House of Wax (1953 film)
House of Wax is a 1953 American period mystery-horror film directed by Andre de Toth and released by Warner Bros. A remake of the studio's own 1933 film, Mystery of the Wax Museum, it stars Vincent Price as a disfigured sculptor who repopulates his destroyed wax museum by murdering people and using their wax-coated corpses as displays. The film premiered in New York on April 10, 1953 and had a general release on April 25, making it the first 3D film with stereophonic sound to be presented in a regular theater and the first color 3D feature film from a major American studio. Man in the Dark, released by Columbia Pictures, was the first major-studio black-and-white 3D feature and premiered two days before House of Wax.
| House of Wax | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Andre de Toth |
| Screenplay by | Crane Wilbur |
| Based on | "The Wax Works" by Charles Belden |
| Produced by | Bryan Foy |
| Starring |
|
| Cinematography | Bert Glennon Peverell Marley |
| Edited by | Rudi Fehr |
| Music by | David Buttolph |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 88 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1 million |
| Box office | $23.75 million |
In 1971, House of Wax was re-released to theaters in 3D with a full advertising campaign. Newly struck prints of the film in Chris Condon's single-strip StereoVision 3D format were used for this release. Another major re-release occurred during the 3D revival of the early 1980s. Warner Bros. released a loose remake of the film in 2005.
The Library of Congress later selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2014, deeming it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".