me..........Thank god I never went to the cinema to see this bundle of melted candles! Usual scenario ......Six friends go off the beaten track and end up in a Ghost Town dominated by an old Waxworks museum.......... However there are two brothers living there with some surprises in store , and who bring a whole new meaning to the phrase' you are getting on my wick'.......Paris Hilton graces the screen but it's hard to tell her from the wax dummies ....she gets down to a red bra and panties looks ornamental and that's about it. But you get the idea the director is shouting from the sidelines 'Keep moving kid they're stock taking' This is so far removed from the brilliant original with Vincent Price it's an insult. And during a scene in an empty cinema we seen Bette Davis in Whatever happened to Baby Jane and she steals the show! when she 's singing .......I'm writing a letter to Daddy. she's no doubt writing 'Get me the Hell outta here!'..... which kind of says it all ............ .Don't even bother with DVD on this one folks much like an Electrolux hoover it sucks big time.

Entertaining but the Same Old Story

'House of Wax' is very much as expected in the respect that it features just about every teen horror cliche in the book - the good looking teens on a road trip that goes wrong, the improbable activities of a raving lunatic that remain inexplicably undiscovered for years, the sex mad couple who get predictably slaughtered, a host of thinly drawn supporting characters each periodically killed in an elaborate fashion, the revelation/slight twist at the end implying its not all over, and so on.

However, if you keep in mind this isn't meant to be groundbreaking cinema, and you like a bit of camp horror, then there are worse ways to spend a couple of hours.

The film's real strength is that the two lead actors give us sympathetic characters. Elisha Cuthbert is drop dead cute and because she is so small and vulnerable you instantly feel protective towards her. The guy playing her brother attempts to give us obnoxious angst at the start but he remains a likeable guy who you can root for (maybe because the other characters are fairly cardboard).

The whole premise is ridiculous but there are some chilling deaths and excellent villains.

All in all - unoriginal but mindlessly entertaining.