IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024368/
IMDB rating: 6,9
Director: Michael Curtiz
Main Cast: Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell, Frank McHugh
"One of the talkies' early horror classics, The Mystery of the Wax Museum is a crackling good thriller that's a great deal of fun. Wax Museum has its flaws: the identity of the villain is not especially hard to figure out, and the actors employed to impersonate wax figures (because real wax would have melted under the hot lights) do tend to move, which is certainly distracting. But on the whole, Wax Museum is tremendously effective. Some object to its odd mixture of comedy and horror, but this mixture contributes greatly to the film's unique appeal; rarely in horror films of the period does one find a wise-cracking, gin-slinging girl reporter like Glenda Farrell, whose cynical, hardboiled performance is a delight. Lionel Atwill is even better in what is perhaps his finest screen performance, and there's also good work from Fay Wray and Frank McHugh. Michael Curtiz directs stylishly and atmospherically, aided greatly by the stunning, dizzyingly impressionistic sets by Anton Grot, which are an orgy of distorted angles and contorted surfaces. Throw in some surprising pre-Code frankness in the area of sex and drugs, and you've got a horror flick with a real kick. Long thought lost, The Mystery of the Wax Museum was rediscovered in Jack Warner's personal film collection in 1970. Its two-color Technicolor had faded to the point of monochrome, but fortunately its original hues were preserved by dedicated AFI technicians. The film was remade (and considerably simplified) as the 1953 3-D extravaganza House of Wax, with Vincent Price in the Atwill role." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-mystery-of-the-wax-museum-v34236
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