Coventry Review of Nightmare in Wax

Nightmare in Wax (1969)

Welcome to the Museum of Whacky Wax Works

[5/10 · 26 November 2006]

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.